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THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORY  OF  INDIA 


IN  SIX  VOLUMES 
VOLUME  V 

British  India 

1407-1858 


This  volume  can  also  be  obtained 

as  Volume  IV  of 
The  Cambridge  History  of  the  British  Empire 


PRINTED  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN 


PREFACE 

1  GREATLY  regret  having  to  record  the  deaths  of  two  con- 
tributors, Mr  S.  M.  Edwardes,  and  Lt.-Gol.  G.  E.  Luard,  while  this 
volume  was  in  preparation.  Dr  Surendranath  Sen,  however,  was 
kind  enough  to  revise  Chapters  xiv  and  xxn,  with  their  bibliographies. 

The  spelling  of  proper  names  is  generally  that  of  the  Imperial 
Gazetteer;  all  diacritical  marks  have  been  omitted. 

The  reader  will  find  that  in  this  and  the  following  volume  the 
scale  of  treatment  has  had  to  be  materially  reduced.  The  period 
covered  by  them  is  much  shorter,  but  it  is  also  incomparably  fuller, 
and  the  allocation  of  space  has  offered  many  difficult  problems.  In 
the  circumstances  it  seemed  to  me  desirable  to  economise  as  much 
as  possible  in  the  space  given  to  political  history  in  order  to  provide 
room  for  an  outline  of  the  development  of  the  administrative  system, 
a  subject  on  which  easily  accessible  information  is  scanty  and  in- 
adequate. I  have  thus  been  able  to  make  room  not  only  for  the 
chapters  dealing  with  this  topic  in  the  present  volume  but  for  a 
longer  series  of  chapters  in  the  next. 


H.  H.  D. 


SCHOOL  OF  ORIENTAL  STUDIES 
LONDON 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 
THE  PORTUGUESE  IN  INDIA 

By  SIR  E.  DENISON  Ross,  C.I.E.,  Professor  of  Persian  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  London,  and  Director  of  the  School  of  Oriental 
Studies. 

PAGE 

The  sea-route  to  India i 

Alexander  VFs  bulls a 

Historical  sources 3 

Political  state  of  South  India 3 

Settlement  at  Calicut 3 

CabraPs  voyage <\ 

da  Gama's  second  voyage 

d'Albuquerque's  first  voyage  7 

Pacheco's  defence  of  Cochin 

Almeida's  government 

The  Egyptian  squadron        .  9 

d'Albuquerque's  government  10 

Capture  of  Malacca      .  1 1 

Attack  on  Aden  1 1 

Portuguese  suzerainty  over  Ormuz 12 

Lopo  Soares's  and  Diogo  Lopes'g  expeditions  to  the  Red  Sea  13 

Vasco  da  Gama's  return  and  death 13 

The  Portuguese  in  Gujarat  14 

First  siege  of  Diu 15 

Garcia  de  Noronha *        ....  15 

Estav&o  da  Gama ID 

Dom  JoSo  de  Castro 16 

Portuguese  policy 17 

Later  governors 16 

Cession  of  Daman 19 

Siege  of  Goa '20 

Akbar  in  Gujarat 22 

Portuguese  relations  with  the  Moghuls 23 

Union  of  the  Spanish  and  Portuguese  crowns 24 

Portuguese  in  Ceylon 24 

CHAPTER  II 
THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 

By  P.  GEYL,  Litt.D.,  Professor  of  Dutch  History 
and  Institutions  in  the  University  of  London. 

Early  voyages  of  the  Dutch  to  the  east 28 

Linschotcn  and  Houtman *        ...  29 

The  United  Company 30 

Early  factories  in  the  Archipelago 31 

^Coromandel  factories 33 

GHIV  b 


viii  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Havart's  description 36 

Their  organisation *0J 

Factories  in  Bengal 40 

Early  attempts  on  Ceylon 41 

Conquest  of  Ceylon 43 

The  Ten  Years' Truce 44 

Renewal  of  war  with  the  Portuguese 47 

Capture  of  Colombo 47 

Capture  of  Negapatam 49 

Capture  of  the  Malabar  fortresses 49 

Organisation  in  Malabar 51 

Relations  with  the  King  of  Kandi 51 

Religious  policy 53 

Misgovernment  of  Vuyst  and  Versluys 54 

Renewed  war  and  treaty  with  Kandi  1766 54 

Naval  power  of  the  Dutch 55 

Finance  and  organisation 57 

Peculation 50 

Attempted  reforms 59 

Relations  with  the  French •               .        .  59 

Fall  of  the  Company •      .  60 

CHAPTER  III 

THE  FRENCH  FACTORIES  IN  INDIA 
By  HENRI  FROIDEVAUX. 

Early  voyages  to  the  east 61 

Madagascar 62 

Colbert's  company      , 63 

Preparatory  measures 65 

Early  factories 6p 

La  Haye's  expedition   .                       .              \ 67 

Trinkomali   .       .       .       .               . 69 

St  Thome* 69 

Pondichery t 70 

Martin's  work 71 

Dutch  capture  of  Pondichery >  72 

Decadence  of  the  company 73 

Law's  company 74 

Mah£ 74 

Lenoir  and  Dumas 75 

CHAPTER  IV 
THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

By  SIR  WILLIAM  FOSTER,  C.I.E.,  late 
Historiographer  to  the  India  Office. 

Formation  of  the  East  India  Company 76 

Early  voyages .  77 

Hawkins  at  Agra 77 

Conflicts  with  the  Portuguese              78 

Roe's  embassy tto 

The  capture  of  Ormuz .81 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

The  Anglo-Dutch  alliance 82 

!%£  Convention  of  Goa 85 

The  first  Dutch  War 86 

Cession  of  Bombay 87 

Trade  from  Surat 87 

Early  factories  in  Eastern  India 89 

The  Company  1635-55 ^9 

Courteen's  Association 90 

The  Assada  scheme  and  the  United  Joint  Stock 91 

Trade  and  trading  conditions 91 

The  question  of  private  trade 94 

Cromwell's  charter 9; 

Attacks  on  the  Company 

The  Scottish  East  India  Company 9 

The  English  Company         .  -        91 

The  United  Company  .        '99 

Rise  of  Bombay    .  .100 

Maratha  troubles          .  .       101 

Sir  Josia  Child's  policy  .       i  o  i 

Sir  John  Child  at  Bombay  .       102 

The  Coromandel  factories  .       103 

Disputes  between  the  London  and  English  Companies'  servants  .       105 

The  Bengal  factories .108 

TheMoghulWar 107 

Foundation  of  Calcutta .108 

The  Company  1709-40 .       108 

Development  of  trade .109 

Surman's  embassy in 

Troubles  in  Bengal 1 1 2 

Madras  1700-1740 .113 

Bombay  1700-1740 113 

The  Danish  East  India  Company 114 

The  Ostend  Company 115 

Other  foreign  Companies ,        .        .116 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  WAR  OF  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION 

By  H.  H.  DODWELL,  M.A.,  Professor  of  the  History  anci  Culture  of  the 
British  Dominions  in  Asia,  in  the  University  of  London. 

Situation  of  the  Carnatic 117 

The  Maratha  raid  1740 118 

Anwar-ud-din  nawab 119 

Neutrality  proposals 119 

Barnett's  squadron 120 

La  Bourdonnais  captures  Madras 120 

Dupleix's  quarrel  with  La  Bourdonnais 12 1 

Attitude  of  the  nawab 121 

French  military  successes 122 

Siege  of  Pondichery 123 

Treaty  of  Aix-la-Chapelle 124 


x  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  VI 
DUPLEIX  AND  BUSSY 

By  ALFRED  MARTINEAU,  Professor  of  Colonial  History  at  the  Sor- 
bonne,  formerly  Governor  of  the  French  Settlements  in  India. 

PAGE 

English  projects  in  Tanjore 125 

Dupleixs  agreement  with  Chanda  Sahib 120 

Overthrow  of  Anwar-ud-din 1 26 

Overthrow  of  Nasir  Jang      .  127 

Struggles  round  Trichinopoly  128 

Death  of  Chanda  Sahib  and  surrender  of  Law    .  130 

Action  of  Vikravandi   ......  130 

Clive's  successes  in  the  Carnatic  ....  131 

French  alliance  with  Mprari  Rao  and  Nandi  Raja  131 

Further  attempts  on  Trichinopoly  131 

Conference  of  Sadras 132 

Recall  of  Dupleix 132 

Bussy's  expedition 134 

Ghazi-ud-din's  attempt  and  death 135 

Grant  pf  the  Sarkars 136 

Bussy's  position 137 

Intrigues  against  Bussy 130 

Bussy's  success 139 

His  recall 140 

CHAPTER  VII 

CLIVE  IN  BENGAL,  1756-60 

By  H.  H.  DODWELL. 


Accession  of  Siraj-ud-daula  . 
His  attitude  towards  the  English 
Capture  of  Calcutta 
Expedition  of  recovery 


141 
141 

H3 
144 


Neutrality  discussions  with  the  French 
Capture  of  Chandernagore  ... 

Discontent  in  Bengal 14' 

The  conspiracy 14! 

Campaign  of  Plassey 149 

Omichand's  affair 151 

Clive  and  the  Hindu  officials 151 

Rotation  government  project 153 

The  shahzada  in  Bihar       t 153 

The  Dutch  project 153 

Clive's  achievement 155 

CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  SEVEN  YEARS'  WAR 

By  H.  H.  DODWELL. 

Military  situation  in  1 756 157 

Influence  of  Clive's  success  in  Bengal 157 

French  reinforcements 158 

Lally's  expedition 158 


CONTENTS  xi 

PAGE 

Capture  of  Fort  St  David 159 

The  Tanjore  expedition 159 

The  naval  action  3  August,  1758 160 

The  siege  of  Madras 160 

Forde's  campaign 162 

d' Ache's  final  defeat 163 

Battle  of  Wandiwash 163 

Hyder  'Ali  and  the  French 163 

Siege  of  Pondichery 164 

The  causes  of  the  French  failure 164 

CHAPTER  IX 
BENGAL,  1760-72 
By  H.  H.  DODWELL. 


Situation  on  Olive's  departure 
Caillaud's  campaign  1760    . 
Holwell's  views  on  English  policy 
Mir  Ja'far  replaced  by  Mir  Kasim 

AtiFVkTwci    svf  CU«U     'Ala*** 


Affairs  of  Shah 
Ramnarayan's  abandonment 
The  internal  trade  question 
The  quarrel  with  Mir  Kasim 


166 

166 

167 

168 

169 

170 

170 

171 

Vansittart's  policy 172 

Expulsion  of  Mir  Kasim  and  the  war  with  Oudh 173 

The  Bengal  mutinies 174 

Restoration  of  Mir  Ja'far 174 

Najm-ud-daula's  accession 1 74 

Olive's  reappointment  as  governor 175 

His  settlement  in  Oudh 175 

Arrangements  with  Shah  J Alam  and  the  diwanni 176 

The  question  of  presents 177 

The  salt  company 1 78 

The  batta  question 178 

The  officers  mutiny 179 

Olive's  Military  Fund 180 

Olive's  character 180 

Verelst  and  Carder 180 

CHAPTER  X 

THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY  AND  THE  STATE, 

1772-86 

By  P.  E.  ROBERTS,  M.A.,  Fellow  of  Worcester  College,  Oxford. 

East  Indian  affairs  in  parliament 181 

Position  of  the  East  India  Company 182 

Parliamentary  measures  of  1 767 184 

Debates  of  March,  1772 i8i 

Select  and  secret  committees  appointed 180 

Attacks  on  the  Company 187 

The  Regulating  Act 188 

The  acts  of  1779  and  1780 191 

The  select  and  secret  committees  of  1781 192 

Attempt  to  recall  Hastings 193 


xii  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Dundas's  India  bi                ..........  194 

Fox's  India  bills    ........     •  .        .        .        .  195 

Supported  by  Burke     ...........  196 

Fox  s  commissioners     ...........  igg 

Pitt's  India  Act     ............  200 

The  Board  of  Control  ...........  aoo 

Hastings's  views    ............  903 

Supplementary  acts  of  1786         .........  203 

CHAPTER  XI 

THE  EARLY  REFORMS  OF  WARREN 
HASTINGS  IN  BENGAL 

By  P.  E.  ROBERTS, 

Warren  Hastings's  early  service   .        .        .        ......  205 

Appointed  governor  of  Bengal     .........  205 

Position  in  1  772    ............  206 

The  dual  government  ...........  206 

Despatch  of  the  supervisors  ..........  207 

Hastings  entrusted  with  their  duties     ........  207 

Commercial  reforms     ...........  208 

Abolition  of  the  dual  government        ........  209 

Trial  of  Muhammad  Reza  Khan         ........  209 

Efficacy  of  the  reforms          ..........  211 

Abuse  of  patronage       ...........  212 

Salaries  and  allowances        ..........  213 

CHAPTER  XII 

EXTERNAL  RELATIONS  AND  THE 
ROHILLA  WAR 

By  P.  E.  ROBERTS. 

Shah  'Alam  withdraws  from  the  Company's  protection      .        .        .        .215 

Transfer  of  Kora  and  Allahabad  to  Oudh  .......  2lo 

Rohilkhand  and  the  Marathas     .........  217 

The  Rohilla  treaty  with  Oudh     .........  217 

The  conference  at  Benares    ..........  210 

Decision  to  attack  the  Rohillas    .........  219 

Question  of  the  Rohilla  War        .........  220 

The  Rohilla  atrocities  ...........  222 

Condemned  by  the  Company      .........  223 

CHAPTER  XIII 

HASTINGS  AND  HIS  COLLEAGUES 
By  P.  E.  ROBERTS. 

The  majority  in  council        ........        .  225 

Richard  Barwell  ............  2ag 

Hastings's  position 

His  conditional  resignation 


The  compact  with  Francis   .........        *      229 


CONTENTS  xffi 

PAGE 

Later  councillors 230 

Hastings's  love  of  power 231 

The  majority  attack  on  Hastings          .                        232 

Nandakumar's  accusations 233 

Nandakumar's  trial      ...........  235 

Misconduct  of  the  majority  and  of  Hastings 239 

Position  of  the  Supreme  Court     .        ..        .        . 240 

Character  of  Impey 241 

Projected  amalgamation  of  the  Courts 242 

Disputes  with  the  Supreme  Court 243 

Impey  and  the  Sadr  Court 244 

Impey's  impeachment 240 

The  Supreme  Court  amended 247 

CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  FIRST  CONFLICT  OF  THE  COMPANY 
WITH  THE  MARATHAS,  1761-82 

By  the  late  LT.-COL.  C.  E.  LUARD,  C.I.E. 

The  accession  of  Madhu  Rao 249 

Raghunath  Rao's  regency 249 

Struggle  between  Raghunath  Rao  and  Madhu  Rao  250 

Position  of  the  English 251 

Maratha  war  with  Hyder  'Ali      ....  252 

Death  of  Madhu  Rao 253 

Raghunath  Rao's  recovery  of  power    .        .        .  253 

Murder  of  Narayan  Rao 255 

Raghunath  Rao  Peshwa 255 

His  negotiations  with  the  English  256 

The  Treaty  of  Surat 257 

Battle  of  Adas 258 

Intervention  of  the  Bengal  Government 259 

Upton's  mission 259 

Treaty  of  Purandhar 260 

St  Lubin's  intrigues 261 

Renewal  of  war 262 

The  Convention  of  Wadgaon 264 

The  expedition  from  Bengal 265 

Goddard's  campaign 260 

Capture  of  Gwalior 268 

Negotiations  with  Nagpur 268 

Goddard's  negotiations 269 

Treaty  of  Salbai 270 

CHAPTER  XV 

THE  CARNATIC,  1761-84 

By  H.  H.  DODWELL. 

Position  of  Nawab  Walajah .       .  273 

Grant  of  the  Sarkars    . 274 

Early  relations  with  Hyder  5Ali 275 

The  first  Mysore  War 276 

Political  complications 277 


Hughes's  actions  against  Suffren  . 
Errors  in  the  conduct  of  the  war 

• 

• 

Stuart's  campaign  against  Bussy  . 
Lord  Macartney  governor    . 
Negotiations  with  Tipu  Sultan     . 

~j  r\. 

• 

• 

xiv  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Sir  John  Lindsay's  mission «  277 

Walajah's  occupation  of  Tanjorc 979 

Pigot  s  imprisonment 280 

Sir  Thomas  Rumbold's  government 280 

The  Guntoor  sarkar 281 

The  alienation  of  Hyder 'Ali 282 

Outbreak  of  war 283 

Colonel  Baillie's  detachment  destroyed 283 

284 
285 
285 

286 
287 
288 

Macartney's  relations  with  Hastings  and  Coote 289 

The  assignment  of  the  Garnatic  revenues 290 

Difficulties  about  the  command  of  the  army 293 

CHAPTER  XVI 

CHAIT  SINGH,  THE  BEGAMS  OF  OUDH 
AND  FAIZULLA  KHAN 

By  P.  E.  ROBERTS. 

Demands  on  Chait  Singh 29, 

Hastings  goes  to  Benares 29' 

Revolt  of  Chait  Singh 296 

Question  of  his  tenure 297 

Chait  Singh's  present  to  Hastings 298 

Later  condition  of  Benares  .        .        .        . 300 

Hastings's  defence 301 

The  nawab  of  Oudh's  present  to  Hastings 302 

Position  of  Faizulla  Khan 303 

Demands  on  him 304 

Hastings's  attempts  to  reform  Oudh 305 

Projected  relations  with  Delhi 300 

CHAPTER  XVII 

THE  IMPEACHMENT  OF  WARREN  HASTINGS 
By  P.  E.  ROBERTS. 

Hastings's  reply  to  Burke's  charges 307 

Pitt's  motives  in  supporting  the  impeachment 307 

The  charges  voted 309 

The  error  of  the  impeachment 309 

Burke's  violence 311 

Hastings's  character 312 


CONTENTS  xv 

CHAPTER  XVIII 

LEGISLATION  AND  GOVERNMENTS,  1786-1818 
By  H.  H.  DODWELL. 

PAGE 

Disappearance  of  the  Company's  trade 313 

Missionary  activity 313 

Relations  of  the  Company  and  the  Board  of  Control  .  314 

Growth  of  a  central  power  in  India 310 

The  question  of  patronage 318 

Correspondence  with  England 319 

Governors,  etc.  chosen  from  outside  the  Covenanted  service  320 

The  subordinate  governments 321 

CHAPTER  XIX 

THE  EXCLUSION  OF  THE  FRENCH,  1784-1815 
By  H.  H.  DODWELL. 

French  adventurers  in  India 323 

French  projects 324 

Contemplated  alliance  with  the  Dutch 325 

Tipu's  embassies 325 

The  French  Revolution 326 

Napoleon's  expedition  to  Egypt 327 

Mornington's  precautions 327 

Baird's  expedition  to  the  Red  Sea 320 

Decaen's  instructions 329 

French  privateers 330 

Gardane's  mission 331 

Capture  of  the  French  islands 332 


CHAPTER  XX 
TIPU  SULTAN,  1785-1802 

By  the  VERY  REVEREND  W.  H.  HUTTON,  D,DM 
Dean  of  Winchester. 

War  between  Tipu  and  the  Marathas  333 

Settlement  of  the  Guntoor  question  334 

Tipu's  attack  on  Travancore  335 

Cornwallis's  triple  alliance  .  335 

The  third  Mysore  War         .  336 

Treaty  of  Seringapatam  1 792  337 

Shore  refuses  intervention    .  338 

Causes  of  the  fourth  Mysore  War  339 

Death  of  Tipu  Sultan 341 

Tipu's  character 342 

WcUeslcy's  settlement 342 

Re-establishment  of  the  Hindu  reigning  family  ......  344 


xvi  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XXI 

OUDH  AND  THE  CARNATIC,  1785-1801 

By  the  DEAN  OF  WINCHESTER. 

i.  OUDH,  1785-1801. 

PAGE 

Condition  of  Oudh  in  1 787 347 

Cornwallis's  settlement 348 

Shore  and  the  succession  question 348 

Lucknow  in  1794 349 

Deposition  of  Wazir  'AH 349 

Oudh  in  1798 351 

Wellesley's  views 3514 

Wellesley's  negotiations 353 

2.  THE  CARNATIC,  1785-1801. 

Position  and  character  of  Nawab  Walajah 355 

His  debts 355 

Cornwallis's  treaty 356 

Lord  Hobart's  proposals 357 

Wellesley's  views 359 

The  Tanjore  question 300 

The  Seringapatam  papers 361 

The  assumption  of  the  Carnatic 361 

CHAPTER  XXII 

THE  FINAL  STRUGGLE  WITH 
THE  MARATHAS,  1784-1818 

By  the  late  S.  M.  EDWARDES,  C.S.I.,  C.V.O. 

Mahadaji  Sindhia 363 

His  position  at  Delhi 363 

Rivalry  of  Nana  Phadna vis 364 

Ghulam  Kadir  seizes  Delhi 365 

Sindhia  consolidates  his  position 360 

Death  of  Mahadaji  Sindhia 367 

The  Maratha  confederacy 367 

The  pirate  states 369 

Intrigues  and  confusion  at  Poona 370 

Wellesley's  proposals  to  Bail  Rao  II 371 

Holkar  defeats  Sindhia  and  Baji  Rao .        .  372 

The  Treaty  of  Bassein 373 

War  with  Sindhia  and  Berar 373 

War  with  Holkar 374 

Barlow's  settlement 375 

State  of  Sindhia  and  Holkar 376 

ThePindaris 377 

The  war  with  Nepal 377 

Gangadhar  Sastrrs  murder 379 

Treaty  pf  Gwalior. 380 

The  last  Maratha  war 380 

Lord  Hastings's  settlement 383 


CONTENTS  xvii 

CHAPTER  XXIII 

MARATHA  ADMINISTRATION 

By  the  late  S.  M.  EDWARDES. 

PAGE 

Position  of  the  raja  of  Satara 384 

The  powers  of  the  Peshwa 384 

ThcffuzurDqftar 385 

The  Deccani  village 386 

The  Mandatdar 387 

Financial  irregularities 380 

Minor  revenue  divisions 389 

The  judicial  system :  panchayats 389 

Criminal  cases 390 

Police 391 

The  army     .        .        .        . 393 

General  character  of  the  administration 394 

Division  of  the  land  revenue 394 

Land  tenures 39; 

Miscellaneous  taxes 3<J 

Customs,  etc 39 

Total  revenues 39) 

CHAPTER  XXIV 

THE  CONQUEST  OF  CEYLON,  1795-1815 
By  SIR  MONTAGU  BURROWS,  C.I.E. 

Early  English  relations         .                        400 

Cleghorn  and  the  capture  of  Colombo 401 

Portuguese  and  Dutch  influence  on  the  island 402 

The  Company's  administration 402 

Frederick  North's  government »  403 

His  attempt  on  Kandi 404 

The  massacre  of  1803   , 405 

The  Kandian  war 400 

Eheylapola 407 

The  occupation  of  Kandi t  400 

CHAPTER  XXV 

THE  REVENUE  ADMINISTRATION 
OF  BENGAL,  1765-86 

By  R.  B.  RAMSBOTHAM,  B.Lit. 

Grant  of  the  diwanni 409 

Revenue  agents  in  Bengal 409 

The  zamindar 409 

The  supervisors  of  revenue  .       .        ., 411 

Thekanungo , 412 

Concealment  of  the  land  revenue 


xviii  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Hastings  as  revenue  administrator 413 

The  Committee  of  Circuit 414 

Union  of  revenue  and  judicial  powers 415 

The  rai-raian 416 

Settlement  of  1772 416 

The  collectors 417 

The  diwanni  adalats 410 

The  changes  of  1773:  provincial  councils 418 

Criticisms  of  Francis,  etc 419 

Interference  of  the  Supreme  Court 421 

Krishna  Kantu  Nandi 421 

Replies  to  the  circular  of  23  October,  1 774 422 

Discussions  of  1775-76 423 

The  Amini  Commission 424 

Impey  chief  judge  of  the  sadr 426 

Annual  settlements 426 

Centralisation  of  1781 427 

Its  defects 428 

Macpherson's  reorganisation 430 

The  chief  Saristodar 431 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE  BENGAL  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM, 
1786-1818 

By  LILIAN  M.  PENSON,  Ph.D. 

Cornwallis's  instructions 433 

His  appointment 434 

His  advisers:  John  Shore 435 

James  Grant 435 

Charles  Grant 435 

Sir  William  Jones 436 

Cornwallis's  character 437 

The  Board  of  Trade 438 

The  General  Department 439 

The  Board  of  Revenue  439 

The  judicial  system       .        .        .  440 

The  reform  or  the  Board  of  Trade  441 

The  revenue  reforms  of  1 787        .  442 

The  reform  of  criminal  justice     .  444 

The  Secret  Department  of  reform  440 

The  Secretariat 446 

Further  reforms  of  1 790 447 

The  decennial  settlement 448 

The  permanent  settlement 450 

Reform  of  the  police  system 451 

Separation  of  judicial  and  executive  authority 452 

The  Cornwallis  code 454 

Changes  introduced  by  Shore  and  Wellesley 450 

The  Select  Committee  of  1808 458 

Lord  Hastings  Js  alterations 4§~ 

Importance  of  Cornwallis's  work 


CONTENTS  xix 

CHAPTER  XXVII 

THE  MADRAS  DISTRICT  SYSTEM 
AND  LAND  REVENUE  TO  1818 

By  J.  T.  GWYNN,  I.C.S.  (Retd.). 

PAGE 

South  Indian  administration  in  the  eighteenth  century       ....  462 

Position  of  the  poligars 463 

Position  of  the  ryots 463 

Land  and  sair  revenue 466 

Early  Company's  administration 46*7 

Lionel  Place  in  the  jagir 468 

Colonel  Alexander  Read 468 

Thomas  Munro 470 

Early  ryotwari 471 

Introduction  of  the  permanent  zamindari  settlement 472 

The  Bengal  judicial  system 474 

The  poligar  settlements 47! 

Village  settlements 470 

Munro  and  the  Fifth  Report 478 

Results  of  the  early  period "  .        .  400 

CHAPTER  XXVIII 

AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 
By  W.  A.  J>  ARCHBOLD,  M.A.,  LL.B. 

Early  historv  of  the  Kabul  kingdom 483 

Zaman  Shah 485 

Shah  Shuja 485 

English  views  on  Central  Asia 486 

Missions  to  Persia,  Kabul  and  Lahore 486 

Rise  of  Dost  Muhammad 488 

Russian  designs  in  Central  Asia 489 

Lord  Auckland 490 

Burnes's  mission 491 

The  siege  of  Herat 493 

The  Tripartite  Treaty 495 

Preparation  for  the  invasion  of  Afghanistan         ......  497 

The  Simla  Manifesto 498 

Home  policy 498 

Keane's  advance 499 

The  storm  of  Ghazni ,  501 

Shah  Shuja's  position 502 

The  Russian  expedition 502 

Difficulties  with  the  Sikhs 503 

Troubles  in  Afghanistan 504 

Surrender  of  Dost  Muhammad 505 

Situation  in  1841 505 

The  revolt  at  Kabul 506 

Macnaghten's  negotiations 508 

Retreat  and  massacre  of  the  Kabul  force 510 

Auckland's  measures «...  511 

Sale's  defence  of  Jallalabad 512 

Ellenborough  appointed  Governor-General        .       .       .       .       .  513 

Nott  at  Kandahar 515 

EUenborough's  orders 510 

Kabul  reoccupied 518 

The  evacuation  of  Afghanistan 520 


xx  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XXIX 

THE  CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

By  W.  A.  J.  ARCHBOLD. 

I.  SIND. 

PAGB 

The  Talpura  Mirs 522 

The  navigation  of  the  Indus 523 

Sind  and  the  Tripartite  Treaty 525 

Treaties  with  the  Mirs 527 

Ellenborough's  early  views 528 

Napier's  instructions 53° 

The  Khairpur  succession 533 

Imam  Garh 534 

Outbreak  hi  Lower  Sind 530 

Battles  of  Miani  and  Dabo 536 

Annexation 538 

II.  THE  PANJAB. 

Rise  of  Ranjit  Singh 539 

The  Cis-Satlej  Sikhs 54<> 

Expansion  of  Ranjit's  dominions 54 1 

The  capture  of  Peshawar 543 

Projects  against  Sind 544 

Character  of  Ranjit * 544 

Intrigue  and  disorder  after  his  death 546 

Ellenborough's  views 547 

Further  revolutions 548 

The  first  Sikh  War 548 

Battles  of  Firozshah  and  Sobraon 550 

Hardinge's  settlement 552 

Revision  of  the  treaty 553 

Murder  of  Agnew  and  Anderson 554 

The  second  Sikh  War 555 

Annexation  of  the  Panjab 558 


CHAPTER  XXX 

BURMA,  1782-1852 

By  G.  E.  HARVEY,  I.C.S. 

Early  English  intercourse     .                „  5f>8 

The  first  Burmese  War •.                .        .        .  559 

The  Residents *  560 

The  second  Burmese  War 561 

Administration  of  Arakan     .        .        .        .        .        .                .        .        .  562 

Administration  of  Tenasserim 565 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XXXI 

THE  INDIAN  STATES,  1818-57 

By  the  late  Li.-CoL.  C.  E.  LUARD. 


Lord  Hastings's  settlement   . 
Malcolm's  work  in  Central  India 
Settlement  in  Rajputana 
Hastings  and  Oudh 
Hastings  and  the  Nizam 
The  Bharatpur  succession     . 
EUenborough  and  Gwalior  . 
Annexation  of  Satara    . 
Annexation  of  Nagpur . 
Dealings  with  Jhansi  and  Karauli 
Annexation  of  Oudh     . 
Dalhousie's  policy 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  SOVEREIGNTY 
IN  BRITISH  INDIA 

By  H.  H.  DODWELL. 

Dual  origin  of  the  Company's  authority 589 

Developments  in  the  Carnatic 590 

Developments  in  Bengal 591 

The  Crown  and  the  Company 592 

Language  of  statutes  and  treaties 592 

Hastings's  assertion  of  British  sovereignty 597 

Francis's  views 599 

French  and  English  policy 600 

Browne's  mission  to  Delhi     .        .        .     ' 601 

The  attitude  of  Cornwallis 603 

Wellesley  and  Shah  'Alam 604 

Lord  Hastings's  views 605 

Amherst  and  Akbar  II 606 

Ellenborough's  and  Dalhousie's  negotiations 606 

Disappearance  of  the  Moghul  Empire 607 

BIBLIOGRAPHIES 

The  Portuguese  in  India  (Chapter  i) 609 

The  Dutch  in  India  (Chapter  n) 

' 


The  French  Factories  in  India  (Chapter  m) 615 

The  East  India  Company,  1600-1740  (Chapter  rv) 618 

The  Struggle  with  the  French  (Chapters  v,  vi,  and  vra)     ....  620 

The  Conquest  of  Bengal  (Chapters  vn  and  DC) 623 

Warren  Hastings  and  Bengal,  1772-85  (Chapters  x-xm  and  xvi-xvn)       .  625 

TheFirstConflict  of  the  Company  with  the  Marathas,  1 761-82  (Chapterxrv)  627 

The  Carnatic,  1761-84  (Chapter  xv) 628 

Legislation  and  Governments,  1786-1818  (Chapter  xvm)  ,  630 

The  Exclusion  of  the  French,  1784-1815  (Chapter  xix)      ....  633 

Tipu  Sultan,  1785-1802  (Chapter  xx) 633 


xxii  CONTENTS 

'  PAGE 

The  Camatic,  1785-1801  (Chapter  xxi) 635 

Oudh,  1785-1801  (Chapter  xxi) 635 

The  Final  Struggle  with  the  Marathas,  1 784-1818  (Chapter  xxn)  636 

Maratha  Administration  (Chapter  xxin) 638 

The  Conquest  of  Ceylon,  1795-1815  (Chapter  xxrv)  .        .        .  638 

The  Revenue  Administration  of  Bengal,  1765-86  (Chapter  xxv)  639 

The  Bengal  Administrative  System,  1786-1818  (Chapter  xxvi) .       ,  641 

The  Madras  District  System  ancl  Land  Revenue  to  1818  (Chapter  xxvii) .  642 

Afghanistan,  Russia  and  Persia  (Chapter  xxvin) 643 

The  Conquest  of  Sind  (Chapter  xxix) 647 

The  Conquest  of  the  Panjab  (Chapter  xxix) 648 

Burma,  1782-1852  (Chapter  xxx) 650 

The  Indian  States,  1818-57  (Chapter  xxxi)        .".....  651 

The  Development  of  Sovereignty  in  British  India  (Chapter  xxxii)     .        .  653 

CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 653 

659 


CHAPTER   I 

THE  PORTUGUESE  IN  INDIA,  1498-1598 

J.HE  last  decade  of  the  fifteenth  century  witnessed  the  discovery 
of  a  new  world  by  Columbus  and  of  a  new  route  to  an  old  world  by 
Vasco  da  Gama.  Both  discoveries  were  epoch-making,  though  in 
totally  different  ways.  The  latter,  however,  had  the  more  immediate 
effect  on  the  history  of  Europe;  and  perhaps  no  event  during  the 
middle  ages  had  such  far-reaching  repercussion  on  the  civilised  world 
as  the  opening  of  the  sea-route  to  India.  Vast  countries,  hitherto 
visited  only  by  rare  travellers  or  not  at  all,  and  known  by  name  only 
to  the  learned  few,  were  suddenly  brought  into  touch  with  the  West; 
and  the  luxuries  of  the  East,  which  had  hitherto  passed  through  so 
many  hands  before  they  reached  the  European  market,  could  now  be 
brought  direct  to  Lisbon.  As  a  result,  the  sea-borne  trade  of  the 
Muslims  in  the  Indian  Ocean  and  the  Red  Sea  was  paralysed,  and 
the  prosperous  houses  of  Genoa  and  Venice  were  faced  with  the  ruin 
of  half  their  trade  in  the  Levant,  while  Portugal  rose  suddenly  to  such 
prosperity  and  fame  that  she  was  soon  without  a  rival  in  Europe. 
Persia,  too,  was  threatened  with  the  loss  of  the  heavy  customs  she  had 
for  centuries  been  levying  on  the  wares  which  were  carried  westward 
through  her  territory.  Nothing  can  better  illustrate  the  revolutionary 
effect  of  the  opening  of  the  sea-route  to  India  on  the  markets  of  Europe 
than  the  detailed  statement  of  the  payments  made  by  merchants 
trading  from  India  to  Alexandria  which  is  given  by  contemporary 
Portuguese  writers.  I  repeat  here  the  excellent  summary  given  by 
Mr  Whiteway:1 

The  profits  on  wares  sent  from  the  East  to  Europe  were  enormous  to  bear  tiie 
cost  of  passage  through  so  many  jurisdictions  and  the  expense  of  so  many  tranship- 
ments. There  has  come  to  us  a  detailed  statement  of  the  payments  made  by 
merchants  trading  from  India  to  Alexandria,  which  is  full  of  interest;  it  refers  to 
a  time  when  an  independent  Sultan  ruled  in  Cairo,  but  under  the  Ottoman  Turks 
the  payments  would  certainly  not  have  been  smaller.  The  Red  Sea  merchants  lived 
in  Jedda  and  had  their  factors  in  Calicut.  The  regulations  of  the  Sultan  of  Cairo 
required  that  one-third  of  the  imports  should  be  pepper,  and  this  amount  must  be 
sold  to  him  in  Jedda  at  Calicut  prices.  Say  a  merchant  brought  goods  from  Calicut 
to  the  value  there  of  £300,  and  among  them  no  pepper.  He  would  have  to  buy 
in  Jedda,  at  Jedda  prices,  pepper  worth  hi  Calicut  £100,  and  re-sell  it  to  the  Sultan 
at  the  Calicut  price.  On  the  balance  of  the  goods  he  would  pay  I  o  per  cent,  ad 
valorem,  and  again  on  the  balance,  after  deducting  this  10  per  cent.,  4  per  cent, 
more.  Instead,  however,  of  getting  the  Calicut  price  of  the  pepper  in  money,  he 
was  compelled  to  take  copper  in  Jedda  from  the  Sultan  at  Calicut  prices — that  is, 
copper  in  Jedda  was  worth  7  cruzados  the  quintal,  but  this  he  was  compelled  to 
buy  at  i  a  cruzados,  the  Calicut  price.  Practically,  therefore,  the  Sultan  of  Cairo 
was,  at  no  expense  to  himself,  a  partner  to  the  extent  of  one-third  in  every  voyage. 

1  Rise  of  Portuguese  Power  in  India,  pp.  7,  8. 
CHIV  * 


2  THE  PORTUGUESE  IN  INDIA,  1498-1598 

* 

In  spite  of  these  exactions  the  profits  on  the  double  journey  would  be  very  large 
indeed. 

To  continue,  however,  with  the  goods  to  Europe.  Brought  to  Suez  in  smaller 
boats  from  Jedda,  the  importer  had  to  pay  5  per  cent,  ad  valorem  in  ready  money; 
and  to  supply  this  money  there  were  banks  at  Suez  prepared  to  cash  drafts.  The 
journey  to  Cairo  took  three  days;  and  a  camel  to  carry  about  450  Ibs.  cost  about 
37*.  6a.  A  mile  out  of  Cairo  the  goods  were  registered.  The  value  of  pepper  in  the 
Cairo  market  was  about  zod.  the  pound,  and  a  merchant  buying  pepper  had  to 
buy  an  amount  equal  to  one-third  of  his  purchases.  From  Cairo  the  goods  were 
taken  down  the  Nile  in  boats,  and  were  carried  from  the  river  to  Alexandria  on 
camels.  At  Alexandria  they  were  registered  again,  and  buyer  and  seller  had  each 
to  pay  5  per  cent,  ad  valorem.  The  shipper  had  also  to  pay  5  per  cent,  to  frank  him 
across  the  sea. 

The  Pope,  Alexander  VI,  in  view  of  the  wonderful  discoveries  by 
the  Spaniards  and  the  Portuguese,  had  taken  upon  himself  between 
1493  and  1494  to  issue  no  less  than  four  bulls  with  the  object  of 
parcelling  out  the  world  between  these  two  nations.1  The  Pope's 
delimitations,  which  with  each  bull  showed  greater  advantages  to 
Spain,  were  somewhat  modified  by  the  Treaty  of  Tordesillas  (June, 
1494),  which  gave  Portugal  all  the  lands  which  might  be  discovered 
east  of  a  straight  line  drawn  from  the  Arctic  to  the  Antarctic  Pole  at 
a  distance  of  370  leagues  west  of  Cape  Verde,  and  to  Spain  all  lands 
west  of  that  line.  And  in  1502  the  same  Pope  gave  the  king  of  Portugal 
permission  to  style  himself  "Lord  of  the  Navigation,  Conquest  and 
Commerce  of  Ethiopia,  Arabia,  Persia  and  India". 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  by  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century 
the  Portuguese  had  explored  not  only  the  whole  length  of  the  western 
coast  of  Africa  but  also  a  portion  of  the  mainland  beyond  the  Cape 
of  Good  Hope;  and  that  Vasco  da  Gama  was  not  sent  to  discover 
India,  but  merely  to  find  the  direct  sea-route  to  that  country.  The 
original  idea  underlying  this  mission  was  to  find  spices  and  Christians. 
Factories  were  established  without  great  difficulty,  but  the  chief  care 
of  the  Portuguese  commanders  was  the  attempt  to  drive  all  Muham- 
madan  shipping  from  the  Indian  Ocean  and  the  Red  Sea  in  order  to 
ensure  the  carrying  of  all  Indian  products  in  Portuguese  vessels.  The 
next  hundred  years  are  therefore  occupied  not  only  in  establishing 
factories  on  the  coast  of  India,  but  also  in  placing  garrisons  at  a 
number  of  strategic  points,  i.e.  at  the  entrance  of  the  Red  Sea  and 
elsewhere  outside  India. 

So  long  as  their  energies  were  mainly  devoted  to  the  control  of  the 
high  seas  and  to  the  capture  or  defence  of  these  strategic  points,  the 
Portuguese  were  pre-eminently  successful,  though  thwarted  of  two 
of  the  prizes  they  most  coveted,  namely  Aden  and  Jedda.  But  they 
showed  themselves  incapable  of  founding  on  Indian  soil  anything 
resembling  an  overseas  empire;  and  although  they  have  continued  to 
hold  a  certain  number  of  their  Indian  possessions  down  to  the  present 

1  See  especially  Van  der  Linden,  "Alexander  VI  and  his  Bulls,  1493-1494",  American 
Historical  Review,  xxi,  No.  i,  1916. 


HISTORICAL  SOURCES  3 

day,  they  were  not  strong  enough,  when  the  time  came,  to  defeat 
their  European  rivals  in  the  East,  and  lost  one  by  one  those  outlying 
bases  which  had  once  given  them  the  command  of  the  eastern  seas. 

Though,  as  has  been  so  often  observed,  the  predominance  of  the 
religious  orders  in  civil  affairs  contributed  greatly  to  the  decline  of 
the  Portuguese  power  in  India,  the  devoted  labours  in  other  spheres 
of  the  Jesuits  at  Goa  must  never  be  lost  sight  of.  The  contributions  of 
their  missionaries  to  the  historical  and  geographical  literature  of  the 
world  constitute  an  inestimable  treasure-house  of  knowledge,  and  have 
placed  under  a  lasting  obligation  all  students  of  the  East.  It  is  also 
a  fortunate  circumstance  that,  apart  from  the  literary  activity  of  the 
Jesuits,  the  Portuguese  produced  during  this  heroic  age,  in  addition 
to  a  great  epic  poet,  a  number  of  fine  chroniclers,  who  wrote  minute 
and  thrilling  narratives  of  their  progress  in  the  East;  notably  Barros, 
Couto,  Castanheda,  Goes,  Alvarez,  Almeida,  Duarte  Barbosa,  and  last 
but  not  least  the  great  Affonso  d' Albuquerque  himself,  whose  Letters 
and  Commentaries  will  bear  comparison  with  those  of  any  other  soldier- 
statesman. 

Finally  a  word  may  be  said  regarding  the  Muhammadan  sources 
for  the  history  of  the  Portuguese  in  the  Indian  Ocean  and  the  Red 
Sea,  existing  in  Arabic,  Persian  and  Turkish.  Although  these  writers, 
like  the  Portuguese,  are  not  free  from  prejudice  nor  above  the  sup- 
pression of  incidents  wounding  national  and  religious  pride,  their 
narratives  are  usually  in  complete  accord  with  those  of  their  enemies, 
and  bear  striking  testimony  to  the  intelligent  grasp  which  the  Portu- 
guese gained  of  the  public  affairs  and  private  intrigues  of  the 
Musulmans.1 

The  principal  states  in  Hindustan  and  Western  India  at  the  end  of 
the  fifteenth  century  were  the  Muhammadan  kingdoms  of  Delhi, 
Gujarat,  Berar,  Bidar,  Ahmadnagar  and  Bijapur:  and  the  Hindu 
kingdoms  of  Vijayanagar,  Kannanur,  Calicut  and  Cochin. 

It  was  actually  the  power  of  Vijayanagar  which  prevented  the 
Muhammadan  states  of  Northern  India  from  making  a  coalition 
against  the  Portuguese  when  they  first  settled  on  the  coast;  and  when 
*&  15^5  the  power  of  Vijayanagar  was  broken  and  a  coalition  formed, 
the  Portuguese  were  too  strongly  established  to  be  ousted.  As,  during 
the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century,  Vijayanagar  was  really  the 
dominating  power  in  Southern  India,  it  is  strange  that  the  Portuguese 
never  tried  to  conciliate  that  state,  but  on  the  contrary  were  at  times 
openly  hostile. 

On  8  July,  1497,  three  vessels,  varying  from  60  to  150  tons  burden, 
left  Lisbon  under  Vasco  da  Gama,  and  on  17  May,  1498,  they  an- 
chored off  a  small  village  eight  miles  north  of  Calicut.  It  is  not  without 

1  See  Journal  of  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society,  October,  1921,  and  January,  1922,  "The  Portu- 
guese in  India  and  Arabia  between  1507-1517;  and  between  1517-1538",  by  the  present 
writer. 

1-2 


4  THE  PORTUGUESE  IN  INDIA,  1498-1598 

significance  that  the  first  landing  of  these  men,  whose  main  object 
was  to  usurp  the  spice  trade,  hitherto  a  monopoly  of  the  Muham- 
madans,  should  have  been  on  Hindu  territory.  One  wonders  what 
might  have  been  the  fate  of  da  Gama  and  his  companions  if  die 
landing  had  been  attempted,  say,  in  some  part  of  the  powerful  Muslim 
kingdom  of  Gujarat.  As  it  turned  out,  the  Hindu  ruler  of  Calicut, 
whose  hereditary  tide  was  Zamorin,  gave  a  friendly  reception  to  these 
strangers,  had  them  conducted  by  a  pilot  to  a  safer  anchorage,  and 
invited  da  Gama  to  pay  him  a  visit  in  Calicut.  In  response  to  this 
invitation  a  party  of  fourteen  set  out  for  the  Zamorin's  capital;  and  so 
great  was  their  ignorance  of  things  Indian  that  they  mistook  a  Hindu 
temple  for  a  Christian  chapel,  imagining  that  what  was  not  Muham- 
madan  must  be  Christian.  Though  they  cannot  have  found  the 
Hindu  idols  very  orthodox  in  type,  they  nevertheless  entered  the 
temple  and  prayed  there.1 

For  the  attainment  of  their  immediate  object  these  early  Portu- 
guese adventurers  were  poorly  equipped.  In  the  first  place  they  had 
brought  no  presents  for  the  local  rulers  with  whom  they  would  have 
to  treat — a  strange  omission  in  view  of  their  past  experiences  in  Africa ; 
and  secondly  their  wares  proved  unattractive  to  the  Indians,  which 
in  the  circumstances  was  quite  natural.  In  spite  of  the  difficulties 
which  the  Muhammadan  traders,  in  self-defence,  put  in  their  way, 
the  adventurers  achieved,  thanks  to  the  Zamorin,  a  certain  measure 
of  success  and  seem  to  have  established  quite  friendly  relations  with 
the  people  of  the  country.  When,  however,  on  29  August,  1498, 
da  Gama  set  out  on  his  return  voyage,  he  carried  with  him  five  out 
of  twelve  inhabitants  whom  he  had  made  prisoners  as  a  reprisal  for 
the  detention  of  some  of  his  goods,  ultimately  restored  to  him.  This  was 
the  one  injudicious  act  associated  with  the  first  expedition,  and  no 
doubt  helped  to  confirm  the  stories,  eagerly  spread  by  the  Muslim 
traders,  of  the  high-handed  methods  of  the  Portuguese  in  Africa.  As 
a  reconnaissance,  da  Gama's  voyage  was  of  the  utmost  importance; 
for  on  his  return  to  Lisbon  after  an  absence  of  two  years  with  two  out 
of  his  three  ships,  and  fifty-five  survivors  out  of  the  original  company 
of  170,  he  was  able  to  show  specimens  of  the  articles  obtainable  in  the 
Calicut  market,  and  to  tell  the  merchants  of  Portugal  what  wares  met 
with  the  favour  of  the  Malabaris.  Of  the  religion  and  customs  of  that 
part  of  India  he  seems  to  have  learnt  surprisingly  little.  To  judge  by 
the  instructions  issued  to  the  second  expedition,2  it  would  appear  that 
da  Gama's  party  had  actually  passed  three  months  in  a  Hindu 
country  without  discovering  the  existence  of  the  Hindu  religion.  All 
the  inhabitants  of  India  who  were  not  Muslims  were  assumed  to  be 
Christians,  but  of  course  bad  Christians  as  they  were  not  Catholics; 
and  we  know  how  much  time  and  how  many  lives  the  Portuguese 

1  See  Whiteway,  op.  cit.  p.  80* 
1  Idem>p.  89,  n.  i. 


PEDRO  ALVAREZ  CABRAL  5 

afterwards  devoted  to  the  conversion  to  the  Roman  faith  of  the 
Ethiopians  who  were  already  Christians.  Still  it  remains  a  mystery 
why  they  failed  to  discover  that  the  Zamorin  was  neither  Christian 
nor  Muslim,  seeing  that  they  were  for  so  long  in  daily  intercourse 
with  him. 

After  the  return  of  da  Gama,  preparations  were  immediately  made 
in  Portugal  to  equip  a  new  fleet  on  a  far  larger  scale  than  the  first, 
and,  on  9  March,  1500,  Pedro  Alvarez  Cabral  set  out  from  Lisbon  in 
command  of  a  fleet  of  thirteen  vessels  and  1200  men.  Among  his 
captains  was  Bartholomeu  Dias,  who  had  been  the  first  sailor  to  round 
the  Cape.  After  a  series  of  amazing  adventures,  including  the  acci- 
dental discovery  of  Brazil  and  Madagascar,  Cabral  with  six  vessels 
reached  Calicut  on  13  September,  1500,  and  on  the  i8th  he  had  an 
interview  on  shore  with  the  Zamorin.  Cabral  was  eminently  unsuited 
for  the  diplomatic  side  of  his  mission,  and  showed  no  disposition  to 
consider  the  sentiments  and  prejudices  of  those  with  whom  he  was 
sent  to  trade.  Misunderstandings  due  to  ignorance  and  mistrust  arose 
after  the  first  interview,  and  reached  a  climax  with  the  seizure  on 
1 6  December  of  a  ship  belonging  to  the  Arabs,  which  led  to  a  riot  in 
which  forty  Portuguese  perished  and  their  factory  was  levelled  with 
the  ground.  In  consequence  of  this  it  became  impossible  for  Cabral 
to  remain  at  Calicut,  but,  before  leaving  with  only  two  ships  laden, 
he  put  to  death  600  innocent  boatmen  who  had  had  nothing  to  do 
with  the  riot,  and  for  two  days  bombarded  the  town.  On  24  December 
they  reached  Cochin,  where,  though  they  did  not  actually  meet  the 
raja — who  afterwards  proved  such  a  valuable  ally  to  them — they 
succeeded  in  loading  the  remainder  of  their  ships.  Scarcely  had  they 
done  so,  however,  when  news  came  that  a  large  fleet  was  sailing  (|own 
the  coast  from  Calicut  to  attack  them.  Cabral  stole  away  on  the  night 
of  9  January,  1501,  leaving  in  Cochin  about  thirty  Portuguese,  among 
whom  was  the  famous  Duarte  Barbosa.1  On  the  following  day  Cabral 
only  escaped  an  encounter  with  the  Zamorin's  fleet  by  reason  of  a 
calm.  It  may  be  mentioned  that  when  off  Kannanur  he  was  assisted 
by  the  local  raja  with  supplies.  Eventually  Cabral  reached  Portugal 
with  five  vessels  so  richly  laden  that  the  expenses  of  the  whole  ex- 
pedition were  more  than  covered.  But  the  most  important  result  of 
this  in  many  ways  disastrous  journey  was  the  discovery  of  the  Cochin 
harbour,  which  was  greatly  superior  to  Calicut  as  an  anchorage,  and 
the  further  knowledge  of  Indian  politics,  which  taught  them  that  in 
the  raja  of  Cochin,  the  enemy  of  the  Zamorin,  they  might  find  a  con- 
stant ally. 

In  1501  a  fleet  of  four  trading  vessels  went  to  Cochin  and  returned 
in  safety,  having  been  warned  at  Mozambique  to  avoid  Calicut. 

It  is  convenient  here  to  review  the  new  situation  in  which  Portugal 
found  herself  as  a  result  of  these  adventures.  The  Portuguese  had  now 

1  Duarte  Barbosa,  ed.  by  M.  Longworth  Dames  (Hakluyt  Society). 


6  THE  PORTUGUESE  IN  INDIA,  1498-1598 

learnt  that  the  Indians  were  not  Christians,  were  capable  of  showing 
themselves  formidable  foes,  and  must  consequently  be  treated  with 
some  consideration.  They  realised  that  the  possibilities  of  trade  were 
enormous,  and  that  the  rival  they  had  to  fear  was  the  Arab  trader. 
It  could  make  no  difference  to  the  Hindus  whether  they  traded  with 
the  Arabs  or  the  Portuguese,  though,  as  far  as  imports  were  concerned, 
the  latter  were  able  to  introduce  many  commodities  which  were  not 
brought  by  the  Arabs  from  the  Red  Sea.  The  main  business  then  of 
the  Portuguese  was  to  conciliate  the  local  Indian  rulers  and  drive 
away  the  Arab  merchantmen.  Although  the  Zamorin  was  an  avowed 
friend  to  the  latter,  to  whom  Calicut  owed  its  prosperity,  the  Portu- 
guese had  the  great  advantage  of  beginning  their  Indian  enterprise 
at  Hindu  ports;  and  not  until  they  moved  further  north  along  the 
west  coast  of  India  did  they  find  themselves  in  conflict  with  a  Muslim 
state  whose  sympathy  with  the  Arabs  was  founded  on  something  more 
binding  than  trade  relations. 

The  object  of  the  Portuguese  was  now  not  only  to  hinder  as  far  as 
possible  trade  between  India  and  the  Red  Sea  and  the  Persian  Gulf, 
but  also  to  divert  to  Portugal  all  the  trade  of  the  East  with  Europe. 
To  this  end  a  fleet  of  twenty  ships  was  dispatched  in  February,  1502, 
under  Vasco  da  Gama,  followed  in  April  by  five  more  vessels  under 
Estav&o  da  Gama.  In  September  this  combined  fleet  assembled  off 
Anjadiva  (south  of  Goa),  where  they  perpetrated  one  of  the  most 
dreadful  deeds  in  the  annals  of  a  not  over-nice  period.  A  rich  Muslim 
pilgrim  vessel  on  its  way  to  India  from  the  Red  Sea  was  intercepted 
by  da  Gama's  fleet,  plundered  and  sunk;  there  were  many  women 
and  children  on  board;  but  to  these  no  mercy  was  shown;  and  we 
actually  read  that  da  Gama  watched  the  horrors  of  the  scene  through 
a  porthole,  merciless  and  unmoved. 

He  reached  Calicut  on  29  October,  1502.  His  aim  was  to  compel 
the  Zamorin  to  turn  the  Muhammadans  out  of  the  country.  This  was 
an  instruction  previously  issued  to  Cabral,  but  at  a  time  when  the 
powers  in  Lisbon  imagined  the  Zamorin  to  be  some  sort  of  Christian. 
When  da  Gama  arrived  the  second  time,  he  found  the  Portuguese 
ostensibly  at  war  with  the  Zamorin,  and  made  the  expulsion  of  the 
Muhammadans  a  preliminary  condition  to  any  peace.  The  Zamorin, 
of  course,  refused;  and  his  refusal  was  followed  by  acts  of  wanton  and 
revolting  cruelty  on  the  part  of  the  Portuguese  leader.  It  is  needless 
here  to  enter  into  the  details  which  are  all  too  vividly  described  by  the 
Portuguese  historians ;  it  is,  however,  quite  evident  that  da  Gama  had 
no  bowels  of  compassion,  and  that  his  only  policy  when  opposed  was 
one  of  frightfulness.  On  3  November  he  sailed  for  Cochin,  where  he 
established  a  factory.  From  there  he  proceeded  to  Kannanur,  where, 
after  erecting  a  defensive  palisade,  he  sailed  for,  and  eventually 
reached,  Lisbon  on  i  September,  1503. 

According  to  the  original  plan,  Vinccnte  Sodre  had  been  left  behind 


DUARTE  PACHEGO  7 

to  patrol  the  coast  with  six  vessels  and  a  caravel.  It  cannot  be  sup- 
posed that  the  raja  of  Cochin  bore  any  love  to  da  Gama  and  his 
Portuguese,  by  whom  he  had  been  treated  in  a  most  high-handed 
manner,  especially  in  regard  to  prices;  but  he  was  anxious  to  obtain 
the  support  of  Sodre  in  the  event  of  an  attack  by  the  Zamorin.  Sodre, 
however,  thought  it  would  be  more  profitable  to  intercept  vessels  at 
the  mouth  of  the  Red  Sea,  and  so  sailed  away  from  the  Indian  coast 
to  the  despair  of  the  factors  left  in  Cochin  and  Kannanur,  He  took 
several  rich  prizes,  but  perished  with  three  of  his  ships  at  the  end  of 
April,  1503,  in  a  bay  in  one  of  the  Curia  Muria  islands.  Meanwhile, 
as  da  Gama  had  foreseen,  the  Zamorin  proceeded  to  revenge  himself 
on  Cochin,  eventually  succeeding  in  overrunning  the  raja's  territory; 
and  the  raja  himself  was  forced  to  retreat  to  an  island  sanctuary, 
taking  the  Portuguese  with  him.  During  1503  the  authorities  in 
Lisbon,  probably  under  the  impression  that  the  safety  of  the  factories 
at  Cochin  and  Kannanur  was  assured  by  the  presence  of  Sodre  with 
his  patrol,  did  not  send  out  a  fleet.  But  in  April  of  that  year  three 
small  squadrons  were  dispatched  under  the  respective  commands  of 
Affonso  d' Albuquerque,  his  cousin  Francisco  d' Albuquerque,  and 
Soldanha.  Francisco  was  the  first  to  arrive,  and  found  the  Zamorin 
and  the  Portuguese  still  at  war.  He  drove  the  Zamorin's  troops  from 
the  immediate  vicinity  of  Cochin,  and  set  about  constructing  the  first 
fortress  built  by  the  Portuguese  in  India.  On  the  arrival  of  Affonso, 
the  rest  of  the  Cochin  territory  was  cleared  of  the  Zamorin's  men,  and 
a  treaty  of  peace  was  concluded  between  the  two  Hindu  princes,  by 
which  the  Zamorin  agreed  to  pay  upwards  of  4000  cwt.  of  pepper. 
It  was  in  connection  with  the  late  delivery  of  the  second  consignment 
that  hostilities  again  broke  out  between  Calicut  and  Cochin,  provoked 
no  doubt  by  the  Portuguese.  Nevertheless,  on  the  last  day  of  January, 
1 504,  the  two  d' Albuquerques  started  for  home ;  Francisco  disappeared 
mysteriously  on  the  voyage,  and  the  great  Affonso  reached  Portugal 
with  only  two  vessels. 

The  famous  Duarte  Pacheco  had  been  left  with  less  than  a  hundred 
men  to  defend  Cochin  against  the  entire  forces  of  the  Zamorin, 
numbering  some  60,000.  Only  about  8000  of  the  Cochin  troops  could 
be  relied  on  to  fight  beside  the  Portuguese.  Pacheco  was  not  only  a 
great  soldier,  but  also  a  man  of  resource  and  intelligence.  He  quickly 
took  stock  of  all  the  local  resources,  and  in  order  to  secure  the  regular 
provision  of  supplies  during  the  siege  of  Cochin,  which  was  self- 
supporting,  he  managed  to  conciliate  the  leading  Muhammadan 
merchants  on  whom  such  supplies  had  always  depended.  The  first 
assault  was  made  on  Palm  Sunday,  31  March,  and  the  siege  dragged 
on  for  nearly  four  months,  during  which  Pacheco  showed  himself  the 
master  of  every  situation,  while  the  Zamorin's  forces  were  daily 
reduced  by  gun-fire  and  sickness.  Lisbon  had,  of  course,  no  news  of 
what  was  passing,  and  towards  the  end  of  1504  Lopo  Scares  arrived 


8  THE  PORTUGUESE  IN  INDIA,  1498-1598 

in  Indian  waters  with  a  fleet  of  fourteen  vessels  with  orders  to  prevent 
any  but  Portuguese  ships  lading  at  Cochin.  At  the  request  of  the 
Zamorin  he  visited  Calicut,  arranged  a  peace,  and  then,  having  taken 
in  a  cargo,  he  sailed  for  home  carrying  with  him  Duarte  Pacheco,  and 
leaving  in  his  place  a  man  who  did  everything  to  make  the  raja  regret 
the  departure  of  that  brave  soldier. 

With  the  year  1505  begins  a  new  era  in  the  history  of  Portuguese 
India.  The  sending  of  an  annual  fleet,  and  the  abandonment  of  a 
handful  of  men  to  their  fate  between  the  departure  of  one  fleet  and 
the  arrival  of  the  next,  had  proved  a  failure.  One  can  picture  the 
feelings  of  anxiety  and  desolation  which  must  have  possessed  these 
little  colonies  of  strangers  without  means  of  escape  either  by  sea  or 
land.  Their  only  consolation  can  have  been  the  thought  that  they 
were  as  safe  in  their  isolated  factories  as  they  would  have  been  on  the 
high  seas.  It  was  now  decided  to  appoint  a  viceroy  who  should  remain 
at  his  post  in  India  for  three  years.  At  the  beginning  of  1505  Fran- 
cisco d'Almeida  set  out  in  command  of  a  large  fleet  and  1500  soldiers, 
with  orders  to  build  fortresses  at  Kilwa,  Ajyadiva,  Kannanur  and 
Cochin. 

It  was  a  fortunate  chance  that  led  to  the  appointment  of  this  man 
as  viceroy,  for  in  the  first  instance  Tristao  da  Cunha  had  been  selected, 
although  owing  to  "temporary  blindness"  he  had  been  unable  to 
accept  (just  as  the  illness  of  Bobadilla  who  had  been  first  proposed 
for  the  Eastern  Mission  by  Ignatius  Loyola,  led  to  the  dispatch  of  the 
great  Francisco  Xavier). 

Almeida  reached  India  in  September,  1505,  and  at  once  began  to 
build  a  fort  at  Anjadiva,  which  proved  useless  and  was  dismantled 
two  years  later.  He  next  proceeded  southwards  to  Kannanur  and 
later  to  Cochin,  where  he  arrived  in  time  to  settle  in  Portuguese 
interests  a  question  of  succession  to  the  throne. 

Now  that  the  Portuguese  fleet  was  continuously  patrolling  the 
Malabar  coast,  it  became  expedient  for  the  Red  Sea  merchantmen 
to  adopt  a  new  route  by  way  of  the  Maldives.  Almeida  sent  his  son 
Lourengo  to  patrol  this  route  and  to  explore  Ceylon;  but  nothing  was 
achieved  beyond  a  hasty  visit  to  that  island. 

In  March,  1506,  an  engagement  took  place  between  a  large  fleet 
of  Muhammadan  traders,  armed  and  equipped  by  the  Zamorin,  and 
a  Portuguese  fleet  of  four  vessels,  resulting  in  the  capture  of  the  largest 
Muslim  ships  and  a  veritable  massacre  of  their  crews,  with  no  casual- 
ties among  the  Portuguese.  Later,  owing  to  the  unwarranted  sinking 
of  a  Muhammadan  vessel  belonging  to  a  well-known  merchant  of 
Kannanur,  the  ruler  of  that  place,  aided  by  the  Zamorin,  besieged  the 
Portuguese  garrison,  who,  after  great  suffering  from  shortage  of  food, 
were,  at  the  end  of  four  months,  saved  by  the  arrival  of  Tristao  da 
Cunha  (August,  1507). 

Tristao  da  Cunha,  having  recovered  his  sight,  left  Portugal  in  April, 


FRANCISCO  D'ALMEIDA  9 

1506,  with  ten  cargo  vessels  and  a  squadron  of  four  ships  under 
the  famous  Affonso  d' Albuquerque,  who  was  designated  to  succeed 
Almeida,  though  with  only  the  lower  title  of  Governor  of  India.  Their 
instructions  were  that  da  Cunha,  having  captured  and  fortified 
Socotra,  in  order  to  block  the  entrance  to  the  Red  Sea  as  an  answer 
to  the  Egypto- Venetian  confederacy,  should  proceed  to  India,  leaving 
Albuquerque  with  six  ships  and  400  men  to  attack  Jedda  and  Aden. 
They  finally  reached  Socotra,  where  they  took  the  Arab  fort  by  storm, 
and  built  a  new  fortress.  On  10  August,  1507,  Trist&o  left  for  India, 
and,  as  we  have  seen,  was  able  by  the  end  of  the  month  to  relieve  the 
beleaguered  garrison  of  Kannanur.  At  the  end  of  November  his  own 
fleet  and  that  of  the  viceroy  completely  destroyed  the  Zamorin's  fleet; 
on  10  December  Tristao  set  out  for  Portugal  with  a  full  cargo. 

Albuquerque  remained  in  Socotra  until  August,  1507,  arranging 
for  the  defences  and  internal  administration  of  the  island.  Perceiving, 
however,  that  Socotra  was  ill-placed  for  blockading  the  Red  Sea,  and 
further  that  with  his  slender  forces  he  had  no  chance  of  successfully 
attacking  Aden,  he  ignored  his  instructions  and  determined  to  attack 
Ormuz. 

The  second  phase  in  the  history  of  Portuguese  India  began  in  the 
middle  of  Almeida's  viceroyalty.  Till  then  the  most  northerly  point 
touched  by  the  Portuguese  vessels  had  been  Anjadiva,  and  not  till 
1508  did  they  venture  nearer  to  what  ultimately  became  the  centre  of 
their  activities.  But  then  begins  their  struggle  with  the  Muhammadan 
powers,  for  on  the  Malabar  Coast,  though  they  had  encountered 
Muhammadan  merchants  and  their  fleets,  their  political  dealings  had 
been  only  with  Hindu  rulers. 

There  were  two  motives  which  now  induced  the  Muhammadans 
to  take  concerted  action.  On  the  one  hand,  the  rulers  of  Arabia  and 
Egypt  were  being  deprived  of  the  duties  Igvied  on  Indian  goods 
passing  up  the  Red  Sea  and  across  Egypt  on  their  way  to  Alexandria; 
and  on  the  other  hand  the  great  Musulman  kingdoms  of  Gujarat, 
Bijapur  and  the  rest  had  begun  to  realise  that  the  Portuguese  must 
ultimately  attempt  at  the  northern  sea-ports  what  they  had  so  success- 
fully achieved  at  the  southern.  The  news  that  the  Portuguese  had 
decided  to  appoint  a  resident  viceroy  and  to  keep  a  standing  fleet  in 
Indian  waters  impelled  these  Muslim  rulers  to  negotiate  with  the 
sultan  of  Egypt  for  joint  action  against  them.  Even  the  Zamorin  is 
said  to  have  thought  of  inviting  the  help  of  the  sultan  of  Egypt.  So 
prompt  was  his  response,  that  his  fleet,  specially  equipped  at  Suez, 
was  ready  in  May  and  reached  Aden  in  August,  1507,  under  the 
command  of  Amir  Husayn,  whom  Portuguese  writers  called  Mir 
Hashim;  and  it  was  this  fleet  that  the  Portuguese  encountered  before 
they  had  tried  issues  with  the  Indian  Muslims.  Louren$o  d' Almeida, 
the  gallant  son  of  the  viceroy,  set  out  for  the  north  in  January,  1508, 
and  was  anchored  off  Chaul  when  the  Egyptian  fleet  arrived  off  that 


xo  THE  PORTUGUESE  IN  INDIA,  1498-1598 

harbour;  and  in  this,  their  first  naval  battle  with  the  Muhammadans, 
they  met  with  a  severe  reverse,  and  their  young  commander  was 
killed  (January,  I5O8).1 

Meanwhile,  Albuquerque  had  left  Socotra  with  his  own  fleet  in 
August,  1507,  and,  having  systematically  destroyed  the  chief  ports 
belonging  to  the  king  of  Ormuz,  he  then  entered  into  negotiations. 
These  led  to  nothing  but  a  nominal  treaty,  and  finally,  in  February, 
1508,  Albuquerque  was  compelled  to  leave  for  India,  reaching  Kan- 
nanur  in  December,  1508. 

He  arrived  in  India  just  as  Almeida  was  setting  sail  to  avenge  the 
death  of  his  son  Louremjo.  Almeida  met  the  Muslim  fleets  off  Diu 
and  gained  a  signal  victory,  February,  1509.  On  his  return  to  Cochin 
in  March,  a  great  quarrel  arose  about  delivering  the  government  to 
Albuquerque,  and  it  was  not  until  5  November,  1509,  that  this  was 
finally  arranged. 

The  first  expedition  which  the  new  governor  undertook  was  against 
Calicut,  but  it  achieved  nothing  beyond  the  destruction  of  a  few 
buildings,  and  Albuquerque  himself  received  two  wounds  in  the 
shoulder.  But  as  soon  as  he  had  recovered,  he  set  to  work  to  refit  the 
whole  fleet,  and  determined  to  set  out  for  the  Red  Sea  in  search  of 
the  sultan  of  Egypt's  fleet.  On  10  February,  1510,  he  sailed  from 
Cochin  with  twenty-three  ships  for  Guardafui,  but  was  diverted  from 
his  course  by  learning  of  the  defenceless  state  of  Goa,  off  which  he 
anchored  on  28  February.  Only  a  slight  resistance  was  offered,  and 
on  4  March  he  received  the  keys  of  the  fortress.  His  first  care  was 
to  strengthen  the  fortifications  in  case  Yusuf  Adil  Khan,2  the  ruler 
of  Bijapur,  should  attempt  to  recover  the  place.  Albuquerque  had 
already  contemplated  making  Goa  the  headquarters  of  the  Portuguese 
in  India;  but,  in  spite  of  all  his  preparations  and  individual  attention 
to  every  detail  of  defence,  he  was  unable  to  resist  Yusuf  Adil  Khan's 
attack,  and  after  many  misadventures  he  had  at  last  to  retire  to 
Anjadiva  on  16  August,  much  to  the  relief  of  his  captains  who  had  all 
along  been  opposed  to  the  adventure.  During  the  next  two  months 
he  received  important  reinforcements  in  ships  and  men,  and  at  the 
end  of  November  he  sailed  back  to  Goa  and  recovered  the  place  by 
storm.  In  reporting  this  victory  to  King  Manoel,  Albuquerque  wrote : 
"My  determination  now  is  to  prevent  any  Moor  entering  Goa,  to 
leave  a  sufficient  force  of  men  and  ships  in  the  place,  then  with  another 
fleet  to  visit  the  Red  Sea  and  Ormuz". 

Amir  Husayn,  who  since  his  defeat  in  February,  1509,  had  been  at 
Cambay  awaiting  reinforcements  from  Suez,  then  sailed  back,  to  find 
the  new  fleet  still  in  process  of  building. 

Albuquerque  now  devoted  all  his  energies  to  the  strengthening  of 

1  The  story  of  his  heroic  death  is  told  by  Camoens  in  his  Lusiads,  Canto  x,  29-32. 
1  Galled  by  the  Portuguese  Idalcao  or  Hidalcao.    He  is  also  called  by  Albuquerque 
Sabaio.  See  Whiteway,  op.  cii.  p.  133,  note.  See  also  Fonseca,  Hist,  of  Goa,  p.  131,  note* 


ALBUQTLJERQJUE  11 

Goa,  and  to  increasing  its  commercial  importance.  He  dispatched 
several  captains  along  the  coast  with  orders  to  compel  all  the  ships 
they  met  to  put  into  that  port.  In  the  city  itself  every  encouragement 
was  given  to  trade,  and  vessels  soon  began  to  arrive  there  from  Ormuz 
and  elsewhere.  Even  Moors  trading  in  spices  were  encouraged  to 
settle  there,  and  in  order  to  secure  a  permanent  population,  Albu- 
querque did  everything  in  his  power  to  encourage  his  Portuguese  to 
take  Indian  wives. 

In  April,  1511,  Albuquerque  set  out  for  Malacca,  at  which  point 
all  traffic  between  India  and  China  was  concentrated.  The  first  attack 
on  Malacca  (25  July,  1 5 1 1 )  led  to  no  definite  result,  and  Albuquerque's 
captains  were  against  making  a  further  attempt.  He,  however,  finally 
convinced  them  of  the  wisdom  of  his  policy  by  pointing  out  that  "if 
they  were  only  to  take  Malacca  out  of  the  hands  of  the  Moors,  Cairo 
and  Mecca  would  be  entirely  ruined,  and  Venice  would  then  be  able 
to  obtain  no  spiceries  except  what  her  merchants  might  buy  in 
Portugal ' '.  In  August,  1 5 1 1 ,  a  second  and  successful  attack  was  made, 
and  the  Portuguese  became  absolute  masters  of  the  place.  Great 
importance  was  attached  to  this  triumph  of  Portuguese  arms.  King 
Manoel  wrote  to  inform  Leo  X  of  the  event,  and  the  Pope  made  the 
news  the  occasion  of  a  series  of  ceremonies  of  public  thanksgiving  of 
unusual  pomp  and  splendour.  TristSio  da  Cunha  was  head  of  the 
special  mission  sent  to  Rome,  bearing  magnificent  presents  to  the 
pontiff,  including  an  elephant  of  extraordinary  size,  which,  as  it 
passed  the  papal  palace  stopped,  and  kneeling  down,  bowed  thrice 
to  the  Pope  who  was  watching  the  procession  from  a  window. 

Albuquerque  reached  Cochin  again  in  January,  1512,  after  an 
absence  of  less  than  twelve  months,  to  find  that  affairs  had  everywhere 
fallen  into  disorder,  while  Goa  was  constantly  alarmed  by  persistent 
rumours  of  the  advent  of  the  Turkish  fleet.  "  The  Rumes  are  coming  " 
was  the  constant  cry.  In  April,  1512,  he  wrote  to  King  Manoel  as 
follows:  "I  would  respectfully  submit  to  your  Majesty  that  until  we 
go  to  the  Red  Sea  and  assure  these  people  that  such  beings  as  the 
Rumes  are  not  in  existence,  there  can  be  no  confidence  or  peace  for 
your  Majesty's  subjects  in  these  parts".  The  security  of  Goa  was  not, 
however,  yet  assured :  and  at  the  end  of  1 5 1 2  Albuquerque  was  obliged 
to  take  a  large  force  to  attack  the  fort  of  Benasterim,  six  miles  from 
Goa,  which  had  been  strongly  fortified  and  garrisoned  by  the  king 
of  Bijapur.  The  reduction  of  this  fort  was  one  of  Albuquerque's  most 
gallant  exploits. 

Not  till  February,  1513,  was  Albuquerque  able  to  set  out  for  the 
Red  Sea.  He  first  attacked  Aden.  His  force  was  composed  of  1000 
Portuguese  and  400  Malabaris,  who  landed  in  small  boats  carrying 
with  them  scaling  ladders.  The  Aden  garrison,  in  order  to  avoid  the 
fire  of  the  Portuguese  guns,  enticed  Albuquerque's  men  within  the 
city  walls,  and,  after  four  hours  of  fierce  hand-to-hand  fighting,  the 


12  THE  PORTUGUESE  IN  INDIA,  1498-1598 

besieging  force  was  obliged  to  withdraw  to  its  ships.  After  this 
Albuquerque  attempted  to  proceed  to  Jedda,  but  the  winds  were 
unfavourable,  and  he  decided  in  May  to  anchor  at  Kamaran.  Having 
destroyed  all  the  fortifications  on  this  island,  he  returned  to  Aden, 
but,  finding  it  even  stronger  than  when  he  left  it,  he  set  sail  for  India 
in  August,  1513.  The  Portuguese  historians  tell  us  that  Albuquerque 
lay  ten  days  off  Aden  on  his  return  from  Kamaran,1  but  do  not  refer 
to  any  further  attack  on  that  city;  but  some  Muslim  historians  speak 
of  a  second  unsuccessful  attack  and  assert  that  the  guns  of  the  fort  did 
great  damage  to  the  Portuguese  ships  lying  at  anchor.2 

In  1513  Albuquerque  came  into  diplomatic  contact  with  Persia. 
Ismail  Safavi  had  sent  ambassadors  to  the  kings  of  Gujarat,  Ormuz 
and  Bijapur;  and  the  ambassador  sent  to  Bijapur  visited  Albuquerque 
at  Kannanur,  and  invited  him  to  send  Miguel  Ferreira  to  Ismail. 
Ferreira  returned  with  the  Persian  via  Ormuz,  and  at  Tabriz  had 
many  interviews  with  the  shah,  who  expressed  a  great  desire  for  the 
destruction  of  the  sultan  and  the  house  of  Mecca.  When  he  dismissed 
Ferreira,  he  sent  with  him  an  ambassador  to  Albuquerque  with  rich 
presents.  While  they  were  at  Ormuz  on  the  return  journey,  Albu- 
querque himself  arrived  there,  but,  instead  of  coming  to  terms,  he 
established  Portuguese  suzerainty  over  Ormuz,  thus  denying  Shah 
IsmaiPs  claims  in  that  quarter. 

In  November,  1515,  Albuquerque,  feeling  his  end  was  near,  set  sail 
for  India,  having  just  learnt  that  Lopo  Scares  had  been  appointed 
captain-major  in  India  and  that  he  himself  had  been  recalled.  The 
last  letter  he  addressed  to  King  Manoel,  dated  at  sea,  6  December, 
1515,  must  be  quoted  here: 

This  letter  to  your  Majesty  is  not  written  by  my  hand,  as  when  I  write  I  am 
troubled  with  hiccoughs,  which  is  a  sign  of  approaching  death.  I  have  here  a  son 
to  whom  I  bequeath  the  little  I  possess.  Events  in  India  will  speak  for  themselves 
as  well  as  for  me.  I  leave  the  chief  place  in  India  in  your  Majesty's  power,  the  only 
thing  left  to  be  done  being  the  closing  of  the  gates  of  the  Straits.  I  beg  your  Majesty 
to  remember  all  I  have  done  for  India,  and  to  make  my  son  great  for  my  sake.* 

He  died  on  16  December,  1515,  having  done  more  than  any  other 
Portuguese  leader  to  establish  the  prestige  of  his  king,  and  to  make 
the  name  of  his  fellow-countrymen  respected  and  feared.  He  realised 
that  the  thr$e  keys  to  the  eastern  trade  were  Malacca,  Ormuz  and 
Aden.  He  obtained  complete  control  of  the  first  two,  and  almost 
secured  the  third.  He  combined  the  most  resolute  determination  with 
the  greatest  personal  bravery.  He  was  scrupulously  loyal  to  his  master ; 
and  the  only  blot  on  his  character  was  his  ruthless  cruelty  towards  his 
enemies,  the  Muhammadans. 

1  BaiTos,  n,  viii,  §  4. 
1  Sec  J.R.A.S.  Oct.  1921,  p.  559. 

*  Cartas,  i,  380,  The  Letters  of  Albuquerque,  published  by  Royal  Academy  of  Lisbon, 
884. 


DIOGO  LOPES  DE  SEQjUEIRA  13 

Had  Albuquerque  lived  long  enough  to  return  to  Aden  from 
Ormuz,  he  would  have  found  the  governor  of  that  town  ready  to 
submit,  whereas  owing  to  the  stupidity  of  his  successor,  Lopo  Scares, 
the  chance  of  adding  Aden  to  the  Portuguese  possessions  was  thrown 
away.  In  February,  1516,  Lopo  set  out  with  a  fleet  of  twenty-seven 
sail  for  the  Red  Sea  in  order  to  engage  the  fleet  which  the  sultan  of 
Egypt  had  been  so  long  preparing  at  Suez.  When  he  arrived  un- 
expectedly before  Aden,  the  governor,  Amir  Mirjan,  who  had  been 
recently  attacked  by  Rais  Salman,1  the  commander  of  the  Egyptian 
fleet,  offered  the  keys  of  the  citadel  to  the  Portuguese  general,  but 
Lopo,  instead  of  taking  advantage  of  this  surprising  offer,  continued 
his  course  in  search  of  the  Egyptian  fleet,  thinking  to  return  and  take 
possession  of  Aden  when  he  had  disposed  of  Rais  Salman.  Hearing 
that  Salman  and  his  fleet  had  been  driven  by  stress  of  weather  into 
Jedda,  he  followed  him  thither;  but  instead  of  bombarding  the  city, 
he  sailed  away  two  days  later  on  the  plea  that  he  had  instructions  to 
fight  the  fleet  but  not  to  attack  Jedda.  On  his  return  he  destroyed 
the  town  of  Zeyla,  and,  on  reaching  Aden,  found  Amir  Mirjan  in  a 
very  different  mood,  and  the  fortifications  repaired.  He  returned  to 
Goa  in  September,  1516,  having  achieved  nothing.  The  remaining 
two  years  of  his  governorship  were  uneventful,  saving  that  he  suc- 
ceeded in  entering  into  relations  with  China. 

In  December,  1518,  he  was  succeeded  by  Diogo  Lopes  de  Sequeira, 
who  in  February,  1520,  made  a  fruitless  expedition  into  the  Red  Sea 
with  a  fleet  of  twenty-four  vessels.  On  his  way  back  he  was  enter- 
tained by  Malik  Ayaz  at  Diu,  which  the  Portuguese  had  coveted  ever 
since  the  time  of  Albuquerque,  and  which  had  once  been  offered  them. 
Diogo  Lopes  in  his  conversations  with  Malik  Ayaz  must  have  shown 
his  hand  too  clearly,  for  when  he  revisited  the  place  in  February, 
1521,  with  a  large  fleet,  its  defences  were  so  strong  that  the  Portuguese 
refrained  from  attack. 

Duarte  de  Menezes  succeeded  Diogo  Lopes  as  governor  on  his 
arrival  at  Goa,  September,  1521.  His  government  was  marked  only 
by  unpleasant  happenings  at  Ormuz  which  reflected  small  credit 
on  the  Portuguese.  King  John  III,  who  succeeded  King  Manoel  in 
1521,  selected  as  viceroy  Vasco  da  Gama,  now  a  man  sixty-four  years 
of  age.  Vasco  reached  India  in  September,  1524,  to  die  on  Christmas 
Day  of  the  same  year.  He  was  buried  in  Cochin,  whence  in  1538  his 
remains  were  carried  to  Portugal.  He  was  succeeded  by  Henrique 
de  Menezes,  who  held  the  office  of  governor  from  1524  to  1526,  mostly 
engaged  in  fighting  on  the  Malabar  Coast.  The  next  governor  was 
Lopo  Vaz  de  Sampaya,  who  was  in  turn  succeeded  by  Nino  da 
Cunha. 

1  Not  "Sulaiman";  Castanhcda  calls  him  correctly  Salmao  Rex.  The  Arabic  historian 
Ibn  ad-Dayba'  says  that  Salman  had  been  sent  by  Sultan  Salim  of  Turkey  to  help  the 
Egyptians  against  the  Portuguese.  See  J.RA.S.  Oct.  1921,  p.  549. 


14  THE  PORTUGUESE  IN  INDIA,  I49&-I598 

Nino  da  Cunha  arrived  in  India  in  November,  1529.  Early  in  1530 
*  the  headquarters  of  the  government  were  moved  from  Cochin  to  Goa, 
which  from  this  date  became,  as  it  has  ever  since  remained,  the  capital 
of  Portuguese  India.  The  next  eight  years  were  mainly  occupied  with 
the  dealings  of  the  Portuguese  with  Sultan  Bahadur  of  Gujarat,  and 
their  acquisition  of  Diu.  The  history  of  this  period  is  copiously  illus- 
trated by  both  the  Portuguese  and  the  Muslims;  and  on  the  whole 
the  various  narratives  are  convincingly  consistent.  In  order  the 
better  to  understand  the  local  conditions  with  which  the  Portuguese 
had  to  cope,  it  is  necessary  to  sketch  briefly  the  state  of  affairs  in 
Gujarat  itself.  In  the  year  1526  the  emperor  Babur  had  made  himself 
master  of  Hindustan  from  the  Indus  to  the  borders  of  Bengal.  He, 
however,  died  in  1530  before  he  could  subdue  the  kingdoms  of  Bengal, 
Gujarat  or  the  Deccan.  His  son  and  successor  Humayun  endeavoured 
to  complete  his  father's  work,  and  one  of  his  first  undertakings  was 
an  invasion  of  Gujarat  and  Malwa.  The  campaign  opened  with  the 
battle  of  Mandasor  at  the  beginning  of  1535.  The  troops  of  Bahadur 
were  in  every  engagement  unsuccessful  and  in  the  early  stages  of  the 
campaign  he  was  deserted  by  his  most  valuable  soldier,  the  famous 
master-gunner  Mustafa  Rumi  Khan,  who,  aggrieved  at  the  treatment 
he  received  at  Bahadur's  hands,  offered  his  services  to  Humayun. 
In  October,  while  Humayun  was  still  pressing  his  conquest,  Bahadur 
had  made  an  appeal  to  the  Portuguese  for  help,  and  had  agreed  to 
give  them  a  footing  at  Diu  in  return  for  a  contingent  of  500  Portuguese. 
He  had  already,  in  1534,  made  considerable  concessions,  ceding  the 
island  of  Bassein  with  all  its  dependencies  and  revenues  to  the 
Portuguese.  When  at  last,  in  1537,  Humayun  suddenly  withdrew, 
Bahadur,  feeling  that  his  troubles  were  over,  regretted  his  promises, 
and  set  about  negotiating  with  Nino  da  Cunha  for  his  withdrawal 
from  Diu.  It  may  be  mentioned  incidentally  that  the  500  men  had 
not  been  forthcoming.  Long  discussions  took  place  with  a  view  to 
a  conference  between  Bahadur  and  Nino  da  Cunha,  who  had  come 
up  to  settle  the  matter,  Bahadur  begging  the  Portuguese  governor 
to  visit  him  ashore,  and  the  Portuguese  insisting  that  the  sultan  should 
visit  the  fleet  and  conduct  negotiations  on  board.  Each  thoroughly 
mistrusted  the  other;  but  eventually  Bahadur  consented  to  visit  Nino 
on  board,  where  a  scuffle  arose,  and  Bahadur  was  drowned  en- 
deavouring to'escape.  All  Portuguese  historians  say  that  Bahadur  had 
intended  to  murder  the  Portuguese  governor  on  the  occasion  of  his 
return  visit.  The  exact  circumstances  which  led  to  the  drowning  of 
Bahadur  will  probably  never  be  known.  The  various  narratives  for 
the  first  time  here  come  in  conflict,  each  side  blaming  the  other  for 
the  disaster,  which  occurred  on  13  February,  1537. 

Early  in  Bahadur's  disastrous  campaign  with  Humayun,  the  king 
of  Gujarat  had  made  plans  for  escaping  from  India  with  his  belongings 
in  the  event  of  defeat.  He  had  dispatched  a  certain  Asaf  Khan  to 


SIEGE  OF  DIU  15 

Mecca  with  his  harem  and  treasure,  and  with  rich  presents  for  the 
sultan  Sulaiman — the  Ottoman  sultans  since  1517  had  been  in 
possession  of  Egypt — entreating  him  to  come  to  his  assistance.1  The 
envoy  had  an  audience  with  the  sultan  Sulaiman  at  Adrianople  after 
the  death  of  Bahadur;  and  by  way  of  avenging  the  death  of  the 
Muslim  king  the  sultan  at  once  gave  orders  for  the  equipment  of  a 
powerful  fleet  in  Suez  to  be  sent  to  attack  the  Portuguese  at  Diu. 

Among  the  small  party  that  had  accompanied  Bahadur  in  his  fatal 
visit  to  the  Portuguese  governor  was  a  certain  Khwaja  Safar  Salmani,2 
who  played  an  important  part  in  subsequent  events.  He  at  first  was 
on  friendly  terms  with  the  Portuguese,  who  put  him  in  charge  of  Diu, 
but  when  he  heard  of  the  arrival  of  the  Egyptian  fleet  under  Sulaiman 
Pasha,  he  at  once  changed  his  tactics  and  attacked  them.  He  reported 
to  the  pasha  that  there  were  500  fighting  men  in  Diu,  and  that  all  he 
required  was  guns  and  munitions.  The  siege  began  in  October  and 
came  suddenly  to  an  end  on  5  November,  1538,  when  the  pasha, 
hearing  of  the  arrival  of  twenty  Portuguese  ships,  sailed  away  without 
striking  another  blow.  The  defence  of  Diu  by  a  tiny  garrison  com- 
manded by  Antonio  da  Silveira  is  one  of  the  most  heroic  episodes  in 
Portuguese  history.  The  brunt  of  the  first  attacks  fell  on  Gfcgala,  a 
suburb  of  the  island  known  to  the  Portuguese  as  Villa  dos  Rums  and 
to  the  Muslims  as  Bandar-i-Turk,  which  with  its  garrison  of  about 
eighty  men  had  at  last  to  capitulate.  The  main  fort  of  Diu,  however, 
continued  to  hold  out,  women  and  children  working  with  the  same 
devotion  as  the  men.  The  besieged  were  also  much  favoured  by 
the  great  differences  which  arose  between  the  Turks  and  the 
Gujaratis. 

In  the  meanwhile  (September,  1538)  Garcia  de  Noronha,  nephew 
of  the  great  Albuquerque,  had  reached  Goa  as  viceroy,  superseding 
Nino  da  Cunha,  who  had  only  held  the  rank  of  governor,  and  who 
died  broken-hearted  on  the  voyage  home.  In  the  fleet  of  eleven  ships 
the  new  viceroy  brought  with  him  from  Lisbon  there  also  came  the 
first  bishop  of  Goa,  which  had  been  made  a  bishopric  by  a  bull  of 
Pope  Paul  III  in  1534.  Garcia  de  Noronha  on  his  arrival  in  Goa  had 
collected  a  powerful  fleet  and  army  for  the  relief  of  Diu,  but  seemed 
in  no  haste  to  lead  them  into  action;  so  that,  when  news  came  of  the 
departure  of  Sulaiman  Pasha,  his  people  were  furious  with  the  delay 
which  had  deprived  them  of  an  opportunity  of  engaging  the  Turkish 
fleet.  The  viceroy  eventually  reached  Diu  in  January,  1539,  and  his 
first  task  was  to  rebuild  the  fort.  He  entered  into  negotiation  with 
the  new  sultan  of  Gujarat,  with  whom  a  peace  was  signed  in  March 
of  that  year.  Under  its  terms  a  high  wall  was  to  be  raised  between 

1  See  An  Arabic  History  of  Gujarat,  Indian  Record  Series,  vol.  n,  Introduction. 

1  His  name  Safar  has  given  rise  to  much  confusion,  as  it  has  been  variously  corrupted 
by  Portuguese  and  English  writers  into  Ja'far,  Ghazanfar,  Sufiy,  Cofar  and  Sifr!  See 
J.R.AJS.  January,  1922,  p.  17. 


16  THE  PORTUGUESE  IN  INDIA,  1498-1598 

the  fortress  and  the  town,  and  one-third  of  the  custom-house  receipts 
were  to  be  paid  to  the  Portuguese. 

In  1540  de  Noronha,  after  a  term  of  office  characterised  by  gross 
corruption  and  cruelty,  died,  and  was  succeeded  by  Estav&o  da  Gama 
(second  son  of  Vasco),  who  had  for  five  years  been  captain  of  Malacca. 
He  immediately  prepared  for  another  expedition  into  the  Red  Sea. 
In  February,  1541,  with  a  large  fleet  of  seventy-two  sail  he  reached 
Massowah,  where  he  left  the  greater  part  of  his  fleet  and  sailed  with 
some  lighter  vessels  to  Suez,  which  he  found  so  well  guarded  that  he 
speedily  withdrew,  without  having  destroyed  a  single  Turkish  galley. 
One  incident  in  connection  with  this  fruitless  expedition,  however, 
deserves  mention  here.  On  his  return  to  Massowah  in  June,  1541, 
urgent  appeals  for  help  were  received  from  the  Abyssinians  who  had 
been  long  engaged  in  hostilities  with  their  Muhammadan  invaders. 
In  response  to  the  call  of  these  Christians,  the  governor  landed  his 
young  brother  Christavao  da  Gama  with  400  men.  The  adventures 
of  this  handful  of  men  form  one  of  the  most  romantic  tales  in  history.1 
Christavao  was  finally  defeated  and  put  to  death  in  August,  1542; 
but  at  the  beginning  of  the  following  year  the  king  of  Abyssinia,  with 
150  of  da  Gama's  followers  who  had  survived,  attacked  and  defeated 
the  Muhammadans,  and  recovered  his  country. 

The  next  governor,  Martim  Affonso  de  Sousa,  arrived  in  India  in 
1542,  carrying  with  him  the  great  Jesuit  saint,  Francisco  Xavier,  who 
had  been  selected  by  Ignatius  Loyola  and  appointed  papal  nuncio  by 
Pope  Paul  III.  Affonso  de  Sousa  was  a  bad  and  greedy  governor. 
His  successor,  Dom  JoSo  de  Castro,  who  reached  India  in  August, 
1545,  was  the  last  of  the  great  Portuguese  governors  in  India.  With 
his  death,  in  June  1548,  began  the  decline  of  Portuguese  power  and 
prestige  in  the  eastern  seas. 

As  soon  as  he  had  assumed  the  reins  of  government,  an  improve- 
ment became  visible  both  in  political  and  military  affairs.  There  had 
been  continued  disputes  with  the  king  of  Gujarat"  ever  since  the  con- 
clusion of  peace  in  March, -1539,  and  finally  the  Portuguese  pulled 
down  the  wall  between  their  fortress  and  the  town,  built  in  accordance 
with  the  terms  of  peace.  In  April,  1546,  Sultan  Mahmud  III,  nephew 
of  the  sultan  Bahadur,  began  to  besiege  the  fortress  of  Diu,  which 
was  commanded  by  JoSto  Mascarenhas.  Although  he  must  have 
regarded  this  attack  as  inevitable,  no  preparations  for  a  siege  had 
been  made,  and  the  garrison  numbered  only  'Stbout  200  men.  In 
command  of  the  besieging  force  was  Khwaja  Safar  Salmani,  who  as 
governor  of  Surat  had  received  the  title  of  Khudawand  Khan,  and 
yftio  had  about  10,000  fighting  men  under  him.  On  18  May  re- 
inforcements reached  the  Portuguese  from  Goa,  raising  the  garrison 
to  about  400  men,  but  they  remained  inferior  in  artillery  and 

1  The  full  narrative  is  given  by  Miguel  Castanhoso.  See  also  Whiteway,  The  Portoguest 
Expedition  to  Abyssinia. 


PORTUGUESE  POLICY  17 

musketry.  In  June  Khwaja  Safar  had  his  head  carried  off  by  a 
cannon-ball  and  was  succeeded  by  his  son  Ramazan  Rumi  Khan.1 

At  last  in  October  Joao  de  Castro  was  able  to  send  sufficient  troops 
to  relieve  the  garrison  which  by  that  time  was  reduced  to  a  mere 
handful  of  wounded,  sick  and  hungry  men.  In  November  the  viceroy 
himself  arrived  in  Diu  and  led  an  attack  in  which  3000  of  the  enemy, 
including  Ramazan  Rumi  Khan,  were  killed  and  600  taken  prisoners. 
After  this  success  de  Castro  was  able  to  make  a  triumphant  entry  into 
Goa  in  April,  1547,  but  in  May,  1548,  he  died  and  was  succeeded  by 
Garcia  de  Sa. 

In  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,  when  the  Portuguese  Empire 
in  the  East  had  attained  the  climax  of  its  grandeur,  it  was  divided 
into  three  sections:  (i)  from  Guardafui  to  Ceylon,  (2)  from  Pegu  to 
China,  and  (3)  all  territories  on  the  east  coast  of  Africa. 

Under  the  viceroy  or  governor  of  India,  with  his  headquarters  at 
Goa,  were  placed  five  governors  or  captains  who  ruled  respectively 
over  Mozambique,  Ormuz,  Maskat,  Ceylon  and  Malacca,  The 
viceroy  or  governor  had  entire  control  over  the  military,  naval  and 
civil  administration.  In  civil  suits  his  decision  was  final,  and  in 
criminal  matters  his  power  extended  to  sentence  of  death,  except  in 
the  case  of  Portuguese  nobles.  He  was  assisted  by  two  councils,  the 
Council  of  State,  and  the  Council  of  the  Three  Estates. 

It  will  be  evident  from  the  brief  narrative  we  have  attempted  that 
this  history  of  one  hundred  years  of  Portuguese  adventure  in  the 
eastern  seas  contains  little  or  no  indication  of  any  effort  to  found  an 
empire;  never  at  any  stage  did  the  Portuguese  captains  assume  the 
offensive  on  shore,  nor  did  they  actually  come  into  contact  with  any 
of  the  great  fighting  races  of  India.  They  depended  solely  on  their 
control  of  the  high  seas;  their  main  objective  was  always  the  capture 
and  occupation  of  the  most  important  ports  and  their  defence  when 
occupied.  For  this. purpose  were  needed,  not  administrators,  but 
brave  soldiers  and  sailors ;  and  success  was  due,  first,  to  the  high  military 
qualities  and  personal  courage  and  endurance  of  most  of  the  captains, 
and  secondly,  to  the  rich  rewards  which  attracted  so  many  to  under- 
take perilous  journeys  (on  an  average  not  60  per  cent,  of  the  men  who 
left  Portugal  reached  India,  so  great  was  the  mortality  on  the  crowded 
vessels)  and  face  the  countless  risks  which  awaited  them  at  the  other 
end. 

The  ultimate  decline  of  Portuguese  power  in  India  was  due  pri- 
marily to  two  causes:  first,  the  encouragement  of  mixed  marriages 
at  home  and  abroad,  and  secondly,  religious  intolerance.  The 
former  policy  had  been  adopted,  as  we  have  seen,  by  the  great  Albu- 
querque, who  probably  foresaw  that  the  constant  drain  on  the  male 
population  of  a  relatively  small  country  like  his  own  must  ultimately 
lead  to  a  shortage  of  man-power;  the  latter  was  pushed  to  its  utmost 

1  Sec  Arabic  History  of  Gujarat,  Indian  Record  Series,  vol.  n,  Introduction. 


cmv 


18  THE  PORTUGUESE  IN  INDIA,  1498-1598 

extreme  by  the  zealous  fervour  of  the  Jesuits  who  selected  Goa  as  their 
second  headquarters  outside  Rome,  soon  after  the  foundation  of  their 
order.  The  arrival  of  St  Francisco  Xavier  in  India  in  1542  was  an 
event  of  the  most  far-reaching  importance  and*  laid  the  foundations 
of  that  ecclesiastical  supremacy  in  Portuguese  India  which  sapped 
the  financial  resources  and  undermined  the  civil  administration  of 
its  governor.  Albuquerque  and  his  immediate  successors  left  almost 
untouched  the  customs  of  the  people  of  Goa,  only  abolishing,  as  did 
the  English  later,  the  rite  of  sati.  It  may  be  recalled,  however,  that 
after  the  arrival  of  the  Franciscan  missionaries  in  1517  Goa  had 
become  the  centre  of  an  immense  propaganda,  and  already  in  1540 
by  the  orders  of  the  king  of  Portugal  all  the  Hindu  temples  in  the 
island  of  Goa  had  been  destroyed.  The  inquisition  was  introduced 
into  Goa  in  1560, 

Garcia  de  Sa  only  held  his  high  office  for  thirteen  months,  during 
which  period  little  of  importance  is  recorded.  His  general  policy  was 
one  of  conciliation  with  the  Indian  princes.  In  August,  1548,  he 
concluded  a  formal  treaty  with  the  king  of  Bijapur,  under  which  it 
was  stipulated  that  Salsette  and  Bardas  were  to  be  the  property  of  the 
king  of  Portugal  in  perpetuity,  and  that  in  the  event  of  the  Turks 
sending  a  fleet  to  attack  the  Portuguese,  the  Adil  Khan  should  send 
men  and  supplies  to  help  them,  but  at  the  expense  of  the  Portuguese. 
Peace  was  also  concluded  with  Sultan  Mahmud  of  Gujarat. 

Garcia  de  Sa  was  succeeded,  on  his  death  in  August,  1549,  by 
Jorge  Cabral,  who  was  immediately  confronted  with  trouble  in 
Cochin,  where  the  safety  of  the  king  was  threatened  by  a  league 
formed  against  him  by  the  Zamorin  and  the  king  of  Pimienta.  In 
spite  of  a  rumour  that  the  Turks  were  fitting  out  a  new  fleet  at  Suez, 
Cabral  sent  an  armada  of  ninety  sail  to  help  the  king  of  Cochin,  and 
himself  followed  later  with  a  large  force  of  soldiers.  The  fighting  was 
protracted  and  severe,  and  when  Cabral  was  at  last  on  the  point  of 
negotiating  a  peace  with  the  enemy  he  had  surrounded,  a  vessel 
arrived  (November,  1550)  with  orders  from  the  new  viceroy,  Dom 
Affonso  de  Noronha,  to  stay  all  proceedings,  and  the  enemy  were 
thus  allowed  to  escape. 

Affonso  de  Noronha's  four  years  of  viceroyalty  were  not  marked  by 
any  very  notable  event,  although  Portuguese  arms  were  often  busily 
engaged  in  Malacca,  Cochin  and  Ormuz,  which  nearly  fell  to  the 
Turks.  Two  events  of  considerable  interest,  however,  occurred  during 
this  period,  namely  the  death  of  St  Francisco  Xavier  (1552)  and  the 
arrival  in  India  of  Luiz  de  Camoens,  the  author  of  the  Lusiads  (1553), 
who,  finding  a  new  expedition  was  ready  to  sail  to  help  the  king  of 
Cochin  against  the  king  of  Pimienta,  at  once  attached  himself  to  it 
and,  we  are  told,  bore  no  inconsiderable  share  in  the  conquest  of  the 
Alagada  Islands. 

The  next  viceroy,  Pero  de  Mascarenhas,  who  had  been  archbishop 


DAMAN  19 

of  Goa,  only  lived  to  hold  office  for  ten  months,  and  was  succeeded 
in  June,  1555,  by  Francisco  Barreto  with  the  title  of  governor.  His 
three  years  of  office  showed  him  to  be  a  man  of  courage  and  deter- 
mination, but  of  exceptional  cruelty  even  for  those  times.  Being 
invited  to  come  to  the  aid  of  the  king  of  Sind,  he  went  with  a  fleet 
and  700  men  to  Tatta.  Finding  on  arrival  that  his  help  was  no  longer 
required,  he  demanded  the  payment  of  expenses  incurred  in  fitting 
out  the  fleet,  as  had  been  previously  agreed  upon.  "On  this  being 
refused,  Barreto  landed  his  men,  entered  the  city  and  in  his  rage 
killed  over  8000  people... and  loaded  his  vessels  with  one  of  the 
richest  booties  ever  taken  in  India."1  It  was  during  the  governorship 
of  Francisco  Barreto  that  King  John  III  of  Portugal  died,  and  with 
his  death  the  fortunes  of  that  country  both  in  Europe  and  in  the  East 
began  to  decline.  During  the  minority  of  Dom  Sebastian,  however, 
the  regency  selected  for  the  viceroyalty  Dom  Constantino  of  Braganza, 
brother  of  the  duke  of  the  same  name,  who  was  one  of  the  wisest  and 
worthiest  men  ever  entrusted  with  that  great  office.  He  arrived  in 
India  in  September,  1558,  and  his  first  act  was  to  recall  a  fleet  which 
Barreto  had  dispatched  to  Malacca,  which  was  threatened  by  the  king 
of  Achin.  We  have  seen  above  how  Affonso  de  Noronha  on  arrival 
in  India  put  a  stop  to  CabraPs  proceedings  in  Cochin,  and  as 
Danvers  says  "it  appears  to  have  been  a  prevailing  custom  in  India, 
that  new  governors  never  put  into  execution  the  plans  of  their  pre- 
decessors".2 During  the  governorship  of  Barreto  the  territory  of 
Bassein  had  been  granted  to  the  Portuguese  by  the  king  of  Gujarat, 
and  one  of  the  first  aims  of  the  new  viceroy  was  to  gain  possession  of 
the  neighbouring  port  of  Daman,  which  was  only  occupied  after 
several  fierce  engagements  with  a  rebellious  Gujarat  noble  who  had 
established  himself  there  (1559).  Now  the  king  of  Gujarat  at  that 
time,  Ahmad  II,  was  a  mere  puppet  in  the  hands  of  two  rival  nobles, 
'Imad  ul-Mulk  and  I'timad  Khan.  The  former  of  these  nobles  in- 
cluded among  his  officers  the  fief-holder  at  the  port  of  Daman,  a 
certain  Sayf  ul-Muluk  Miftah  (called  by  the  Portuguese  historians 
Cide  Bofata).  In  order  that  he  might  devote  his  whole  attention  to 
combating  Ftimad  Khan,  he  made  an  agreement  with  the  Portuguese 
that  in  return  for  the  services  of  500  "Frankish"  troops,  he  would 
hand  over  to  them  the  port  of  Daman.  Miftah,  however,  refused  to 
surrender  the  port,  even  when  the  original  mandate  of 'Imad  ul-Mulk 
had  been  sent  to  him.  When,  finally,  the  Portuguese  got  possession 
of  Daman,  they  ignored  their  side  of  the  bargain  and  sent  no  men  to 
help  'Imad  ul-Mulk,  who  then  repented  his  action  and  resolved  on 
the  recapture  of  Daman.  The  Portuguese  historians,  who  call  'Imad 
ul-Mulk  "Madre  Maluco,  king  of  Cambay",  relate  that  he  was  pre- 
paring for  an  attack  in  force  on  Daman,  and  the  Portuguese  governor 
of  that  port,  feeling  that  he  could  not  resist  such  a  force,  had  recourse 

1  Danvers,  Portuguese  in  India,  I,  508.  *  Idem,  I,  510. 

2-2 


ao  THE  PORTUGUESE  IN  INDIA,  1498-1598 

to  stratagem.  He  persuaded  Khudawand  Khan  Rajab,  the  son  of 
Khwaja  Safar  (Portuguese  Cedeme),  lord  of  Surat,  that  his  brother- 
in-law  'Imad  ul-Mulk  was  in  reality  intending  not  to  attack  Daman 
but  to  drive  him  out  of  Surat.  Khudawand  Khan,  believing  this 
statement,  invited  his  brother-in-law  to  a  party,  where  on  arrival  he 
was  foully  murdered  with  all  his  attendants.  The  Muslim  historians, 
on  the  other  hand,  tell  us  that  'Imad  ul-Mulk  marched  on  Surat  in 
response  to  an  appeal  from  the  inhabitants  of  that  town,  who  were 
grievously  oppressed  by  Khudawand  Khan,  and  make  no  reference 
to  an  attack  on  Daman.  Ghingiz  Khan,  the  son  of  'Imad  ul-Mulk, 
at  once  resolved  to  avenge  his  father's  murder  and  marched  on  Surat 
which  he  invested,  but  being  able  to  produce  no  effect  by  this  means, 
he  called  in  the  Portuguese  to  his  assistance,  who  with  ten  ships 
blockaded  the  waterway  by  which  provisions  entered  the  port.  It 
appears  from  the  Portuguese  accounts  that  both  the  besiegers  and  the 
besieged  were  given  to  suppose  that  the  ships  had  been  sent  to  help 
them,  but  the  Muslim  historians  say  that  Chingiz  Khan  made  definite 
promises  of  territory  to  the  Portuguese  in  return  for  their  help.  How- 
ever this  may  be,  it  appears  that  Chingiz  Khan  withdrew  temporarily, 
and  on  his  return  to  the  attack  was  met  by  the  Portuguese  who  put 
him  to  rout;  for  in  the  interval  Khudawand  Khan  had  promised  to 
give  Surat  to  the  Portuguese  if  they  would  help  him  against  Chingiz 
Khan.  But  no  sooner  had  the  Portuguese  accomplished  their  task 
than  Khudawand  Khan  was  obliged  to  flee  from  his  own  people,  who 
were  incensed  by  his  intention  of  surrendering  the  port.  In  making 
his  escape  he  fell  into  the  hands  of  one  of  Chingiz  Khan's  nobles  who 
cut  off  his  head  and  sent  it  to  his  master. 

The  next  notable  viceroy  to  be  sent  to  India  was  Dom  Luiz  de 
Atayde,  during  whose  viceroyalty  (1568-71)  the  Portuguese  were 
confronted  by  a  danger  which  threatened  their  very  existence  in  India. 
In  1569  three  of  the  most  powerful  Indian  princes  concluded  an 
offensive  league  against  the  Portuguese  which,  we  are  told,  had  been 
discussed  among  them  with  the  utmost  secrecy  for  the  past  five  years. 
These  princes  were  'Ali  II,  the  Adil  Khan  of  Bijapur,  Murtaza 
Nizam  Shah  of  Ahmadnagar,  and  the  Zamorin  of  Calicut.  So  great 
was  the  confidence  of  these  princes  in  their  ability  to  drive  these 
unwelcome  strangers  out  of  India,  that  they  had  arranged  beforehand 
exactly  how  the  Portuguese  possessions  should  be  divided  among 
them;  the  Adil  Khan  had  gone  so  far  as  to  nominate  certain  of  his 
officers  to  posts  in  Goa,  at  the  same  time  promising  them  certain 
Portuguese  ladies,  famous  for  their  beauty,  in  marriage.  Ignoring 
all,  treaties,  the  Adil  Khan  marched  against  Goa  at  the  head  of  100,000 
men;  and  Murtaza  Nizam  Shah  against  Chaul.  To  protect  Goa  the 
viceroy  had  at  his  disposal  650  active  troops  and  about  250  aged  and 
infirm;  having  dispatched  600  to  reinforce  the  commander  of  Chaul. 
He  sent  these  troops  to  defend  the  most  vulnerable  points  of  attack, 


SIEGE  OF  GOA  21 

while  the  defence  of  the  town  of  Goa  was  entrusted  to  Dominicans, 
Franciscans  and  other  priests  numbering  some  300  in  all.  In  addition 
to  this  he  organised  1000  Christian  slaves  of  various  .nationalities  into 
Tour  bands,  and  placed  1500  native  Christians  under  selected  Portu- 
guese officers,  with  a  sprinkling  of  reliable  Portuguese  soldiers.  His 
council  strongly  urged  the  abandonment  of  Chaul  and  the  concentra- 
tion of  all  efforts  on  the  defence  of  Goa,  but  the  viceroy  was  resolved 
that  the  enemy  should  pay  dearly  for  all  they  might  take.  The  attack 
on  Goa  at  the  end  of  December,  1569,  opened  with  the  bombardment 
of  the  Pass  of  Benasterim,  where  the  viceroy  himself  took  command. 
The  defence  of  Goa  forms  one  of  the  most  brilliant  feats  in  Portuguese 
annals,  and  the  courage  and  resource  shown  by  Dom  Luiz  de  Atayde 
in  the  face  of  such  overwhelming  odds  entitle  him  to  rank  among  the 
great  soldiers  of  the  world.  Although  during  the  siege,  which  lasted 
ten  months,  he  received  reinforcements  in  ships  and  men,  it  must  be 
remembered  that  he  was  able  not  only  to  send  troops  to  other  threat- 
ened ports  along  the  coast,  but  even  to  dispatch  the  trading  ships  with 
their  annual  consignments  to  Lisbon,  as  if  nothing  unusual  were 
toward.  Hardly  less  remarkable  was  the  defence  of  Chaul  by  the 
small  garrison  of  Portuguese  against  the  superior  forces  of  the  king  of 
Ahmadnagar  which  lasted  all  through  the  summer,  and  terminated 
in  the  signing  of  an  offensive  and  defensive  alliance  between  Murtaza 
Nizam  Shah  and  Dom  Sebastian  of  Portugal.  The  part  played  by  the 
Zamorin  was  of  little  or  no  account,  and  it  was  not  until  the  beginning 
of  June,  1570,  that  he  made  an  attack  in  force  on  the  fort  of  Chale, 
near  Calicut,  where  a  small  garrison  was  only  saved  from  surrender 
by  the  arrival  of  reinforcements  in  September.  Not  until  December, 
1571,  was  a  final  treaty  concluded  between  the  new  viceroy  and  the 
Adil  Khan,  whereby  the  local  princes  were  compelled  to  recognise 
the  rights  of  the  Portuguese  to  their  Indian  possessions.  Thus  did 
Dom  Luiz  de  Atayde,  by  his  unflinching  valour,  his  single-minded 
devotion  and  his  military  genius,  succeed  in  re-establishing  for  a  time 
the  prestige  of  Portugal  in  the  East,  by  withstanding  the  most  serious 
confederacy  that  had  ever  taken  arms  against  her.  Dom  Luiz  returned 
in  the  same  year  to  Portugal,  where  he  was  received  with  great  honour. 
The  newly  appointed  viceroy,  Antonio  de  Noronha,  arrived  at  Goa 
in  September,  1571,  before  the  siege  of  that  town  had  been  raised. 
Chale,  in  the  meantime,  was  holding  out  against  desperate  odds,  and 
the  reliefs  sent  by  the  new  viceroy  immediately  after  the  conclusion 
of  peace  with  the  Adil  Khan,  arrived  only  to  find  that  the  garrison 
had  surrendered  conditionally  to  the  Zamorin.  With  the  appointment 
of  Antonio  de  Noronha  the  administration  of  the  Portuguese  pos- 
sessions in  the  East  were  divided,  as  we  -have  seen  above,  into  three 
governments,  Noronha  becoming  viceroy  of  India,  while  governors 
were  appointed  to  the  other  two  provinces.  This  experiment  led  at 
once  to  disputes  between  the  viceroy  and  Antonio  Moniz  Barreto, 


23  THE  PORTUGUESE  IN  INDIA,  1498-1598 

the  governor  of  Malacca,  and  ultimately  involved  the  viceroy's 
recall  in  1573. 

It  is  necessary  at  this  stage  to  revert  to  the  events  which  were  passing 
in  Gujarat.  Ever  since  the  invasion  of  that  country  by  the  emperor 
Humayun,  and  the  tragic  death  of  Sultan  Bahadur  in  1537,  the 
kingdom  of  Cambay,  as  Gujarat  was  called  by  the  Portuguese,  had 
been  in  a  state  of  almost  continuous  civil  war,  the  nominal  kings  being 
merely  figureheads  at  the  mercy  and  disposal  of  whichever  of  the  rival 
nobles  was  able  to  capture  and  hold  them.  Such  a  state  of  affairs  was, 
no  doubt,  very  greatly  to  the  advantage  of  the  Portuguese,  who  were 
able  to  play  one  chief  off  against  another,  as  we  have  seen  in  the  case 
of  Surat.  Although  Humayun  had  virtually  conquered  Gujarat,  he 
had  withdrawn  without  making  any  arrangements  for  the  incorpora- 
tion of  that  country  into  the  Moghul  Empire;  and  not  till  1572  did 
his  son,  the  great  Akbar,  who  had  then  been  seventeen  years  on  the 
Moghul  throne,  think  fit  to  undertake  the  reduction  of  this  rich 
province.  The  political  situation  in  Gujarat  at  this  moment  has  already 
been  described.1  It  may  here  suffice  to  say  that  it  was  with  two 
distinct  classes  of  opponent  that  Akbar  had  now  to  contend.  First, 
the  Gujarat  nobles,  who  were  divided  always  into  two  or  more  factions, 
the  one  or  the  other  having  the  person  of  the  puppet  king,  and  secondly, 
the  so-called  Mirzas,  members  of  the  royal  house  of  Tamerlane, 
residing  for  their  personal  safety  outside  the  Moghul  Empire,  who  with 
the  prestige  of  their  descent  were  able  to  command  a  certain  following 
wherever  they  went.  The  Mirzas  were  a  constant  source  of  trouble  to 
their  imperial  cousin,  especially  in  Gujarat,  and  it  was  due  to  them 
rather  than  to  the  Gujarat  nobles  that  the  final  absorption  of  that 
country  into  the  Moghul  Empire  was  delayed. 

The  nominal  king  of  Gujarat  at  this  time  was  Sultan  MuzafFar,  and 
the  leading  noble  was  the  Ftimad  Khan  who  has  been  mentioned 
above.  It  was  at  the  invitation  of  the  latter  that  Akbar,  towards  the 
end  of  1572,  entered  Ahmadabad  and  received  the  submission  of 
Ftimad  Khan  and  his  partisans  and  later  of  Sultan  MuzafFar,  who 
was  found  lurking  near  Akbar's  camp.  It  was  after  his  entry  into  the 
capital  that  Akbar  visited  Cambay,  where  for  the  first  time  he  saw 
the  sea  and  made  acquaintance  with  the  Portuguese,  receiving  there 
certain  of  their  merchants  who  came  to  pay  their  respects.  Mean- 
time, the  Mirzas,  headed  by  Ibrahim  Husayn,  had  collected  their 
forces  in  Broach  and  were  plotting  against  Akbar;  and  when  it 
reached  the  emperor's  ears  that  they  had  murdered  Rustam  Khan, 
the  lord  of  Broach,  who  had  expressed  his  intention  of  obeying  Akbar's 
summons,  Akbar  resolved  on  immediate  vengeance  and  set  out  at 
the  head  of  200  men  for  Surat,  which  was  occupied  by  Muhammad 
Husayn.  On  his  way  he  encountered  and  defeated  Ibrahim  Mirza 
in  superior  force  at  Sarnal  (December,  1572),  but  the  Mirza  escaped 

1  Camb.  Hist,  of  India,  ra,  chap.  xiii. 


RELATIONS  WITH  THE  MOGHULS  23 

to  Delhi  where  he  tried  to  stir  up  the  common  people  in  order  to 
necessitate  Akbar's  withdrawal  from  Gujarat,  only  to  perish  shortly 
afterwards  in  Multan.  In  January,  1573,  Akbar  began  siege  opera- 
tions against  Surat.  It  was  during  this  siege  that  Akbar  first  entered 
into  negotiations  with  the  Portuguese.  The  accounts  are  confusing, 
but  it  would  appear  from  a  collation  of  the  narratives  of  Abul  Fazl 
and  Couto,  that  the  besieged  in  Surat  had  offered  to  hand  over  that 
port  to  the  Portuguese  if  they  would  help  them  against  Akbar,  but 
that,  when  the  Portuguese  contingent  realised  the  strength  of  the 
Moghuls,  they  changed  their  role  from  that  of  enemies  to  ambassadors, 
and  were  well  received  by  the  emperor  who  "made  enquiries  about 
the  wonders  of  Portugal  and  the  manners  and  customs  of  Europe". 

It  was,  no  doubt,  a  source  of  great  vexation  to  the  emperor  to  find 
that  important  ports  like  Diu,  Daman  and  Bassein,  were  in  the  hands 
of  these  alien  merchants,  but  the  failure  of  the  triple  alliance  of  1569 
had  clearly  shown  that  without  the  co-operation  of  a  powerful  fleet 
it  would  be  impossible  to  dislodge  the  Portuguese  from  these  coastal 
strongholds;  and  it  was  not  within  the  competency  of  the  Gujaratis, 
still  less  of  the  Moghuls,  to  build  ships  of  the  requisite  strength.  Akbar, 
therefore,  confined  his  military  activities  to  the  reduction  of  the  ports 
which  still  remained  in  the  hands  of  the  Gujaratis,  notably  Cambay, 
Surat  and  Broach. 

To  return  to  the  Portuguese,  in  1573  Antonio  Moniz  Barreto 
became  governor  in  Goa,  and  it  was  during  his  term  of  office  that 
a  curious  incident  occurred  which  may  be  fitly  recorded  here.  The 
annual  pilgrimages  of  Muslim  Indians  to  Mecca,  whose  route  lay 
through  Gujarat  (which  was  called  the  Gate  of  Mecca)  had  been  for 
some  years  interrupted  by  the  domination  of  the  Arabian  Ocean  by 
the  Portuguese  and  also  by  the  disorder  prevailing  in  Gujarat.  Now 
that  order  had  been  restored  in  this  province  and  Akbar's  relations 
with  Goa  were  of  a  friendly  nature,  it  was  considered  safe  for  the 
ladies  of  the  imperial  household  to  fulfil  a  long-cherished  desire  of 
performing  this  chief  act  of  Muslim  piety  (for  although  Akbar  himself 
in  his  religious  experiments  had  almost  abjured  Islam,  his  family  had 
remained  devout  Muslims) .  The  party  reached  Surat  in  safety  at  the 
end  of  1575,  but  it  was  not  till  the  following  season  that  satisfactory 
passes  were  furnished.  The  ladies,  who  included  the  famous  Gulbadan 
Begum,  performed  the  pilgrimage  and  returned  safely  in  1582. 

In  1578,  under  the  viceroyalty  of  Dom  Diego  de  Menezes,  Antonio 
Cabral  (who  had  met  Akbar  at  Surat  in  1573)  was  accredited  to  the 
emperor's  court  as  ambassador,  and  it  was  the  conversations  of  Akbar 
and  Cabral  on  religious  matters  which  resulted  in  the  dispatch  of  the 
first  Jesuit  mission  to  the  Moghul  court  in  1580.*  Like  Kubilai  Khan 
in  the  thirteenth  century,  Akbar  was  disposed  to  give  Christianity 
a  fair  hearing,  but  he  had  to  reckon  with  the  spiritual  forces  of  Islam 

1  See  Payne,  Akbar  and  the  Jesuits. 


24  THE  PORTUGUESE  IN  INDIA,  149^1598 

which  he  was  obliged  to  conciliate  outwardly  at  least  throughout  his 
progress  towards  the  new  religion  which  was  forming  in  his  mind. 

In  the  meanwhile,  events  of  far-reaching  importance  for  the  history 
of  India  were  passing  in  Europe. 

In  August,  1578,  Dom  Sebastian,  then  only  twenty-five  years  of 
age,  was  killed  in  battle  near  Fez,  fighting  like  a  hero  in  a  hopeless 
enterprise  against  the  Moors.  Philip  II  of  Spain  had  long  coveted  the 
kingdom  of  Portugal,  and  on  the  death  of  the  cardinal  Dom  Henrique, 
who  had  assumed  the  title  of  king,  he  invaded  that  country  and  totally 
defeated  the  Portuguese  at  the  battle  of  Alcantara  (1580),  and  in 
April,  1581,  was  crowned  king  at  Tomar.  Portugal  thus  became  a 
part  of  the  kingdom  of  Spain,  but  it  was  stipulated  that  the  commerce 
of  Africa,  Persia  and  India  should  be  reserved  to  the  Portuguese,  and 
carried  only  on  their  vessels. 

The  first  viceroy  sent  to  India  under  the  new  regime  was  Dom 
Francisco  Mascarenhas,  who  had  already  considerable  experience  of 
India.  Among  the  many  happenings  of  his  period  of  office  may  be 
mentioned  the  rebellion  of  the  ex-sultan  of  Gujarat,  Muzaffar,  who, 
escaping  from  captivity,  managed  to  raise  an  army  of  some  30,000 
men  and  recovered  a  large  part  of  his  former  kingdom  (1583).  In  the 
confusion  which  ensued,  the  viceroy  thought  an  opportunity  possibly 
offered  of  "laying  hands  on  Surat  at  small  cost"1,  but  his  plans  were 
frustrated  by  the  sudden  arrival  of  a  Moghul  army. 

By  reason  of  the  assistance  given  by  Queen  Elizabeth  to  the  Nether- 
lands in  their  revolt  against  Spain,  a  declaration  of  war  became 
merely  a  matter  of  time,  and  in  1584  diplomatic  relations  were  broken 
off  between  England  and  Spain,  and  consequently  Portugal.  In  1586 
six  ships  sailed  from  Lisbon  for  India.  Off  the  Azores  they  fell  in  with 
Sir  Francis  Drake,  who  brought  into  Plymouth  a  cargo  valued  at  over 
a  hundred  thousand  pounds.  This  success  taught  the  English  and  the 
Dutch  that  what  the  Portuguese  had  achieved  in  Indian  waters  was, 
no  doubt,  equally  possible  for  themselves.  Though  the  merging  of 
Portugal  into  the  kingdom  of  Spain  may  be  said  to  have  hastened  the 
end  of  Portugal's  monopoly  of  Indian  trade,  rival  European  ad- 
venturers were  bound  to  appear  in  Indian  waters  sooner  or  later  in 
an  age  which  produced  and  encouraged  such  men  as  Francis  Drake. 
The  only  wonder  is  that  other  seafaring  nations  allowed  her  to  enjoy 
for  so  long  the  advantages  she  had  gained.  By  the  time  she  had 
recovered  her  independence  after  " sixty  years'  captivity",  the  Dutch 
had  already  deprived  her  of  the  greater  part  of  her  possessions  and 
her  trade. 

The  neighbouring  island  of  Ceylon  had  been  discovered  by  the 
Portuguese  more  or  less  by  accident.  It  was  during  the  viceroyalty 
of  Dom  Francisco  d' Almeida  that  the  Muhammadan  merchants,  in 

1  Gouto,  x,  6. 


CEYLON  35 

order  to  avoid  their  new  rivals,  began  to  make  a  detour  by  way  of  the 
Maldives  when  proceeding  with  their  spice  ships  to  the  Red  Sea.  In 
November,  1505,  the  viceroy  sent  his  youthful  son  Lourengo  with  a 
fleet  of  nine  vessels  to  try  and  intercept  these  merchantmen,  and  while 
searching  for  them  Lourengo  was  driven  on  to  the  coast  of  Ceylon  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  Galle,  where  he  replenished  his  stores,  and  then 
proceeded  to  Colombo.  According  to  some  accounts  a  treaty  was 
then  concluded  with  the  king  of  Ceylon,  whereby  the  king  agreed  to 
pay  tribute  in  cinnamon  and  elephants  to  the  Portuguese,  who,  in 
return,  undertook  to  protect  Ceylon  against  all  enemies.  Seeing  that 
the  next  official  visit  to  Ceylon  did  not  take  place  until  1518,  when 
Lopo  Soares  actually  secured  similar  terms  from  the  local  king,  it 
would  appear  that  the  first  treaty  was  not  regarded  very  seriously, 
although  we  hear  in  the  interval  of  Portuguese  merchants  trading  in 
cinnamon  at  Colombo.  The  only  evidence  which  remains  of  Dom 
Lourencjo's  visit  is  a  stone,  still  standing,  bearing  the  royal  arms  of 
Portugal  surmounted  by  a  cross,  but  marked  with  the  unaccountable 
date  of  1501. 

The  report  sent  to  King  Manoel  from  Cochin,  dated  22  December, 
1518,  contains  the  following  entry:  "Lopo  Soares  has  returned  from 
Ceylon,  where  he  has  erected  a  fortress  of  mud,  stone  and  clay,  and 
obtained  tribute  often  elephants  and  400  baharis  of  cinnamon". 

In  1520  Lopo  de  Brito,  bringing  with  him  400  men,  arrived  in 
Colombo,  and  at  once  set  about  the  rebuilding  of  the  little  fort,  which 
had  suffered  badly  from  the  torrential  rains.  He  had  scarcely  had 
time  to  complete  his  defences  when  the  inhabitants  showed  open 
hostility,  which  led  to  a  siege  of  the  little  garrison,  who  were  only 
saved  at  the  end  of  six  months  by  the  timely  arrival  of  a  Portuguese 
galley.  Hostilities  ceased  shortly  after  this  and  friendly  relations  were 
re-established.  The  Portuguese  had,  however,  made  themselves 
thoroughly  disliked  by  the  Sinhalese,  and  the  constant  exposure  of 
the  garrison  to  attack  led  them  finally,  in  1524,  to  dismantle  the  fort 
at  Colombo,  and  to  confine  themselves  to  a  factory  under  the  pro- 
tection of  the  Sinhalese  king.  In  1538  the  Zamorin  of  Calicut  dis- 
patched a  fleet  of  fifty-one  vessels  carrying  8000  men  to  attack  Ceylon. 
A  Portuguese  fleet  set  out  in  pursuit,  and  inflicted  a  severe  defeat  on 
the  Zamorin's  forces  after  a  very  fierce  engagement;  the  grateful  king 
rewarded  his  allies  with  a  handsome  contribution  towards  the  ex- 
penses of  the  expedition,  but  further  assistance  to  meet  a  renewed 
attack  by  the  Zamorin  in  alliance  with  the  king's  brother  was  not 
forthcoming  as  the  Portuguese  were  at  that  time  too  busily  engaged 
in  and  around  Diu  to  spare  any  ships  or  men.  In  the  following  year, 
however,  the  required  help  was  sent,  and  peace  was  restored  in 
Ceylon.  Shortly  after  this  tI54I)  a  Sinhalese  embassy  was  sent  to 
Lisbon  carrying,  among  other  gifts  to  the  Portuguese  king,  an  image 
of  the  child  who  had  just  been  declared  heir  apparent  to  the  throne. 


26  THE  PORTUGUESE  IN  INDIA,  1498-1598 

The  coronation  of  the  image  was  celebrated  with  stately  ceremony 
and  the  day  was  observed  as  a  holiday  throughout  the  land.  The 
name  of  this  child  was  Dharmapala,  and  on  the  death  of  his  grand- 
father in  1550  he  ascended  the  throne.  In  1556,  thanks  mainly  to  the 
wave  of  religious  enthusiasm  kindled  by  the  missionary  activities  of 
Francisco  Xavier,  Dharmapala  and  his  queen  were  baptised  and 
received  into  the  Catholic  Church.  Had  the  priests  by  whom  he  was 
surrounded  acted  with  moderation,  or  even  with  understanding,  this 
conversion  might  have  had  momentous  results;  but,  no  doubt  with 
the  best  of  intentions,  they  did  everything  that  was  possible  to  offend 
the  Buddhist  inhabitants  of  the  island;  without  making  any  effort  to 
enquire  into  the  nature  of  the  Buddhist  religion  they  determined  to 
destroy  it  by  every  means  in  their  power,  and  by  their  ruthless  action 
only  succeeded  in  undoing  the  labours  of  twenty  years.  It  was  at 
this  time  that  we  find  introduced  among  the  Sinhalese  that  curious 
medley  of  Portuguese  names  and  the  high-sounding  title  ofDom.  From 
1559  to  1565  the  Portuguese  were  engaged  in  constant  war  with  the 
Sinhalese  by  whom  they  were  so  much  hated,  and  on  more  than  one 
occasion  were  very  near  to  being  altogether  ejected  from  the  island. 
In  1560  matters  became  so  serious  that  the  viceroy,  Dom  Constantino 
of  Braganza,  himself  led  a  great  expedition  against  the  Sinhalese.  The 
headquarters  of  the  Portuguese  had  hitherto  been  Kotte,  but  in  1565 
it  was  decided  to  remove  the  garrison  and  factory  and  the  native 
inhabitants  to  Colombo,  and  the  ancient  capital,  thus  abandoned, 
soon  became  the  haunt  of  wild  beasts.  The  rest  of  Ceylon  remained 
in  the  undisputed  possession  of  the  Sinhalese  monarch,  the  grand- 
uncle  of  Dharmapala,  who  was  now  a  refugee  under  the  protection 
of  the  Portuguese.  In  1578  the  old  king,  feeling  he  had  no  longer 
the  strength  to  cope  with  the  increasing  aggressions  of  the  Portuguese, 
abdicated  in  favour  of  his  son,  Raja  Sinha,  who,  in  the  following  year, 
laid  siege  to  Colombo,  but  was  driven  off.  In  the  meantime  Dharma- 
pala executed  a  deed  of  gift,  by  which,  after  setting  forth  his  own  title 
to  the  throne,  and  explaining  that  nothing  had  been  left  him  by  his 
rivals  but  Colombo,  he  made  over  all  his  claims  to  the  king  of 
Portugal,  Dom  Henrique,  and  in  1583  executed  another  instrument  by 
which  Philip  II,  who  was  now  lord  of  Portugal,  was  made  heir  to 
Dharmapala.  Raja  Sinha  meanwhile  devoted  all  his  energies  to 
raising  an  efficient  army  and  to  erecting  strong  forts,  which  became 
a  source  of  much  anxiety  to  the  Portuguese,  who  on  their  side  were 
engaged  in  strengthening  the  fortifications  of  Colombo.  Constant 
appeals  for  assistance  were  sent  to  Goa,  but  seldom  met  with  a  satis- 
factory response.  In  1587  Raja  Sinha,  with  an  army  of  50,000  men, 
made  his  first  great  assault  on  Colombo.  The  carnage  was  terrible, 
but  the  half-clothed  Sinhalese  could  not  cope  with  the  fully  armed 
soldiery  of  Europe,  and  the  assault  was  turned  to  a  siege,  during  which 
large  reinforcements  in  men  and  munitions  arrived  from  Cochin,  and 


CEYLON  27 

later  on  from  Malacca;  and  finally,  in  February,  1588,  the  Portuguese 
had  acquired  such  superiority  over  the  enemy  that  they  were  able  to 
make  a  sortie  in  force,  and  Colombo  was  saved.  In  1597  Dharmapala 
died  and  a  convention  of  delegates  was  held,  which,  after  two  days 
spent  in  negotiations,  agreed  to  recognise  Philip  II  as  the  king  of 
Ceylon,  provided  the  Portuguese  "would  guarantee  on  his  behalf  that 
the  laws  and  customs  of  the  Sinhalese  should  be  maintained  inviolate 
for  ever". 

In  considering  the  achievement  of  the  Portuguese  in  the  Indian 
Ocean,  it  is  our  duty  to  recognise  the  important  part  they  played, 
having  regard  for  the  future  history  of  India,  in  successfully  frustrating 
all  the  attacks  made  on  them  by  the  Turks.  Although  we  have  no 
documentary  evidence  for  believing  that  the  Turks  ever  entertained 
the  idea  of  establishing  a  naval,  and  still  less  a  military  base  in  India, 
it  is  quite  conceivable  that  if  one  of  their  fleets  had  succeeded  in 
driving  the  Portuguese  out  of  their  fortresses  on  the  Indian  coast,  the 
establishment  of  the  Christian  powers  in  India  might  have  been 
indefinitely  postponed. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 

JL  HE  first  Dutch  vessels  to  sail  round  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  and 
to  cross  the  Indian  Ocean  in  search  of  trade  left  the  Texel  on  2  April, 

1595.  The  owners  were  a  group  of  Amsterdam  merchants  who  had 
formed  a  company  for  Indian  trade  in  1592.  The  Netherlands  had 
long  been  a  most  important  centre  for  the  European  trade  in  the 
produce  of  the  colonial  world.  The  wares  which  the  Spaniards  and 
Portuguese  transported  from  America  and  the  Indies  to  Seville  and 
Lisbon  were  carried  further  north  very  largely  in  Holland  and  Zeeland 
ships.  Antwerp  had  been  the  great  distributing  centre  for  Northerrl 
and  Middle  Europe,  but  after  its  fall  in  1585  and  the  consequent 
closure  of  the  Scheldt  by  the  more  successful  rebels  of  the  northern 
provinces,  the  trading  towns  of  Holland  and  Zeeland,  and  particularly 
Amsterdam,  had  inherited  its  position.  The  circumstances  of  the  time 
made  the  use  of  the  Iberian  ports,  all  obeying  Philip  II  after  the 
conquest  of  Portugal  in  1580,  as  centres  of  Mediterranean  and  colonial 
trade  a  perilous  practice.  Even  though  the  economic  dependence  of 
Spain  and  Portugal  on  the  Netherlands  rebels  was  too  great  to  permit 
the  king  to  adopt  a  consistent  policy  of  prohibition  with  respect  to 
Netherlands  trading,  the  embargoes  of  1585  and  1595  served  to  create 
a  sense  of  insecurity  in  Netherlands  trading  circles. 

To  venture  out  into  the  vast,  unknown  regions  of  the  Indian  world, 
however,  was  an  enterprise  not  lightly  to  be  undertaken.  Knowledge 
of  the  route  to  India  was  of  the  vaguest,  and  ignorance  exaggerated 
the  power  of  the  Spanish-Portuguese  Empire  to  defend  its  claims. 
At  first,  therefore,  attempts  were  made  to  reach  the  Indies  by  the 
north  of  Asia,  although  a  plan  for  an  expedition  round  the  Cape  of 
Good  Hope  had  been  conceived  as  early  as  any  of  the  northern  ex- 
peditions. But  years  of  preparation  preceded  the  execution.  The  first 
act  of  the  Company  formed  in  1592  was  to  send  Cornelis  de  Houtman 
to  Lisbon  to  collect  information  about  the  conditions  and  methods 
of  Indian  trade,  and  in  1595  it  was  he  who  led  the  expedition.  The 
famous  geographer  Petrus  Plancius,  a  Reformed  minister  who  had 
fled  from  Flanders,  and  who  in  1592  had  published  a  map  of  the 
world  based,  in  so  far  as  the  Indies  are  concerned,  on  Portuguese 
data,  was  commissioned  to  instruct  the  skippers  and  mates  who  were 
to  take  part  in  the  expedition  in  the  newest  discoveries  of  the  science 
of  navigation.  And  invaluable  was  the  advice  of  Jan  Huyghen  van 
Linschoten,  whose  Reysgesckrift  van  de  navigatien  der  Portugalqysers,  a 
seaman's  guidebook  to  Indian  and  Far  Eastern  navigation,  appeared 
*&  J595j  while  the  Itinerario,  voyage  ofte  schipvaert  van  Jan  Huyghen  van 


EARLY  VOYAGES  29 

Linschoten  naer  Oost  ofte  Portugails  Indien,  although  published  only  in 
the  next  year,  must  have  been  printed  earlier,  since  we  know  that 
de  Houtman  took  a  copy  with  him  on  his  voyage. 

The  number  of  Netherlanders  who  made  the  voyage  to  India  in 
the  Portuguese  period  and  served  the  Portuguese  in  some  capacity 
or  other  must  have  been  considerable.  Some  were  engaged  in  trade 
out  there,  and  many  served  on  the  Portuguese  ships,  particularly  as 
gunners.  Jan  Huyghen  van  Linschoten  in  1583,  after  some  years 
spent  in  Spain  and  Portugal,  accompanied  the  newly  appointed 
archbishop  of  Goa  to  his  post  in  the  capacity  of  secretary.  He  was 
still  a  very  young  man,  having  been  born  in  1563.  He  stayed  at  Goa 
from  September,  1583,  to  January,  1589.  He  came  back  to  Holland 
in  September,  1592,  and  settled  at  Enkhuizen.  He  became  an  active 
promoter  of  the  plans  for  direct  trading  with  the  Indies  which  were 
already  in  the  air.  In  1594  and  1595  he  took  part  in  fruitless  attempts 
to  find  the  North-east  Passage,  yet  in  spite  of  that  found  time  to  work 
out  the  notes  collected  during  his  travels  into  the  two  works  above  cited. 

Of  the  two,  the  Reysgeschnft  was  probably  of  the  greater  immediate 
use,  but  it  is  on  the  Itinerario  that  Linschoten's  fame  is  chiefly  founded. 
It  is  much  more  than  the  ordinary  traveller's  story.  In  fact,  Lin- 
schoten's personal  observation  of  India  was  practically  confined  to 
Goa,  but  in  the  Itinerario  he  gives  an  encyclopaedic  account  of  the 
whole  of  the  extensive  area  which  the  Portuguese  looked  upon  as  their 
special  preserve.  He  describes  towns  and  harbours,  the  political  or- 
ganisation, the  social  conditions  and  the  religions  of  the  various 
peoples,  and  the  produce  and  industries  of  particular  regions;  through 
it  all  he  traces  the  ramifications  of  the  Portuguese  Empire  and  of 
Portuguese  trade,  explaining  how  it  works,  where  it  is  weak  and  where 
it  is  strong.  One  fact  he  stresses  over  and  over  again  which  must  have 
stimulated  the  spirit  of  enterprise  of  his  countrymen — and  no  doubt 
that  was  his  intention — namely  that  the  Portuguese  system  was 
vulnerable  in  the  extreme,  undermined  by  abuses  and  corruption, 
while  Portuguese  methods  of  navigation  in  particular  were  far  inferior 
to  those  of  Dutch  seamen.  At  the  same  time  Linschoten  did  not 
under-estimate  the  strength  of  the  Portuguese  fortified  establishments, 
and  he  pointed  to  the  Malay  Archipelago  as  the  most  suitable  area 
for  Dutch  enterprise  on  account  of  Sunda  Straits  being  undefended: 
there  was  not  a  Portuguese  fortress  on  either  Java  or  Sumatra,  which 
nevertheless  offered  great  opportunities  to  the  European  merchant; 
Bantam  in  particular  was  the  centre  of  a  trading  movement  to 
Malacca  on  the  one  side  and  the  Spice  Islands,  or  Moluccas,  on  the 
other. 

It  was  excellent  advice  and  it  was  taken.  Houtman  set  his  course 
straight  for  Java,  where  he  found  the  inhabitants  quite  willing  to 
enter  into  commercial  relations  with  rivals  of  the  Portuguese,  and 
although  he  spoiled  his  chances  by  injudicious  behaviour  and  this 


30  THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 

first  expedition  yielded  no  profits,  in  August,  1597,  Houtman,  with 
three  out  of  his  four  ships,  reappeared  before  the  Texel,  and  the  mere 
fact  of  his  having  accomplished  the  voyage  was  encouragement 
enough.  The  pent-up  enterprise  of  the  Dutch  commercial  class  burst 
forth  as  if  a  dyke  had  been  cut.  New  companies  for  the  Indian  trade 
sprang  up  in  several  towns  of  Holland  and  Zeeland.  Twenty-two  ships 
left  for  the  Archipelago  in  1598,  and  about  forty  more  in  the  next 
three  years.  Some  of  the  so-called  Pre-companies  made  enormous 
profits,  but  it  soon  became  apparent  that  their  keen  competition 
would  in  the  long  run  spoil  the  market  both  in  the  East  and  in  Europe, 
while  their  jealousy  made  it  impossible  for  them  to  co-operate  in 
order  to  secure  the  new  trade  against  the  attempts  of  the  Portuguese 
to  enforce  their  monopoly.  The  foundation  of  the  English  East  India 
Company  (1600),  which  at  once  sent  an  expedition  in  the  track  of  the 
Dutch,  to  Java,  drove  home  the  conclusion  that  unity  was  necessary. 
The  Government,  anxious  lest  a  promising  new  source  of  wealth 
should  dry  up,  and  realising  that  the  energies  of  commercial  enter- 
prise might  be  so  directed  as  to  help  the  country  in  its  war  with  the 
Spanish  Empire,  took  action.  It  was  the  Advocate  of  Holland,  Johan 
van  Oldenbarnevelt,  who  initiated  negotiations  for  an  amalgamation, 
on  the  basis  of  a  national  monopoly.  For  although  public  opinion 
in  the  Netherlands  was  strongly  averse  to  monopolies,  in  this  par- 
ticular case  it  was  realised  that  the  amalgamated  companies  must 
be  protected  from  further  competition.  In  December,  1601,  delegates 
of  the  various  companies,  at  the  invitation  of  the  states-general,  met 
at  the  Hague.  It  was  far  from  easy  to  reach  agreement,  Zeeland 
interests  in  particular  proving  refractory.  The  Advocate,  however, 
exerted  all  his  influence  and  at  last  a  scheme  was  evolved  by  which 
the  Pre-companies  consented  to  be  merged  into  a  monopolist  char- 
tered company  and  this  was  at  once  embodied  in  a  resolution  of  the 
states-general  (20  March,  1602). 

The  United  Company  was  a  very  powerful  organism.  The  directors 
of  the  Pre-companies,  who  now  became  directors  of  the  United 
Company,  had  every  time  put  up  their  capital  for  one  expedition 
only.  New  capital  was  now  invited  from  the  general  public — a  total 
of  6,500,000  guilders  (about  £540,000)  was  subscribed — and  that  for 
ten  years;  the  directors  were  to  be  liable  only  for  the  amount  they 
subscribed  as  shareholders.  In  fact  the  return  of  the  capital  on  the 
expiration  of  the  period  named  in  the  charter  never  took  place,  nor 
had  the  shareholders  ever  any  effective  control  over  the  direction  of 
affairs.  In  its  administrative  organisation  its  origin  as  the  result  of 
an  amalgamation  appeared  very  clearly.  It  was  composed  of  six 
"chambers"  which  traded  each  with  its  own  capital,  but  profit  and 
loss  were  pooled.  The  directors  of  the  several  chambers,  who  held 
office  for  life,  were  appointed  by  the  government  of  the  town  in  which 
the  chamber  was  situated  (by  the  Provincial  States  in  the  case  of  the 


THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY  31 

Zealand  Chamber)  out  of  three  persons  nominated,  on  the  death  of 
a  director,  by  his  surviving  colleagues.  The  Amsterdam  Chamber 
was  by  far  the  most  important  and  appointed  eight  of  the  seventeen 
general  directors.  "The  Seventeen",  who  met  three  times  a  year, 
could  only  lay  down  general  lines  of  policy,  the  execution  of  which 
rested  with  the  several  chambers.  This  complicated  organisation, 
intended  to  reconcile  the  waning  interests  of  various  groups  and 
political  entities,  particularly  of  Amsterdam  and  Zeeland,  lasted  as 
long  as  the  company. 

To  this  body  the  states-general  by  the  charter  of  20  March,  1602, 
delegated  important  sovereign  powers.  Not  only  was  the  Company 
given  the  exclusive  right  to  trade  in  all  countries  between  the  Cape 
of  Good  Hope  and  the  Straits  of  Magellan,  but  within  that  area  it  was 
empowered  to  carry  on  war,  to  conclude  treaties,  to  take  possession 
of  territory,  and  to  erect  fortresses.  The  Pre-companies  had  had  little 
thought  of  colonisation  or  of  attacking  the  Portuguese,  whom  on  the 
contrary  they  sought  to  avoid.  Only  on  the  outskirts  of  the  Portuguese 
sphere  of  influence,  in  the  Moluccas,  had  the  desire  to  control  the 
spice  trade  inspired  attacks  on  Portuguese  posts.  The  states-general, 
by  their  interference,  set  a  new  direction  and  made  the  United 
Company  a  great  instrument  of  war  and  conquest. 

The  powerful  fleets,  of  about  a  dozen  large  ships  each,  which  the 
Company  sent  out  annually  during  the  first  years  of  its  existence, 
boldly  attacked  the  Portuguese  Empire  at  its  vital  points.  Mozam- 
bique, Goa,  Malacca,  were  all  attacked,  but  in  vain.  The  Dutch 
had  the  command  of  the  seas,  they  hindered  and  interrupted  com- 
munications between  the  Portuguese  ports,  they  even  prevented  the 
sending  of  reinforcements  from  the  mother  country.  But  they  failed 
to  break  Portuguese  power  ashore.  Only  in  the  Moluccas  did  they 
succeed  in  ousting  the  Portuguese  and  securing  a  foothold  for  them- 
selves. Even  there,  however,  the  Portuguese,  supported  by  the 
Spaniards  from  the  Philippines,  offered  a  strong  resistance,  and  the 
determined  attempt  of  the  Company  to  become  masters  of  the  Moluccas 
— in  an  instruction  of  1608,  the  directors  described  this  as  their 
principal  aim — for  a  number  of  years  claimed  much  of  its  energies. 
For  a  considerable  period  these  were  in  any  case  concentrated  on  the 
Malay  Archipelago.  The  spice  trade  of  the  Moluccas  was  looked  upon 
as  the  great  prize  of  the  Indian  world.  Java,  moreover,  was  proving 
as  important  as  Linschoten  had  foretold.  Factories  were  established 
at  Bantam  and  Jacatra,  and  these  insensibly  became  the  centre  of 
the  trading  movement  which  the  Dutch  were  developing  and  which 
already  embraced  the  Moluccas  in  the  east,  China  and  Japan  in  the 
north,  and  Coromandel  and  Surat  in  the  west.  In  1609  unity  of 
command  over  the  scattered  ships  and  posts  in  the  East  was  secured 
by  the  institution  of  a  central  authority,  the  governor-general  and 
the  council  of  the  Indies.  The  first  governor-general  was  Pieter  Both 


32  THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 

and  his  instructions,  endorsed  by  the  states-general,  ordered  him  to 
establish  some  fixed  seat  for  the  central  government  in  the  Indies, 
and  suggested  Johore,  Bantam  or  Jacatra  for  that  purpose.  It  was 
years  before  these  instructions  were  acted  upon,  and  it  was  done,  not 
by  Both,  but  by  his  second  successor,  Jan  Pietersoon  Coen,  the  real 
founder  of  the  Dutch  Eastern  Empire.  In  1619  Coen  conquered 
Jacatra  and  founded  Batavia  on  its  ruins.  At  the  same  time  his  ruth- 
less energy  saved  the  Dutch  from  being  superseded  by  the  English, 
whose  chances  in  the  Archipelago  were  in  the  course  of  a  few  years 
effectually  ruined,  and  who  thenceforward  concentrated  their  atten- 
tion on  India.  Great  exertions  were  still  required  of  the  Dutch, 
however,  to  defend  their  new  capital  against  the  Javanese  themselves, 
and  altogether  it  was  not  until  the  governor-generalship  of  Antonie  van 
Diemen  (1636-46)  that  the  ruling  powers  at  Batavia  felt  themselves 
sufficiently  secure  in  the  Archipelago  to  resume  the  earlier  policy  of 
aggression  against  the  strongholds  of  Portuguese  power  in  the  Indian 
Ocean. 

In  1633  ^e  Dutch  had  already  begun  to  blockade  Malacca,  which 
finally  they  took  in  1641.  Meanwhile  from  1636  onwards  a  fleet  had 
been  sent  every  year  to  blockade  Goa  during  the  winter  months,  the 
only  time  when  the  port  was  accessible.  In  the  spring  of  1638  the 
fleet  returning  from  that  blockade  attacked  Batticaloa  and  a  twenty 
years'  struggle  began  in  which  the  Dutch  wrested  from  the  Portuguese 
all  they  possessed  on  Ceylon  and  in  the  southern  part  of  the  mainland 
of  India  itself. 

A  long  time  before  they  made  those  conquests,  the  Dutch  already 
had  acquired  factories  on  the  Coromandel  Coast,  in  Gujarat,  and  in 
Bengal.  Except  for  the  fortress  Geldria  at  Pulicat,  these  settlements 
were  merely  unfortified  trading  posts,  and  the  position  of  the  Dutch 
in  India  for  a  long  time  remained  essentially  different  from  that  in 
the  Archipelago.  And  the  Archipelago  was  not  only  the  strategic  and 
administrative  centre  of  their  system,  it  was  also  the  economic  centre. 
It  was  pepper  and  spices,  the  produce  of  Sumatra,  Java  and  the 
Moluccas,  then  so  much  in  demand  for  the  European  market,  that 
had  originally  drawn  the  Dutch  to  the  islands,  and  from  the  early 
years  of  the  United  Company  they  set  themselves  to  obtain  a  mono- 
poly in  these  articles.  What  took  them  to  India  in  the  first  instance 
was  rather  the  requirements  of  the  Archipelago  than  of  the  European 
market;  in  other  words,  it  was  a  distinctly  subsidiary  interest.  The 
Dutch  traders  were  not  slow  to  discover  that  the  system  of  paying  in 
money  for  the  pepper  and  spices  had  grave  disadvantages.  At  the 
same  time  they  saw  that  there  was  an  active  commercial  movement 
in  existence,  with  Bantam,  and  especially  Achin,  as  its  intermediary 
centres,  by  which  the  populations  of  the  Archipelago  exchanged  their 
own  products  for  cotton  goods  from  Gujarat  and  from  the  Coromandel 


GOROMANDEL  COAST  33 

Coast.  The  idea  naturally  arose  of  controlling  that  movement,  elimi- 
nating the  Arab  and  Indian  middlemen,  and  paying  for  the  spices 
by  imported  cotton  goods. 

As  early  as  October,  1603,  the  Seventeen  directed  the  attention  of 
the  admiral  (Van  der  Haghen)  of  a  fleet  they  were  just  then  fitting  out 
to  the  Coromandel  Coast  and  particularly  to  Masulipatam  as  a  place 
well  fitted  for  the  buying  of  cotton  goods.  Even  before  this,  an  attempt 
had  been  already  made  to  start  trade  on  the  other  side  of  the  peninsula, 
at  Surat  and  on  the  Malabar  Coast,  but  it  had  ended  in  disaster.  The 
two  Zeeland  merchants  who  had  ventured  out  into  those  parts  had 
fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  Portuguese  and  been  hanged  at  Goa.  So 
the  United  Company  looked  to  the  east  coast,  and  a  circumstance 
which  especially  recommended  Masulipatam,  was  the  weakness  of 
the  Portuguese  in  that  northern  region.  Admiral  Van  der  Haghen, 
from  Calicut  where  he  then  was,  while  going  on  himself  to  Bantam 
with  the  main  fleet,  dispatched  the  yacht  Delft  to  open  up  trade  with 
the  Coromandel  Coast.  Masulipatam  belonged  to  the  king  of  Gol- 
conda,  and  although  there  were  Portuguese  merchants  in  the  town, 
their  rivals  were  welcomed  by  the  Indian  authorities  and  the  senior 
merchant  Pieter  Ysaac  Eyloff  remained  behind  with  a  small  number 
of  assistants  to  set  up  a  permanent  factory  when  the  Delft  left  early 
in  May,  1605,  with  the  first  cargo  of  cotton  goods  for  Achin  and 
Bantam. 

The  beginning  was  thus  very  easy,  and  another  factory  was  founded 
at  Petapoli  (Nizampatam),  also  in  the  kingdom  of  Golconda,  but 
many  difficulties  were  still  to  be  overcome?  before  the  new  settlement 
could  work  smoothly  and  profitably.  The  governors  of  the  two  ports 
imposed  crushing  import  and  export  duties  in  the  most  arbitrary 
fashion,  and  interfered  in  the  intercourse  between  the  factors  and  the 
native  weavers  and  dyers.  The  export  trade  in  textiles  was  highly 
technical,  and  the  servants  of  the  Dutch  Company  wanted  to  be  free 
to  instruct  the  native  craftsmen  as  to  the  requirements  of  the  Archi- 
pelago markets  and  actively  to  supervise  their  work.  A  mission  to  the 
Golconda  court  in  1606  secured  farmans  fixing  import  and  export 
duties  at  4  per  cent.,  but  the  governors  did  not  heed  them  much*  In 
1608,  hoping  that  the  fear  of  their  going  away  altogether  would 
check  their  tormentors,  the  Dutch  factors  sent  out  some  of  their  sub- 
ordinates to  found  a  new  settlement  at  Devenampatnam  to  the  south- 
ward. A  treaty  guaranteeing  the  same  tolls  as  in  Golconda  was 
obtained  from  the  nayak  of  Jinji,  in  whose  province  the  port  was 
situated.  After  some  trouble  due  to  the  influence  which  the  Portu- 
guese, themselves  established  at  St  Thom6  and  Negapatam,  pre- 
served at  Vellore,  the  Dutch  obtained  permission  to  rebuild  an  old 
fort  at  Devenampatnam  and  to  build  a  factory  at  Tirupapuliyur 
to  be  armed  with  four  pieces  of  cannon,  while  the  Portuguese 
were  expressly  forbidden  access  to  either  place.  In  1610,  by  direct 
cmv  3 


34  THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 

negotiations  with  the  king,  permission  was  obtained  to  found  another 
factory  at  Pulicat,  and  again,  in  spite  of  their  attempts  to  dissuade 
the  king,  the  Portuguese  were  expressly  excluded  from  the  port.  The 
Dutch  were  thus  extending  their  position  on  the  Coromandel  Coast, 
although  at  the  same  time  the  main  forces  of  their  Company  were  so 
fully  engaged  in  the  Archipelago  that  no  Dutch  vessels  appeared  on 
the  coast  between  October,  1608,  and  March,  1610.  The  king  of  the 
Carnatic  began  to  doubt  whether  the  Portuguese,  whose  trade  the 
newcomers  threatened  with  ruin,  might  not  after  all  be  the  more 
valuable  friends.  But  by  means  of  a  present  of  elephants  from 
Kandi  and  other  bribes  the  Dutch  retained  his  favour,  while  the 
Portuguese,  who  made  one  or  two  fruitless  attacks  on  the  Dutch 
at  Pulicat  by  sea  from  St  Thome,  only  displayed  that  inferiority  in 
naval  power  which  was  the  real  cause  of  the  ruin  of  their  Indian 
Empire. 

Meanwhile  the  Seventeen,  before  the  news  of  the  settlement  at 
Pulicat  had  reached  them,  had  realised  the  need  for  unity  of  adminis- 
tration on  the  Coromandel  Coast.  In  December,  1610,  the  council 
at  Bantam,  acting  upon  their  instructions,  organised  the  administra- 
tion of  the  Coromandel  factories.  The  senior  merchant  of  Masulipatam 
and  Petapoli,  Van  Wesick  (Pieter  Ysaac  had  died),  was  appointed 
to  be  General  Director.  The  Portuguese,  however,  had  not  yet  learnt 
to  acquiesce  in  the  presence  of  their  rivals.  On  9  June,  1612,  they 
carried  out  a  successful  raid  on  Pulicat  from  their  neighbouring 
settlement  of  St  Thom6.  The  Dutch  factory  was  destroyed.  Wemmer 
van  Berchem,  Van  Wesick's  successor  as  Director,  was  absent  in 
Golconda;  but  some  of  the  factors  were  killed  and  the  senior  merchant, 
Adolf  Thomassen,  carried  off  to  St  Thome,  whence  he  only  escaped 
over  a  year  later.  Wemmer  van  Berchem  realised  that,  if  the  factory 
at  Pulicat  was  to  survive,  it  would  have  to  be  fortified.  The  local 
authorities,  as  well  as  the  raja  at  Vellore,  professed  great  indignation 
at  the  action  of  the  Portuguese;  liberal  presents  secured  freedom  to 
'proceed  with  the  work;  and  with  the  aid  of  the  crews  of  two  ships, 
which  happened  to  call  in  March,  1613,  the  fortress,  called  Geldria 
after  Van  Berchem's  native  province,  was  completed.  In  the  very 
next  month  it  had  to  withstand  an  attack  by  a  native  chief,  Etheraja, 
behind  whom  Van  Berchem  naturally  suspected  the  Portuguese.  A 
direct  attack  by  the  Portuguese,  both  by  sea  and  by  land,  soon 
followed,  but  was  beaten  off.  For  some  time  the  Dutch  still  feared 
that,  although  the  neighbouring  Portuguese  settlements  had  proved 
too  weak  to  dislodge  them,  the  viceroy  at  Goa  might  send  an  armada 
to  restore  Portuguese  monopoly  on  the  east  coast.  An  attempt  was 
actually  made  in  1615,  when  a  Portuguese  fleet  sailed  to  Arakan  to 
expel  the  Dutch;  but  the  king  of  Arakan's  ships,  assisted  by  a  single 
Dutch  yacht,  the  Duif,  compelled  the  assailants  to  return.  Both  in 
Golconda  and  in  the  Carnatic  the  native  authorities  and  the  Dutch 


PULIGAT  35 

factories  prepared  jointly  to  resist  the  Portuguese  fleet,  which  sailed 
south  along  the  coast;  but  at  no  point  did  it  venture  to  attack. 
Portuguese  prestige  never  recovered  from  this  failure,  and  Geldria 
never  again  had  to  fear  attack  from  them. 

Fort  Geldria,  meanwhile,  played  a  part  of  growing  importance. 
For  several  years  after  1614,  the  kingdom  of  the  Carnatic  was  shaken 
by  a  disputed  succession  and  civil  war.  The  Dutch  castle  was  a  fixed 
point  in  the  midst  of  turmoil,  and  many  natives,  and  even  many 
refugees  from  St  Thom£,  sought  its  protection,  so  that  almost  at 
once  it  became  the  nucleus  from  which  a  new  territorial  power  might 
have  sprung.  When  the  anarchy  in  the  Carnatic  led  to  its  falling 
under  the  sway  of  the  kings  of  Golconda,  conditions  in  that  region 
were  not  greatly  changed.  The  Dutch  Company  continued  to  coin 
its  own  gold  pagodas  at  Pulicat,  out  of  imported  gold,  as  did  the 
English  later  on  at  Madras.  At  Masulipatam,  however,  so  much 
nearer  the  capital,  no  such  developments  took  place.  That  town  was 
ruled  despotically  by  its  havildar,  while  the  Dutch  factory,  like  the 
English  one,  remained  a  trading  settlement  pure  and  simple.  The 
Company  had  soon  obtained  another  farman  by  which  the  king  of 
Golconda  remitted  the  4  per  cent,  duties  for  an  annual  payment  of 
3000  "old  pagodas"  (25,000  guilders).  Even  this  did  not  save  the 
Company  from  the  exactions  of  the  local  authorities,1  and  embassies 
to  Golconda  were  frequently  needed  to  solicit  the  king's  inter- 
ference. 

On  the  whole,  however,  the  advantages  of  the  new  settlements  far 
outweighed  the  drawbacks.  The  Coromandel  Coast  soon  played  a 
very  important  part  in  the  life  of  the  Company.  As  early  as  1612,  it 
was  described  as  "the  left  arm  of  the  Moluccas  and  neighbouring 
islands,  since  without  the  cottons  from  thence  trade  is  dead  in  the 
Moluccas".2  The  export  of  textiles  for  the  Archipelago  market  always 
remained  the  chief  business  of  the  Coromandel  factories,  although 
soon  considerable  quantities  were  exported  to  Europe  as  well,  and 
the  export  of  rice  and  vegetables  and  of  slaves  (for  Batavia) 
became  important;3  diamonds  also  were  exported;  while  the  hinter- 
land of  Masulipatam  supplied  indigo.  Both  the  indigo  and  the  textile 
trades  required  considerable  skill  on  the  part  of  the  Company's 
servants.  As  regards  the  latter,  the  requirements  of  the  Archipelago 
market  were  exactly  studied.  Patterns  were  sent  from  Bantam  or 
Batavia,  and  minute  instructions  were  given  to  the  weavers  and  dyers 
who  worked  for  the  Company  in  towns  and  villages  within  a  wide 
radius  of  the  factory. 

The  Dutch  were  able  to  carry  on  their  trade  to  a  large  extent  by 
importing  other  articles  in  exchange  for  those  of  the  country.  This 


1  Daghregister  gchouden  int  CasUel  Batavia,  I,  229. 

*  E.  Heeres,  Corpus  Diplomaticum  Necrlando-Indicum,  p.  154. 

8  Daghregistar,  I,  189,  221 ;  n,  445  sqq. 


3-2 


36  THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 

was  one  of  the  great  problems  for  the  European  Companies.1  The 
Indian  market  could  not  absorb  any  considerable  amount  of  European 
articles.  Neither  the  English  nor  the  Dutch  Company  could  export 
an  unlimited  supply  of  money  from  their  own  countries.  In  India 
money  could  be  borrowed  only  at  an  extortionate  rate  of  interest. 
Two  ways  lay  open  to  the  European  Companies  who  did  not  want  to 
fall  into  the  hands  of  the  native  moneylenders.  They  could  raise  money 
by  trading  in  countries  where  imports  were  paid  for  with  cash;  the 
trade  with  Cfeina  and  Japan  was  the  most  fruitful  in  this  respect,  and 
here  the  Dutch  had  a  practical  monopoly.  Secondly,  they  could  escape 
the  necessity  of  importing  money  by  importing  non-European  articles 
for  which  there  was  a  demand  in  India,  and  here  again  the  Dutch 
were  fortunate  in  their  control  of  the  supply  of  spices.  Apart  from  spices, 
the  chief  articles  which  they  imported  on  the  Coromandel  Coast  were 
sandal  wood  and  pepper  from  the  Malay  Archipelago,  Japanese 
copper  and  certain  Chinese  textiles  from  the  Far  East. 

In  1617  the  directorate  of  the  Coromandel  Coast  was  raised  into  a 
gouvernement,  its  chief  at  Pulicat  being  given  the  title  of  governor  as  well 
as  becoming  an  Extraordinary  Councillor  of  the  Indies.  In  1689  the 
governor's  seat  was  removed  from  Pulicat  in  the  centre  to  Negapatam 
in  the  south,  which  as  will  be  described  in  a  subsequent  paragraph, 
had  been  taken  from  the  Portuguese  in  1659.  No  doubt  the  decision 
to  make  it  into  the  capital  of  the  coast,  which  was  adversely  criticised 
by  many  who  praised  the  situation  of  Pulicat  as  ideally  central,  was 
inspired  by  the  consideration  that  in  the  troublous  times  ahead,  now 
that  Aurangzib  was  master  of  Golconda,  Negapatam,  close  to  the 
Company's  new  stronghold  of  Ceylon,  was  the  natural  strategic  basis 
of  the  whole  gouvernement.  A  new  castle  was  at  once  constructed,  at 
a  cost,  it  was  said,  of  1,600,000  guilders,  which  far  surpassed  Fort 
Geldria  in  size  and  strength. 

We  possess  a  very  vivid  account  of  the  conditions  in  the  Dutch 
factories  on  the  Coromandel  Coast  just  about  the  time  when  this 
transfer  was  taking  place  in  the  travels  of  Daniel  Havart. 

The  society  into  which  Havart  introduces  his  reader  is  purely 
official.  The  "Free  merchants"  whom  early  governors-general  had 
wanted  to  encourage  had  been  driven  away  by  the  severely  mono- 
polist policy  on  which  the  Seventeen  insisted.  There  were  only  the 
servants  of  the  Company  left,  who  enriched  themselves  (although 
Havart  does  not  say  so)  by  infringing  that  very  monopoly  which  was 
so  dear  to  the  directors'  hearts.  During  the  last  years  of  Havart's  stay 
on  the  coast  this  little  society  was  shaken  to  its  foundations  by  the 
appearance  of  a  commissioner,  Van  Reede  tot  Drakensteyn,  entrusted 
by  the  Seventeen  themselves  with  extraordinary  powers  ta  put  down 
corruption  and  reform  abuses.  Several  officials,  chiefs  of  factories 
among  them,  were  broken  by  this  ruthless  reformer,  whose  social 

1  Moreland,  From  Akbar  to  Aurang&b,  pp.  58  sqq. 


COROMANDEL  COAST  37 

4* 

position  (he  was  a  member  of  the  Utrecht  nobility,  a  very  unusual 
rank  among  the  servants  of  the  Company)  added  to  the  awe  which 
he  inspired. 

By  Havart's  time  some  of  the  early  factories,  Petapoli  and  Tim- 
papuliyur,  had  been  abandoned.  On  the  other  hand  several  new 
ones  had  been  founded.  Proceeding  northward  from  Negapatam, 
Havart  enumerates:  Porto  Novo,  Devenampatnam,  Sadraspatam, 
Pulicat,  Masulipatam,  Nagelwanze,  Golconda,  Palakollu,  Daatzerom 
and  Bimlipatam.  Of  these,  Porto  Novo,  founded  as  late  as  1680,  was 
a  prosperous  centre  for  the  collection  of  cottons.  Sadraspatam  and 
Palakollu  were  important  on  account  of  the  especial  excellence  of  the 
textiles  to  be  had  there.  Devenampatnam  and  Masulipatam  were  the 
busiest  factories,  both  for  export  and  import,  although  Masulipatam 
had  lost  some  of  its  importance  since  the  establishment,  in  1660,  of 
a  factory  at  Golconda,  the  chief  of  which,  apart  from  his  commercial 
duties,  acted  as  the  Company's  resident  with  the  king  of  Golconda, 
although  special  embassies  continued  still  to  be  sent  after  as  before 
1660.  Nagelwanze  was  the  centre  for  the  indigo  trade.  At  Palakollu  the 
Company  had  had  a  factory  since  1613,  and  carried  on  a  profitable 
dyeing  industry.  From  1653  the  village  was  administered  by  the 
Company  which  held  it  from  the  king  at  an  annual  rent  of  1000 
pagodas. 

In  all  these  places  the  Dutch  Company  had  buildings,  more  or  less 
fortified,  and  large  enough  to  accommodate  the  factors,  their  slaves, 
and  sometimes  a  small  body  of  soldiers.  The  number  of  factors  varied 
a  good  deal.  At  Sadraspatam,  although  a  very  successful  trading 
centre,  there  were  only  four;  at  Nagelwanze,  at  the  time  of  its  highest 
prosperity  about  1680,  eighteen.  Many  of  the  factors  were  married, 
and  if  the  factory  could  not  house  their  families,  they  lived  outside. 
At  Masulipatam  eight  or  ten  were  married,  when  the  Commissioner 
Van  Reede  strictly  prohibited  (except  for  the  chiefs  of  factories)  what 
was  regarded  as  an  abuse,  and  sent  many  families  to  Europe  or 
Batavia.  The  factors  in  the  Company's  service  were  called  merchants, 
and  their  ranks  were  assistant,  junior  merchant,  merchant,  and  senior 
merchant.  This  nomenclature  was  preserved  even  in  possessions  where 
the  duties  of  the  Company's  servants  were  not  primarily  commercial, 
but  administrative,  as  in  Ceylon.  At  the  head  of  a  factory  there  were 
as  a  rule  two  chiefs,  the  first  and  the  second  chief,  who  might  be  junior 
merchant,  merchant,  or  senior  merchant  in  rank.  The  Coromandel 
instructions  of  the  Pulicat  governors  of  1649  and  1663*  ^d  it  down 
that  the  first  chief  presides  over  the  council,  on  which  the  other  factors 
also  sat;  he  had  the  general  supervision  over  the  factory's  affairs,  kept 
the  money,  negotiated  with  native  traders,  contracting  for  textiles, 
etc.,  and  corresponding  with  the  central  administration,  with  the 
director  or  governor,  as  the  case  might  be,  but  consulting  his  secundo. 
1  Havart,  Op-  en  Ondergang  van  Cormandel,  in,  57. 


38  THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 

The  second  himself  kept  the  trading  accounts  and  looked  after  the 
warehouses. 

At  Pulicat — Havart  knew  the  place  before  Van  Reede  ordered  the 
transfer  of  headquarters  to  Negapatam — the  governor's  house  and 
those  of  some  other  high  officials  were  within  the  castle.  But  in  the 
town,  there  were  "many  streets  where  none  but  Dutchmen  live,  and 
among  them  one  whole  row  of  houses  all  built  in  the  Dutch  way,  with 
three  rows  of  trees  in  front  of  them".  The  governor,  who  had  to 
consult  his  council  about  most  matters  of  importance,  corresponded, 
not  with  the  directors  in  Europe,  but  with  the  government  at  Batavia. 
The  Geldria  fort,  as  Havart  observes,  was  by  no  means  so  fine  a  castle 
as  the  English  castle  at  Madras,  and  on  the  whole,  the  English  fac- 
tories surpassed  those  of  the  Dutch  in  size  and  beauty,  if  not  in  trade, 
all  along  the  Coromandel  Coast.  Particularly  after  the  reductions  of 
1678,  when  the  Company  ceased  supplying  chiefs  of  factories  with 
horses  and  palanquins,  and  the  number  of  servants  in  each  factory 
was  greatly  cut  down,  Havart  feared  that  Dutch  prestige  in  the  eyes 
of  the  natives  would  suffer  irreparable  damage. 

In  fact,  bad  times,  but  not  only  for  the  Dutch,  were  fast  approaching. 
Relations  with  the  court  of  Golconda  had  on  the  whole  been  very 
friendly.  In  1676,  on  the  occasion  of  a  visit  to  Masulipatam,  when 
the  king  insisted  that  the  Dutch  ladies  should  visit  his  wives,  and 
when  he  himself  attended  service  in  the  Dutch  church,  he  remitted 
all  the  annual  payments  which  the  Company  owed  him  in  respect  of 
freedom  of  tolls  or  possession  of  lands.  In  1686,  a  quarrel  broke  out 
about  a  debt  which  the  Company  had  outstanding  at  Golconda.  It 
had  just  been  settled  after  a  display  of  vigour  on  the  Company's  part 
— the  inland  factories  had  been  evacuated  and  Masulipatam  occupied 
by  a  force  shipped  from  Ceylon — when  the  army  of  Au^angzib 
appeared  before  Golconda;  the  king  was  deposed  and  the > country 
overrun.  The  Dutch  factory  at  Nagelwanze  was  destroyed,  and  alto- 
gether a  time  of  dearth  and  insecurity  began  in  which  trade  declined. 
The  profits  of  the  Coromandel  gouvernement,  which  in  the  years  1684 
and  1685  appeared  in  the  Company's  books  as  exceeding  1,200,000 
guilders,  fell  to  445,000  guilders  in  1686  and  82,000  in  I687-1  Nor 
was  the  high  water  mark  of  the  years  before  Aurangzib's  conquest  of 
Golconda  ever  reached  again.  Towards  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  there  was  an  improvement,  but  it  was  not  maintained,  and 
the  figures  generally  moved  between  200,000  and  400,000  guilders 
profit,  which  indeed  still  made  a  good  showing  in  the  Company's 
books  when,  as  will  be  shown  in  a  subsequent  paragraph,  so  many  of 
its  establishments  were  worked  at  a  loss. 

In  the  days  before  the  amalgamation  of  the  companies,  two  Zeeland 

1  Klerk  de  Reus,  Geschichtiicher  Ueberblick  der  Niederl  Ostindischen  Compagnu,   1894, 
Beilage  ix. 


GUJARAT  39 

merchants,  as  has  been  briefly  mentioned  above,  had  tried  to  open 
up  relations  with  the  ports  on  the  west  coast  of  India,  but  had  been 
hanged  by  the  Portuguese  at  Goa.  Their  reports  on  Gujarat,  however, 
had  been  most  sanguine,  and  the  United  Company  was  anxious  to 
follow  up  their  pioneer  work  and  secure  Gujarat  cottons  for  the 
markets  of  the  Moluccas  and  the  west  coast  of  Sumatra  and  Jambi 
as  well  as  for  Europe.  In  1604,  and  again  in  1605,  the  admiral  com- 
manding the  annual  fleet  was  instructed  to  detach  two  ships  to  Surat; 
whether  the  order  was  carried  out  in  1604  does  not  appear;  in  the 
following  year,  at  any  rate,  it  was  set  aside  because  reports  of  an 
impending  attack  by  the  Portuguese  made  a  concentration  of  all 
forces  in  the  Archipelago  seem  imperatively  necessary.  A  Dutch 
merchant  was  at  Surat  in  1606  and  1607,  but,  wrought  upon  by 
nervous  fears  that  the  Portuguese  were  succeeding  in  setting  against 
him  the  mind  of  the  Khankhanan,  Jahangir's  representative  at 
Burhanpur,  he  committed  suicide.  The  English  soon  were  more 
successful,  and,  stimulated  by  their  example,  and  urged  moreover  by 
the  shahbandar  of  Surat,  the  Dutch  governor  of  Coromandel  in  May, 
1615,  sent  one  of  his  officials,  Gilles  van  Ravesteyn,  to  Surat,  where 
he  arrived  after  a  six  weeks'  journey  on  horseback.  Van  Ravesteyn, 
who  went  to  Burhanpur  in  the  company  of  Sir  Thomas  Roe,  on  his 
return  advised  against  the  establishment  of  a  factory.  Political  con- 
ditions in  the  Moghul  Empire  did  not  seem  to  him  to  promise  security 
to  foreign  traders;  in  any  case  a  farman  signed  by  the  Great  Moghul 
himself  would  be  required  and  would  be  very  difficult  to  obtain. 

Coen,  however,  who  in  the  capacity  of  director-general  of  trade  at 
Bantam  was  already  the  leading  spirit  among  the  authorities  in  the 
East,  considered  the  cottons  of  Gujarat  indispensable  for  the  Molucca 
trade,  the  more  so  as  the  factory  at  Achin,  where  they  could  be 
obtained,  if  at  much  higher  prices,  was  exposed  to  intolerable  vexa- 
tions and  had  soon  to  be  withdrawn.  Even  before  Van  Ravesteyn's 
report  had  been  received,  therefore,  Coen  had  dispatched  a  yacht 
under  Pieter  van  den  Broecke  to  Gujarat.  After  touching  at  Mokha, 
which  became  the  usual  practice,  as  cash  useful  for  the  purchases  to 
be  made  at  Surat  could  be  obtained  there,  Van  den  Broecke  arrived 
at  Surat  in  August,  1616,  and  asked  permission  to  establish  a  factory. 
Sir  Thomas  Roe  did  what  he  could  to  excite  the  Great  MoghuFs 
suspicions  against  the  newcomers,1  but  the  Surat  merchants  feared 
that  in  case  of  a  refusal  the  Dutch  might  attack  their  shipping,  and 
the  governor  of  the  town  gave  a  provisional  permission.  The  next 
year  two  senior  merchants,  Van  Ravesteyn  and  Adriaan  Goeree,  were 
left  in  charge  of  the  Surat  factory,  and  they  had  to  struggle  through 
some  very  difficult  years.  Van  Ravesteyn  succeeded,  to  the  morti- 
fication of  Sir  Thomas  Roe,  in  negotiating,  not  it  is  true  with  Jahangir 
himself,  but  with  his  son  Prince  Khurram,  a  satisfactory  treaty  of 

1  Embassy  of  Sir  Thomas  Roe  (ed.  1926),  pp.  202  sqq. 


40  THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 

commerce  (1618),  but  all  his  and  his  colleague's  efforts  were  in  vain 
since  no  ships  appeared  to  carry  away  their  indigo  and  cottons.  Van 
den  Broecke,  sent  from  Bantam  for  the  third  time  in  December,  1618, 
was  immediately  recalled  on  account  of  the  outbreak  of  the  war  with 
the  English,  which  necessitated  the  concentration  of  all  available 
forces  in  the  Archipelago.  The  two  factors  at  Surat  were  driven  almost 
to  distraction  by  their  false  position  until  at  last,  in  October,  1620, 
Van  den  Broecke,  after  having  called  at  Aden,  arrived  at  Surat.  Coen 
had  appointed  him  director  of  both  Mokha  and  Surat,  and  he  took  up 
his  residence  at  the  latter  place.  A  number  of  the  Company's  other 
servants  arrived  overland  from  Masulipatam  later  in  the  year,  and 
factories  could  then  be  organised  in  the  inland  towns,  explored  during 
the  preceding  years,  Broach,  Cambay,  Ahmadabad,  Agra,  and  Bur- 
hanpur,  where  indigo  and  textiles  of  various  kinds  were  to  be  had. 

A  more  prosperous  time  now  began  for  the  settlement.  There  was 
a  dangerous  conflict  in  1622  with  the  Gujarat  authorities,  especially 
with  Asaf  Khan,  Prince  Khurram's  powerful  father-in-law,  over  the 
activities  of  a  Dutch  ship  which  had  sailed  along  the  Arabian  and 
Persian  coast,  seizing  native  craft  belonging  to  Portuguese  ports,  and 
had  confiscated  property  belonging — or  so  it  was  alleged — to  that 
dignitary.  The  factor  at  Cambay,  who  was  within  the  reach  of  Asaf 
Khan's  resentment,  nevertheless  took  a  high  tone  and  threatened 
Coen's  vengeance  in  a  way  eloquent  of  the  self-confidence  engendered 
by  the  events  of  1619.  He  was,  however,  arrested  and  sent  to  Agra, 
and  Van  den  Broecke  had  to  pay  an  indemnity  before  the  Cambay 
factory  could  be  recovered.  Incidents  like  these  were  typical  of  trade 
in  a  strong  but  despotic  empire  like  the  MoghuPs,  and  did  not  prevent 
the  Gujarat  factories  from  producing  larger  and  larger  profits.  Coen 
was  impatient  with  Van  den  Broecke  for  sending  him  indigo,  when 
he  wanted  textiles.1  In  course  of  time,  however,  the  indigo  trade 
came  to  be  as  important  as  the  trade  in  cottons.  In  1624  ^e  ft*"8*  S^P 
sailed  from  Surat  direct  for  Holland;  its  cargo  consisted  mainly  of 
indigo.  In  those  years  three  or  four  ships  were  sent  annually  from 
Batavia  to  trade  with  Gujarat  and  Arabia.  The  English  Company, 
which,  after  its  defeat  in  Java,  was  beginning  to  develop  Gujarat  as 
the  centre  of  its  eastern  system,  was  still  somewhat  ahead  of  its  rival 
here.  But  the  advantages  of  the  Dutch  which  have  been  mentioned 
in  connection  with  their  Coromandel  trade  told  in  Gujarat  as  well, 
and  the  directorate  of  Surat — the  factories  farther  to  the  west  were 
soon  formed  into  a  separate  directorate — came  to  be  one  of  the  most 
profitable  of  all  the  establishments  the  Dutch  Company  possessed. 

In  1627  ^e  governor  of  Coromandel  sent  some  of  his  subordinates 
to  found  a  trading  establishment  in  Bengal.  At  first  the  new  post  was 
kept  within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Coromandel  gouvernement,  but 
1  Golenbrander,  Jan  Pieters&on  Coen,  m,  184. 


BENGAL  AND  CEYLON  41 

distance  and  its  growing  importance  caused  the  government  at 
Batavia  in  1655  to  give  it  a  separate  organisation  as  the  Directorate 
of  Bengal.  Pippli,  the  first  place  where  the  Dutch  had  established 
themselves,  was  soon  abandoned  for  Balasore.  When  in  1653  a  firm 
footing  was  obtained  at  Chinsura  up  the  Hugli  river,  Balasore  was 
retained  only  for  the  convenience  of  the  ships.  Chinsura,  Kasimbazar 
and  Patna,  however,  became  the  centres  of  an  exceedingly  prosperous 
and  profitable  trade.  Although  the  Dutch  in  Bengal  never  attained 
to  the  position  of  independence  which  they  enjoyed  in  the  Carnatic,  they 
were  given  considerable  liberties  by  the  nawab  of  Bengal,  from  whom 
they  held  the  villages  of  Chinsura  and  Bernagore  in  "perpetual  fief", 
with  wide  jurisdiction  even  over  natives.  They  were  allowed  to  con- 
struct a  fortress  at  Chinsura,  called  Fort  Gustavus,  which  at  any  rate 
safeguarded  them  against  any  sudden  attack  by  native  forces.  They 
were  always  exposed,  nevertheless,  to  the  exactions  of  native  authori- 
ties, but  the  profits  of  the  Bengal  trade  enabled  them  to  suffer  many 
losses  and  to  pay  many  bribes  with  equanimity. 

The  articles  of  export  were  textiles  and  silk,  saltpetre,  rice,  and 
particularly,  opium.  The  opium,  which  was  sent  to  Java  and  China, 
yielded  enormous  profits.  Even  when  in  the  eighteenth  century  the 
Company's  position  in  Bengal  had  become  precarious,  the  establish- 
ments there  continued  to  be  among  the  most  profitable  in  all  the 
Company's  domain. 

Ceylon  had  attracted  the  Dutch  from  the  early  days  of  their 
colonial  enterprise. 

In  1602  Joris  van  Spilbergh,  in  command  of  three  ships  owned  by 
Balthazar  de  Moucheron,  called  at  Batticaloa,  which  was  not  occupied 
by  the  Portuguese,  and  travelled  up  to  Kandi.  Before  the  year  was 
out,  another  three  ships  (detached  from  the  first  of  the  United  Com- 
pany's fleets)  appeared  at  Batticaloa,  and  their  commander,  Sebald 
de  Weert,  followed  Spilbergh's  example  and  visited  the  "emperor". 
"Dom  Joao"  was  eager  to  enlist  the  help  of  the  Dutch  against  the 
Portuguese,  and  De  Weert  arranged  with  him  to  go  to  Achin  for 
reinforcements  with  which  to  blockade  Galle  by  sea  while  the  Sin- 
halese attacked  it  by  land.  On  25  April,  1603,  De  Weert  was  back  at 
Batticaloa  with  a  fleet  of  seven  ships,  but  before  the  expedition  against 
Galle  could  be  undertaken,  a  quarrel  arose,  and  the  Dutch  commander 
was  slain  with  a  number  of  his  companions. 

This  misfortune  naturally  had  a  discouraging  effect  on  the  Dutch 
Company,  and  for  many  years  to  come  it  devoted  its  energies  to  the 
strengthening  of  its  position  in  the  Malay  Archipelago.  Posts  on  the 
Coromandel  Coast  and  Gujarat  were  a  necessary  corollary  to  the 
enjoyment  of  the  monopoly  of  the  Molucca  trade,  but  the  building 
up  of  a  new  monopoly  in  Ceylon  could  wait.  Relations  were  not 
broken  off  altogether.  When  the  Dutch  had  founded  a  factory  at 


4*  THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 

Dcvcnampatnam  in  1608,  the  new  king  (Dom  Jo2o  had  died  in  1604) 
sued  for  their  help  again,  and  in  1610,  and  again  in  1612,  treaties  were 
concluded.  The  man  who  had  negotiated  the  latter  treaty,  de 
Boschhouwer,  rose  into  high  favour  with  the  king  and  left  Ceylon  in 
1615  full  of  zeal  for  the  plan  of  an  immediate  attack  on  the  Portuguese 
in  the  island.  Both  in  Java  and  in  Holland,  however,  he  found  the 
authorities  immersed  in  their  cares  for  the  Moluccas.  At  last  he 
persuaded  the  Danish  Government  to  fit  out  an  expedition  to  Ceylon, 
but  he  himself  died  on  the  way  out,  and  without  him  the  Danes 
achieved  nothing  at  Batticaloa. 

The  Portuguese  now  woke  up  to  the  danger  threatening  their 
position,  and  closed  the  ring  round  the  king  of  Kandi  by  occupying 
and  fortifying  both  Trinkomali  and  Batticaloa.  An  attempt  to  take 
Kandi,  however,  failed  disastrously. 

Soon  afterwards  (1632),  the  throne  of  Kandi  was  occupied  by  an 
energetic  young  ruler,  Raja  Sinha,  who  resumed  the  policy  of  setting 
the  Dutch  against  his  arch-enemies  the  Portuguese.  On  9  September, 
1636,  he  wrote  a  letter  to  the  Dutch  Governor  of  the  Coromandel 
Coast  at  Pulicat — it  took  his  envoy  six  months  to  elude  the  watch- 
fulness of  the  Portuguese  and  deliver  the  letter — in  which  he  asked 
for  a  fleet  of  five  vessels  to  blockade  the  Portuguese  fortresses  while 
he  attacked  them  from  the  land  side;  he  promised  the  Dutch  leave 
to  build  a  fortress  of  their  own  and  the  repayment  of  all  the  expenses 
of  the  expedition. 

These  proposals  now  found  ready  acceptance.  The  Company, 
securely  established  in  the  Archipelago,  was  thinking  of  expansion, 
and  under  the  energetic  leadership  of  the  governor-general  Van 
Diemen  a  determined  attempt  was  being  made  to  break  down  the 
Portuguese  Empire.  The  main  effort  was  directed  against  Malacca, 
but  at  the  same  time  Goa,  the  nerve-centre  of  the  Portuguese  system, 
was  paralysed  by  an  annual  blockade  (this  policy  had  been  started 
in  1636),  and  the  Dutch  felt  strong  enough  to  try  and  wrest  from  the 
Portuguese  the  places  which  provided  the  valuable  pepper  and 
cinnamon,  on  the  west  coast  of  India  and  in  Ceylon. 

In  January,  1638,  the  admiral  of  the  fleet  before  Goa,  Westerwolt, 
detached  two  yachts  under  the  command  of  Coster  to  begin  the  siege 
of  Batticaloa.  When  the  south-west  monsoon  necessitated  the  break- 
up of  the  blockade,  he  himself  appeared  on  10  May  with  four  ships 
and  landed  300  men;  Batticaloa  surrendered  after  a  bombardment 
without  awaiting  a  storm. 

The  only  importance  of  Batticaloa  lay  in  that  it  established  com- 
munications with  the  independent  ruler  of  the  interior.  Westerwolt 
at  once  obtained  Raja  Sinha's  consent  to  a  new  treaty  prepared 
beforehand  and  which  assured  enormous  advantages  to  the  Company. 
By  it  the  Company  promised  to  supply  the  troops  and  ships  required 
for  the  expulsion  of  the  Portuguese  from  the  island;  the  king  was  to 


CONQJJEST  OF  CEYLON  43 

make  good  all  expenses  thus  incurred  by  deliveries  of  cinnamon, 
pepper,  etc. ;  the  Dutch  were  moreover  to  have  complete  freedom  of 
commerce  in  the  island  to  the  exclusion  of  all  other  European  nations. 
Clearly  the  king  thought  hardly  any  price  too  high  that  would  help 
him  to  re-establish  his  authority  over  the  coastal  towns.  By  the  third 
clause  of  the  treaty,  as  Westerwolt  sent  it  to  Batavia,  however,  the 
king,  on  top  of  all  this,  consented  that  the  Dutch  should  garrison  the 
fortresses  captured  from  the  Portuguese.  One  wonders  why  he  should 
have  thought  it  worth  his  while  to  pay  the  Dutch  so  heavily  merely 
to  step  into  his  enemies'  place.  But  the  mystery  is  solved  when  the 
Dutch  copy  of  the  treaty  is  compared  with  the  Portuguese  translation 
handed  to  Raja  Sinha:  in  the  only  version  known  to  the  ruler  of 
Kandi  the  clause  in  question  contains  an  addition  making  the  gar- 
risoning of  the  fortresses  by  the  Dutch  dependent  on  his  approval. 
The  deception  remained  undetected  for  some  time,  as  the  king, 
pleased  with  his  allies  and  conscious  of  his  impotence  against  the 
Portuguese,  made  no  objection  to  the  Dutch  retaining  Batticaloa. 
When  Westerwolt  on  4  June,  1638,  departed  for  Batavia,  he  left 
Coster  behind  him  as  governor  of  the  town. 

At  about  the  same  time  another  disaster  befell  the  Portuguese,  a 
fleet  with  reinforcements  from  Goa  for  Colombo  being  shipwrecked. 
Coster  urged  the  authorities  at  Batavia  to  strike  while  the  iron  was 
hot,  and  the  governor-general  and  council  themselves  wrote  to  the 
directors  at  home  (22  December,  1638)  that  if  they  would  only  send 
some  extra  ships  and  troops,  the  time  had  come  "to  help  the 
Portuguese  out  of  India":  the  Malabar  Coast  with  its  rich  trade, 
Ceylon  and  Malacca,  all  seemed  within  the  grasp  of  the  Company. 

But  quarrels  with  Raja  Sinha  supervened,  and  nothing  was  achieved 
in  1639  except  the  capture  of  Trinkomali,  useless  for  the  cinnamon 
trade,  and  the  special  effort  which  the  Company  made  towards  the 
end  of  that  year,  sending  out  a  fleet  of  twenty-eight  ships  in  order  to 
blockade  Goa  and  attack  Ceylon  simultaneously,  still  did  not  enable 
them  to  capture  Colombo.  But  the  command  of  the  sea  enabled  the 
Dutch  to  attack  the  enemy  where  he  was  weakest.  In  order  to  provide 
for  the  defence  of  their  capital,  the  Portuguese  had  reduced  the 
garrison  of  Negombo,  and  on  9  February,  1640,  that  town  was  taken 
by  the  combined  Dutch  and  Sinhalese  forces.  The  first  breach  had 
been  made  in  the  strong  places  protecting  the  cinnamon  country,  but 
the  immediate  result  was  a  quarrel  between  the  allies  over  the  right 
to  occupy  the  captured  town,  and  the  discrepancy  between  the  two 
versions  of  the  treaty  of  1638  now  came  to  light.  Raja  Sinha's  in- 
dignation can  easily  be  understood,  but  the  Portuguese  were  still  the 
more  formidable  intruders,  and  Coster  succeeded  in  bringing  about 
a  reconciliation  on  the  basis  of  a  compromise  which  assured  to  his 
masters  the  reality  of  power.  Trinkomali  and  Batticaloa  were  to  be 
surrendered  to  Raja  Sinha  in  return  for  ten  elephants  and  1000  bahars 


44  THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 

of  cinnamon;  after  the  Portuguese  had  been  driven  out  of  Ceylon 
altogether,  the  Dutch  were  to  be  allowed  to  retain  one  fortress;  they 
might,  however,  hold  all  they  took  as  a  pledge  till  their  expenses  had 
been  paid;  Colombo  was  in  any  case  to  be  dismantled.  This  treaty 
was  to  take  the  place  of  the  third  clause  of  the  treaty  of  1638,  which  was 
reconfirmed  as  far  as  its  other  provisions  went.  Immediately  after  the 
conclusion  of  this  arrangement,  Coster  sailed  southward  and  laid 
siege  to  Galle,  which  after  hard  fighting  was  taken  on  13  March,  1640. 
No  Sinhalese  troops  took  part  in  the  siege. 

The  Dutch  now  held  two  ports  in  the  cinnamon  area  and  expected 
to  have  a  good  share  in  the  trade.  But  Raja  Sinha,  although  Trin- 
komali  was  given  up  to  him  in  April  when  he  paid  the  stipulated  price 
often  elephants,  still  suspected  the  intentions  of  his  allies  with  regard 
to  the  captured  fortresses.  Thanks  to  their  exertions,  he  now  controlled 
part  of  the  cinnamon  fields,  but  he  never  delivered  the  quantities 
which  the  Dutch  claimed  under  the  treaty,  preferring  to  deal  with 
Arab  merchants  in  spite  of  its  provisions.  Coster,  who  went  from 
Galle  to  Kandi  to  remonstrate  with  the  king,  was  murdered  by  his 
Sinhalese  escort  on  his  way  back  (August,  1640).  Shortly  afterwards 
the  Portuguese  were  enabled  by  reinforcements  from  Goa,  where  an 
energetic  new  viceroy,  d'Aveiras,  had  taken  up  the  government,  to 
make  a  determined  attempt  to  retake  Negombo,  and  although  Galle, 
where  Thijssen  had  assumed  the  command  after  Coster's  death,  held 
out,  its  position  was  difficult.  The  Portuguese  now  dominated  all  the 
surrounding  area  with  their  troops,  and  not  only  was  no  cinnamon  to 
be  obtained,  but  the  town  had  to  be  provisioned  from  Pulicat. 

The  news  of  these  events  aroused  the  more  disappointment  at 
Batavia  as  developments  had  taken  place  in  Europe  which  threatened 
to  interfere  with  the  Company's  schemes  of  conquest.  A  rebellion 
against  Spanish  rule  had  for  some  time  been  brewing  in  Portugal;  in 
November,  1640,  the  Duke  of  Braganza  was  proclaimed  king.  Por- 
tugal's colonial  possessions  had  for  forty  years  been  fair  game  for  the 
Dutch  East  India  Company,  because  Portugal  was  part  of  the  Spanish 
Empire,  with  which  the  states-general  still  continued  at  war.  Now 
that  Portugal  had  freed  herself  and  had  become  Spain's  enemy,  peace 
between  Holland  and  Portugal  seemed  inevitable.  In  fact  negotiations 
with  that  object  were  begun  at  the  Hague  in  April  I64I,1  and  the 
Batavia  government  felt  that  no  time  was  to  be  lost.  The  siege  of 
Malacca,  which  had  been  taken  in  January,  1641,  had  exacted  a 
high  toll  of  life,  and  the  forces  at  their  disposal  were  small.  Yet  in 
September,  1641,  they  again,  as  in  1639,  sent  out  a  fleet  capable  of 
blockading  Goa  and  attacking  Ceylon  simultaneously,  but  nothing 
was  achieved,  although  the  negotiators  in  Europe  had  taken  care  to 
allow  as  much  latitude  of  time  to  the  Company's  arms  as  decency 

1  Prestage,  The  Diplomatic  Relations  of  Portugal  with  France,  England,  and  Holland  from 
1640  to  1668,  p  175." 


THE  TEN  YEARS5  TRUCE  45 

would  permit.  On  14  February,  1642,  news  was  received  at  Batavia  of 
a  ten-year  truce  signed  at  the  Hague  on  1 2  June,  1 64 1 ;  but  it  was  only 
to  come  into  force  in  the  East  a  full  year  after  the  king  of  Portugal's 
ratification  arrived  at  the  Hague.  War  could  go  on,  therefore,  in 
spite  of  the  attempts  of  the  Goa  government  to  arrange  an  immediate 
armistice.  The  ratification  was  not  passed  by  the  king  of  Portugal 
until  1 8  November,  and  news  of  this  was  only  received  at  Batavia  on 
2  October,  1642.  The  delay  had  not  been  of  any  use  to  the  Company. 
The  Portuguese  still  kept  Galle  practically  invested  on  the  land  side, 
and  the  Dutch  had  no  access  at  all  to  the  cinnamon  fields.  But  the 
resources  of  the  Company's  diplomacy  were  not  yet  exhausted.  A 
difference  of  interpretation  as  between  Goa  and  Batavia  of  one 
important  article  of  the  truce  arranged  in  Europe  was  used  as  a 
pretext  to  continue  the  war.  It  must  be  said  that  the  Dutch  inter- 
pretation seems  the  correct  one,  and  that  the  Portuguese  viceroy's 
attitude  was  most  unyielding.  The  successes  of  the  last  two  years  in 
Ceylon  had  inspired  the  Portuguese  with  a  new  confidence. 

The  article  in  question,  the  twelfth  of  the  treaty  of  truce,1  arranged 
the  affairs  between  the  two  nations  on  the  basis  of  uti  possidetis,  with 
this  proviso,  however,  that  the  lati  campi,  the  countryside,  between 
fortresses  belonging  to  the  contracting  parties,  were  to  be  divided  by 
the  authorities  on  the  spot  in  accordance  with  their  dependence  on 
these  fortresses.  Basing  themselves  on  this  article,  the  Dutch  demanded 
that  the  Portuguese  should  evacuate  the  districts  of  Matturai  and 
Saffragam,  parts  of  the  cinnamon  country  which  had  always  been 
considered  as  falling  within  the  jurisdiction  of  Galle.  The  Dutch 
Commissioner,  appearing  at  Goa,  which  in  spite  of  Portuguese 
protests  was  still  being  blockaded,  on  i  April,  1643,  proposed  a  pro- 
visional division  of  the  cinnamon  lands  until  the  governments  in 
Europe  had  settled  the  matter.  When  this  was  rejected,  war  was 
resumed. 

It  was  not  waged  by  the  Dutch  only  to  compel  the  Portuguese  to 
accept  their  interpretation  of  the  twelfth  article  of  the  truce.  There 
still  was  a  state  of  war  between  the  Portuguese  and  Raja  Sinha;  the 
viceroy  did  not  recognise  the  king's  authority,  in  spite  of  the  third 
article  of  the  truce,  which  included  all  Indian  rulers  allied  to  either 
of  the  contracting  parties.  In  Ceylon,  therefore,  the  Dutch  pretended 
to  act  on  the  king's  behalf,  which  meant  that  they  claimed  to  be 
free  to  extend  their  conquests.  Reinforcements  from  home  made  it 
possible  for  the  Batavia  government  to  act  with  vigour.  While  in  the 
autumn  of  1643  the  usual  fleet  sailed  to  blockade  Goa,  a  second  fleet 
of  nine  ships,  manned  by  1550  men  and  under  the  command  of  Caron, 
made  straight  for  Ceylon.  After  a  battle  under  the  walls  of  Negombo, 
in  which  the  Portuguese  were  entirely  routed,  the  Dutch  penetrated 
into  the  town  in  the  wake  of  the  flying  army,  and  became  masters  of 

1  Dumont,  Corps  Universel  Diplomatique,  vi,  214. 


46  THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 

Ncgombo  once  more  (January,  1644).  Without  heeding  Raja  Sinha's 
requests  that  the  town  should  be  given  up  to  him,  the  Dutch  strongly 
fortified  it. 

The  viceroy  at  Goa,  regretting  his  uncompromising  rejection  of 
the  offers  made  him  the  year  before,  now  wrote  to  Batavia  that  he 
was  willing  to  accept  them.  But  the  Dutch  were  no  longer  content 
with  the  cinnamon  country  near  Galle,  they  also  claimed  Negombo 
with  the  surrounding  area.  They  claimed  it  on  behalf  of  Raja  Sinha, 
to  whom,  however,  they  did  not  dream  of  surrendering  it.  Yet  when 
in  the  autumn  of  1 644  the  Batavia  government  once  more  sent  a  large 
fleet  to  blockade  Goa,  its  commander,  Joan  Maetsuycker,  was  em- 
powered to  negotiate.  The  Seventeen,  primed  by  the  states-general, 
had  been  remonstrating  with  their  servants  in  the  Indies  about  the 
high-handed  way  in  which  they  had  made  war  on  the  Portuguese  all 
over  the  Indian  Ocean  on  account  of  some  cinnamon  fields  in  Ceylon, 
and  it  really  was  a  relief  to  the  Batavia  authorities  when  Maetsuycker 
succeeded  in  obtaining  from  the  viceroy  a  treaty  (10  November,  1644), 
by  which  both  Galle  and  Negombo  were  ceded  with  the  cinnamon 
lands  divided  at  equal  distances  between  those  places  and  Colombo. 
The  viceroy,  however,  only  gave  up  Negombo  under  protest,  and  a 
treaty  made  between  the  home  governments  on  27  March,  1645,  in 
ignorance  of  what  had  been  done  in  the  East,  could  still  be  interpreted 
by  each  party  to  suit  its  own  interests. 

At  the  same  time,  Negombo  was  the  cause  of  serious  trouble  with 
Raja  Sinha,  whose  men  were  ravaging  the  cinnamon  lands  in  which 
the  Dutch  hoped  to  recoup  themselves  for  their  expenditure.  The 
governor  of  Galle,  Thijssen,  rashly  declared  war  on  the  king  in  May, 

1645,  and  was  at  once  recalled,  but  before  Maetsuycker,  who  became 
his  successor,  could  restore  peace,  a  military  disaster  occurred;  a 
Dutch  encampment  was  surrounded,  the  troops  sent  to  relieve  it  cut 
to  pieces,  and  the  king  returned  to  Kandi  with  400  prisoners  (May, 
1646).    In  the  negotiations  which  now  dragged  on  for  years,  Raja 
Sinha  held  a  trump  card,  his  prisoners.  At  last,  in  1649,  the  Dutch 
consented  to  a  treaty  which  restored  the  alliance  of  1638,  but  on 
somewhat  less  favourable  conditions;  not  even  the  monopoly  of  the 
cinnamon  trade  was  to  remain  to  them  once  Raja  Sinha  had  paid 
off  his  debts,  no  doubt  a  somewhat  unlikely  contingency.   In  any 
case,  the  old  scheme  for  the  expulsion  of  the  Portuguese  was  again 
being  discussed  between  the  king  and  the  Dutch. 

While  the  Portuguese  claims  to  Negombo  were  still  a  matter  of 
negotiation  with  Maetsuycker,  news  had  arrived,  in  the  summer  of 

1646,  of  the  rebellion  against  Dutch  rule  that  had  broken  out  in 
Brazil.  This  settled  the  matter  of  Negombo;  it  served  as  a  sufficient 
pretext  for  its  indefinite  retention  by  the  Dutch.  Relations  between 
the  Dutch  Republic  and  Portugal  were  greatly  strained  and  the  East 
India  Company's  pretensions  now  had  the  support  of  the  states- 


RENEWAL  OF  WAR  47 

general.  Quite  apart  from  the  narrow  issue  of  Negombo,  it  was  clear 
that  the  peace  between  the  two  countries  was  precarious.  When  the 
ten  years'  truce  ran  out  in  1652,  the  Company's  servants,  in  the  East 
were  apprised  that  they  were  again  to  make  war  on  the  Portuguese, 
During  the  next  period,  the  affairs  of  the  Dutch  West  India  Company 
kept  the  war  between  the  Dutch  Republic  and  Portugal  alive,  and 
while  the  Portuguese  were  successful  in  Brazil,  and  could  not  make 
peace  on  account  of  that  very  success,  they  lost  nearly  all  they  had 
left  in  India,  and  the  schemes  of  conquest  of  the  Dutch  East  India 
Company,  which  had  been  interrupted  in  1642,  were  now  to  a  large 
extent  realised. 

It  was  not  until  1655  that  a  serious  effort  was  made.  At  the  urgent 
requests  of  the  Batavia  government,  larger  quantities  of  ships  and  men 
had  been  sent  from  home:  13,500  men  during  the  three  years  from 
1653  to  1655.  On  14  August,  1655,  twelve  ships,  with  1200  soldiers 
on  board,  left  Batavia  with  orders  to  attack  Colombo;  Gerard  Hulft, 
director-general  of  India,  was  the  commander.  Towards  the  end  of 
September  Colombo  was  invested.  It  was  kept  closely  blockaded 
both  by  land  and  by  sea,  and  non-combatants  trying  to  escape  were 
driven  back.  Famine  and  disease  raged  as  the  months  wore  on,  and 
still  the  Portuguese  held  out,  hoping  for  relief  from  Goa.  Early  in 
April  a  fleet  of  twenty-two  small  vessels  trying  to  carry  troops  and 
provisions  to  Colombo  was  scattered  off  Quilon  by  a  single  Dutch 
ship.  At  last,  on  7  May,  after  reinforcements  had  arrived  from  Batavia, 
the  town  was  stormed,  and  the  north-east  bastion  captured.  On 
12  May  Colombo  capitulated,  which  did  not  save  it  from  being  sacked 
by  the  Dutch  soldiers. 

Colombo  was  at  once  garrisoned  and  the  ruined  fortifications 
rebuilt  by  the  Dutch.  Raja  Sinha  had  not  taken  a  very  active  part 
in  the  siege.  His  army  had  most  of  the  time  been  encamped  near 
Raygamwatte.  Yet  his  help  had  been  useful  in  the  provisioning  of 
the  Dutch  troops,  and  his  relations  with  Hulft  had  been  most  cordial. 
The  maharaja  bravely  kept  up  the  fiction  of  the  Dutch  being  merely 
the  humble  auxiliaries  of  his  august  and  all-powerful  person.  Of 
Hulft  he  spoke  as  "my  Director-General",  and  of  the  Dutch  army 
as  "my  army".1  Hulft  was  killed  during  the  siege,  on  10  April,  1656, 
and  with  Adriaan  van  der  Meyden,  who  took  his  place,  Raja  Sinha's 
relations  soon  grew  less  agreeable.  When  the  capitulation  of  Colombo 
was  concluded,  in  his  name  and  the  Company's,  but  without  his  even 
being  consulted,  and  when  it  became  clear  that  the  Dutch  had  no 
intention  of  giving  up  their  conquest  to  him,  the  king's  attitude 
became  frankly  hostile.  He  closed  the  mountain  passes  and  forbade 
the  delivery  of  cattle  and  other  provisions  to  the  Dutch.  He  tartly 
reproached  the  Company  with  faithlessness.  In  November  Van  der 
Meyden  made  an  end  of  pretences.  A  little  army  was  sent  against  the 

1  Aalbcrs,  Rijklqfvan  Goens,  p.  53,  note  4. 


48  THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 

camp  at  Raygamwatte.  Raja  Sinha  did  not  wait  for  it,  but  broke 
camp  hastily  and  retired  to  his  mountains.  It  was  to  be  feared  that 
he  might  be  reconciled  with  the  Portuguese*  who  were  still  in  pos- 
session of  two  strong  places  on  the  north  of  Ceylon,  Manar  and 
Jaffnapatam,  and  held  Tuticorin  and  Negapatam  on  the  mainland. 
The  Dutch  could  not  feel  safe  in  the  possession  of  the  cinnamon  lands, 
therefore,  until  they  had  expelled  the  Portuguese  from  those  last 
strongholds  and  "cleaned  up  that  whole  corner".1 

In  September,  1657,  Rijcklof  van  Goens,  an  Extraordinary  Member 
of  the  Council  of  India,  who  had  already  served  the  Company  in 
many  capacities  and  in  many  lands  with  striking  success,  was  in- 
structed to  effect  this.  Having  expelled  the  Portuguese  from  the  open 
town  of  Tuticorin,  Van  Goens  dispatched  a  mission  to  the  thever,  the 
nayak's  vassal,  and  to  the  nayak  of  Madura  himself,  and  continued 
on  his  way.  On  19  February,  the  fleet  crossed  from  the  island  of 
Rammanakoil  along  Adam's  Bridge  to  Manar,  where  a  number  of 
Portuguese  vessels  with  great  obstinacy  tried  to  prevent  a  landing. 
When  it  was  nevertheless  effected,  on  the  22nd,  the  fortress  surren- 
dered at  once,  most  of  the  garrison  having  hurriedly  evacuated  it  and 
made  for  Jaffnapatam.  Thither,  Van  Goens,  with  850  men,  followed 
overland;  200  more  soldiers,  brought  from  Colombo,  joined  him 
before  the  town.  On  9  March  the  Dutch  troops  fought  their  way  into 
the  town,  the  Portuguese  retiring  into  the  citadel,  which  as  Van  Goens 
put  it,  "deserved  that  name  more  than  any  one  I  ever  saw  in  India". 
The  Portuguese  garrison  numbered  about  1000,  and  in  addition  there 
were  700  or  800  native  soldiers.  But  some  thousands  of  refugees  from 
the  town  created  confusion  and  accelerated  the  consumption  of 
provisions.  After  having  captured  (26  April)  the  fortress  on  the  islet 
of  Kays  in  the  mouth  of  the  channel  between  Ouratura  (afterwards 
Leyden)  and  Caradiva  (afterwards  Amsterdam),  Van  Goens  could 
use  the  cannon  of  the  fleet  which  was  now  assembling  before  Jaffna- 
patam, and  ten  batteries  were  constructed  round  the  fort.  Famine 
and  disease,  however,  were  the  most  potent  weapons  of  the  besieger, 
and  at  last,  when  all  hope  of  relief  from  Goa  had  vanished,  the 
Portuguese  commander  capitulated  (23  June,  1658). 

As  soon  as  the  difficult  problem  of  the  great  number  of  prisoners 
and  of  the  occupation  of  the  fort  was  settled,  Van  Goens  sailed  for 
Negapatam.  The  garrison  of  367  men  was  too  small  to  hold  that  large 
fortified  town,  and  capitulated  at  once.  Negapatam  at  first  remained 
under  the  governor  of  Ceylon,  but,  as  has  already  been  stated,  in 
1689  the  Dutch  made  it  the  seat  of  their  administration  on  the 
Coromandel  Coast.  Portuguese  power  was  definitely  broken  in  the 
whole  of  Southern  India.  The  only  remaining  task  was  to  expel  them 
from  the  Malabar  Coast,  and  this,  too,  was  a  few  years  later  under- 
taken by  Van  Goens. 

1  Instruction  for  Van  Goens,  5  September,  1657,  ap.  Aalbers,  Rijkkfvan  Goens,  p.  66. 


MALABAR  CONQJUESTS  49 

The  Malabar  Coast  was  the  region  on  the  mainland  of  India  where 
the  Portuguese  had  struck  root  most  deeply.  The  small  rulers  between 
whom  the  country  was  divided  had  been  unable  to  prevent  the  in- 
truders from  acquiring  large  political  powers,  which  they- used  in  the 
first  place  to  secure  for  themselves  the  exclusive  trade  in  the  only 
important  export  of  the  region,  pepper.  In  a  number  of  towns  there 
were  considerable  settlements  of  Portuguese,  and  Roman  Catholicism 
had  made  many  converts. 

The  Dutch,  although  they  -had  never  found  time  to  obtain  a  firm 
footing  on  the  Malabar  Coast,  had  been  repeatedly  in  communication 
with  rulers  unfriendly  to  the  Portuguese  in  that  region,  particularly 
with  the  most  powerful  of  the  Malabar  princes,  the  Zamorin  of  Calicut. 
In  September,  1604,  Admiral  Steven  Van  der  Haghen  had  concluded 
a  treaty  with  the  Zamorin1  but,  as  we  know,  all  available  forces  were 
needed  for  the  establishment  of  Dutch  power  in  the  Archipelago  in 
those  early  days.  The  piece-goods  trade  of  the  Coromandel  Coast 
was  moreover  thought  to  be  of  greater  importance  than  the  pepper 
trade  of  Malabar,  pepper  being  obtained  in  sufficient  quantities  at 
Bantam  and  at  Achin.  And  so,  although  other  fleets  stopped  at 
Calicut,  and  Van  der  Haghen's  treaty  was  renewed,  and  once  (1610) 
merchants  were  sent  from  Tirupapuliyur  to  conclude  a  fresh  treaty 
of  friendship  and  commerce,  all  these  arrangements  remained  a  dead 
letter,  and  in  the  days  of  Van  Goens  the  only  Dutch  port  on  the  west 
coast  of  India  was  Vengurla  to  the  north  of  Goa.  Here  in  1637,  when 
the  policy  of  annually  blockading  the  Portuguese  capital  had  just 
been  adopted,  the  Dutch  had  built  a  fort  which  served  as  apointd'appui 
for  the  blockading  fleets  and  as  a  post  of  observation  during  the  months 
when  they  were  not  there.  The  Malabar  Coast  proper  was  still 
controlled  effectively  by  the  Portuguese  fortresses. 

For  some  time  after  the  conquest  of  Negapatam,  the  war  with  the 
Portuguese  was  carried  on  less  energetically.  The  Company,  exhausted 
by  its  effort,  tried  to  obtain  assistance  from  the  states-general.  But  in 
1 66 1,  although  little  assistance  was  forthcoming,  it  was  decided  to 
make  a  fresh  effort  to  drive  the  Portuguese  from  the  coast.  The 
states  were  at  last  making  up  their  minds  to  waive  their  claims  to 
Brazil,  and  the  Company  was  anxious  to  complete  this  new  conquest 
before  peace  came  to  upset  its  schemes. 

In  October,  1661 ,  a  Dutch  fleet  of  twenty-three  sail,  large  and  small, 
appeared  under  the  command  of  Van  Goens  off  Quilon.  The  town 
was  taken  after  a  fight  with  the  Nairs,  who  here  as  elsewhere  took  the 
side  of  the  Portuguese.  A  garrison  was  left  behind,  and  the  fleet  sailed 
northward  to  Kranganur,  which  Van  Goens  desired  to  occupy  before 
attacking  the  principal  stronghold  of  the  Portuguese  at  Cochin.  Kran- 
ganur, which  offered  an  unexpectedly  vigorous  resistance,  was  taken 

1  DC  Jonge,  Opkomst  van  het  Nederlandsch  gezag  in  Oost-Indie,  m  (1865),  204. 
cmv  4 


50  THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 

by  assault  on  15  January,  1662,  and  now  the  Dutch  making  them- 
selves masters  of  the  island  of  Vypin,  on  which  they  built  the  fortress 
Nieuw  Oranje,  opened 'the  attack  on  Cochin.  The  kings  of  Cochin  had 
for  a  long  time  leant  on  the  support  of  the  Portuguese  against  their 
enemy  the  Zamorin  of  Calicut,  and  so  again  the  Nairs  had  to  be  driven 
off,  and  the  queen  of  Cochin  to  be  made  prisoner,  before  the  Portu- 
guese town  of  Cochin  could  be  besieged.  The  difficulties  of  the  marshy 
ground,  however,  were  considerable.  The  army,  weakened  already 
by  the  garrisons  left  at  Quilon,  Kranganur  and  Nieuw  Oranje,  was 
further  weakened  by  illness.  The  commander  decided  to  raise  the 
siege,  and  in  the  dead  of  night  the  1400  men  were  successfully 
embarked  before  the  Portuguese  knew  what  was  happening.  The 
delay  almost  proved  fatal.  On  6  August,  1661,  the  treaty  of  peace 
between  Holland  and  Portugal  had  actually  been  signed.  It  laid 
down  that  hostilities  were  to  cease  in  Europe  two  months  after 
signature  and  elsewhere  on  publication;  each  side  to  retain  what  it 
then  possessed.  Had  this  treaty  been  ratified  at  once,  the  Dutch 
East  India  Company  would  have  been  baulked  of  Cochin.  But 
Portugal's  new  ally,  Charles  II,  was  unwilling  to  share  with  the 
Dutch  in  the  remaining  Portuguese  possessions  trading  facilities  which 
had  hitherto  been  reserved  to  the  English,  and  the  Portuguese 
government  was  too  dependent  on  English  help  not  to  seek  an 
alteration  of  the  terms.  The  Dutch  East  India  Company  possessed 
influence  enough  in  the  states-general  to  take  advantage  of  these  new 
negotiations,  and  so  it  was  not  until  14  December,  1662,  that  instru- 
ments of  ratification  were  exchanged  at  the  Hague,  and  only  several 
months  later  was  the  treaty  proclaimed — in  Holland  in  April,  in 
Portugal  not  before  May. 

Meanwhile  in  September,  1662  a  large  fleet  had  sailed  from 
Batavia  to  attack  Cochin.  In  November  the  siege  was  renewed.  The 
town  was  subjected  to  a  furious  bombardment,  but,  fearing  that  peace 
might  save  it,  the  governor-general  and  his  council  had  empowered 
the  commander  to  offer  unusually  favourable  conditions,  particularly 
freedom  of  exercise  for  the  Catholic  religion.  Only  after  repeated 
assaults  had  carried  the  Dutch  into  part  of  the  town,  were  these 
conditions  accepted  (January,  1663),  and  Van  Goens  made  his 
triumphant  entry.  The  subjection  of  the  king  of  Porakad  and  the  cap- 
ture of  Kannanur  completed  the  conquest  of  the  Malabar  Coast.  In 
vain  the  Portuguese  protested  in  Europe  that  Cochin  and  Kannanur, 
having  been  taken  after  the  peace,  ought  to  be  restored.  After  pro- 
tracted negotiations  a  settlement  was  arrived  at  in  July,  1669.  The 
Dutch  promised  to  restore  the  two  places  on  payment  by  Portugal 
of  certain  debts  and  of  the  costs  incurred  by  the  conquest  and 
fortification  of  the  two  towns.  As  the  sums  in  question  far  ex- 
ceeded Portugal's  financial  capacity,  the  Company  remained  in 
possession. 


MALABAR  AND  CEYLON  51 

The  Malabar  Coast,  Kanara  and  Vengurla  were  organised  as  a 
separate  administrative  unit  under  a  commandeur  residing  at  Cochin. 
The  title  of  commandeur •,  which  was  also  borne  by  the  chief  officials  at 
Galle  and  Jaffnapatam,  who  were  subordinate  to  the  governor  of 
Ceylon,  was  not  a  very  high  one.  The  commandeur  ranked  after  the 
director.  In  fact,  the  Malabar  Coast  never  gave  the  Company  all 
that  had  been  expected.1  The  position  here  was  quite  different  from 
that  in  the  other  establishments  on  the  mainland  of  India,  where  the 
Company  traded  in  open  competition  with  European  and  native 
merchants.  What  had  tempted  it  to  conquer  the  Malabar  Coast  was 
the  prospect  of  a  monopoly  in  the  pepper  trade;  and  in  the  eyes  of 
those  who  guided  the  Company's  destinies,  only  a  monopoly  based 
on  contracts  at  low  prices  with  the  native  rulers  could  compensate 
the  high  cost  of  a  political  establishment.  The  first  task  of  the  com- 
mandeurs,  therefore,  was  to  make  the  pepper  monopoly  a  reality,  but 
this  task  proved  more  arduous  than  had  been  anticipated.  English, 
Portuguese,  and  Gujarat  competition  enabled  the  native  rulers  to 
avoid  dealing  only  on  Dutch  terms.  It  was  impossible  to  prevent 
smuggling  by  way  of  Calicut  and  of  the  mountains.  Towards  the  end 
of  the  Company's  rule,  however,  the  financial  position  was  more 
satisfactory  in  this  region.2 

The  Zamorin  had  preserved  his  independence,  and  relations  with 
him  were  frequently  strained.  In  1717  there  was  a  war,  after  which 
the  Company  attained  greater  influence  over  that  potentate.8  But 
Hyder  Ali,  who  conquered  the  Zamorin's  lands  half  a  century  later, 
was  a  far  more  dangerous  neighbour,  and  under  Tipu,  his  son,  the 
Company  was,  very  much  against  its  inclination,  drawn  into  the 
quarrels  between  that  ruler  and  the  English. 

In  Ceylon,  as  on  the  Malabar  Coast,  the  Dutch  had  merely  stepped 

into  the  position  of  the  Portuguese.  They  held  the  coastal  towns  and 

controlled  most  of  the  cinnamon  fields  and  of  the  regions  where 

elephants  were  found.  But  the  "emperor  of  Ceylon"  still  resided  at 

Kandi,  in  undisputed  possession  of  the  mountainous  interior,  and  the 

nobles  and  headmen  of  the  plains,  particularly  of  the  south,  never 

>  quite  renounced  their  allegiance  to  him.  The  ancient  organisation  of 

;  society,  under  disawas  and  mudaliyars,  was  retained,  and  Dutch  rule 

*  rested  on  a  native  officialdom,  open  to  many  influences  of  race  and 

religion  over  which  they  had  no  control.   It  was  the  policy  of  the 

Dutch  to  maintain  friendly  relations  with  the  court  of  Kandi,  because 

whenever  there  was  tension  the  king  could  stir  up  trouble  for  them 

among  the  Chalias,  the  cinnamon-peelers,  or  among  the  Sinhalese 

nobles  and  officials.  Not  only  Raja  Sinha,  who  lived  until  1687,  but 

1  Selections  from  the  Records  of  the  Madras  Government;  Dutch  Records,  No.  1 1  (1910),  Memo  r 
of  Commandeur  Caspar  de  Jong,  1 76 1 . 

1  Dutch  Records,  No.  2  (1908),  Memoir  written  in  the  year  1781  by  Adriaan  Moens,  p.  130. 

*  Dutch  Records,  No.  8  (1910),  Diary  kept  during  the  expedition  against  the  Zamorin,  4/A  Dec. 
1716-25^  April,  1717. 

4-2 


52  THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 

his  successors  as  well,  still  claimed  Colombo,  and  the  Dutch,  anxious 
above  all  to  be  left  in  peace  so  that  the  cinnamon  might  be  safely 
collected,  humoured  their  pretensions  by  paying  them  excessive 
honours  and  posing  as  their  humble  allies  bound  to  aid  them  against 
the  attacks  of  foreign  powers.  During  Raja  Sinha's  lifetime  this  did 
not  prevent  frequent  trouble,  the  king  sometimes  attacking  Dutch 
posts  and  extending  the  cinnamon  area  directly  under  his  control. 
Cinnamon-peeling  was  repeatedly  prevented  and  the  export  of  areca- 
nuts,  the  most  important  product  of  the  king's  own  dominions, 
prohibited.  Better  relations  prevailed  under  his  immediate  successors, 
although  the  Dutch  maintained  their  pretension  to  keep  the  trade 
with  the  outside  world  completely  in  their  own  hands,  and  in  1707, 
in  order  the  better  to  prevent  smuggling,  closed  all  ports  except 
Colombo,  Galle  and  Jaffnapatam.  By  placing  ships  at  the  disposal 
of  the  court  for  intercourse  with  Pegu,  whence  came  Buddhist  priests, 
and  with  Madura,  whence  the  kings  generally  obtained  their  wives, 
the  Company  strove  to  make  its  control  of  overseas  relations  less 
galling.  The  kings  of  the  Dravidian  dynasty,  however,  who  came 
to  the  throne  in  1 739  with  Hanguraketa,  and  under  whom  all  power 
at  court  was  in  the  hands  of  nayaks  from  the  mainland,  were  not  so 
easily  pacified.  At  the  same  time  the  Company's  governors  became 
more  and  more  impatient  of  the  humiliating  conditions  of  their 
position  in  Ceylon.  Particularly  they  disliked  the  annual  embassy 
to  the  king's  court,  in  order  to  secure  with  abject  genuflections  the 
right  to  collect  the  cinnamon-bark  in  the  area  under  the  king's 
sovereignty. 

But  the  relations  with  Kandi  did  not  constitute  the  only  difficulty 
with  which  Dutch  rule  had  to  contend.  Wide  regions  with  popula- 
tions of  varying  national  and  religious  traditions  and  complicated 
social  structures  were  brought  under  direct  Dutch  control.  At  the 
time  of  the  conquest,  material  misery,  after  Portuguese  misrule  and 
protracted  war,  was  the  most  pressing  problem.  The  Dutch  imported 
slaves  from  Southern  India  to  restore  irrigation  works  and  cultivate 
the  rice  fields.  They  encouraged  new  crops,  like  cotton  and  indigo. 
They  did  their  best  to  reduce  the  chaos  which  reigned  in  land  tenure. 
In  the  Sinhalese  country  Maetsuycker's  Batavia  Statutes,  a  codifi- 
cation of  the  Company's  laws,  were  introduced,  but  experienced 
Sinhalese  were  always  members  of  the  Landraads  in  order  to  see  that 
the  ancient  customs  of  the  country  were  observed.  In  the  north, 
Tamil  law,  codified  under  Dutch  auspices  in  1 707,  was  taken  as  the 
basis  for  legal  decisions  so  long  as  it  appeared  consonant  with  reason, 
all  deficiencies  being  supplied  from  Dutch  law.  The  administration 
ef  justice  left,  however,  a  great  deal  to  be  desired.  The  governors 
never  ceaised  complaining  about  the  scarcity  of  officials  with  sufficient 
legal  training  and  at  the  same  time  conversant  with  the  conditions 
of  the  country. 


RELIGIOUS  POLICY  53 

On  the  whole,  circumstances  were  not  such  as  to  favour  the  growth 
of  a  vigorous  public  spirit  among  the  officials.  The  society  in  which 
they  lived  at  Colombo  and  in  the  other  coastal  towns  remained 
permeated  with  Portuguese  influences.  The  same  was  true,  to  a  greater 
or  lesser  extent,  for  all  the  places  on  the  mainland  of  India  and  in  the 
Malay  Archipelago  from  which  the  Dutch  had  ousted  the  Portuguese, 
and  it  is  to  be  explained  by  two  characteristics  of  Portuguese  colonisa- 
tion, their  marriages  with  the  natives  and  their  successful  propagation 
of  Catholicism.  Under  Dutch  rule  ministers  of  the  Dutch  Reformed 
Church  at  once  took  charge  of  the  communities  of  Christians  formed 
by  the  Portuguese  ecclesiastics,  but  far  into  the  eighteenth  century 
complaints  were  frequent  that  the  attachment  of  native  Christians, 
then  numbered  in  hundreds  of  thousands,  to  Protestantism,  and  even 
to  Christianity,  was  purely  nominal.  The  later  historian  owes  a  very 
real  debt  to  some  of  the  Dutch  Reformed  ministers.  We  mention  only 
Philippus  Baldaeus,  whose  description  of  Ceylon  and  the  Malabar 
Coast  was  published  in  1672,  Francois  Valentyn,  whose  encyclo- 
paedic work  on  the  possessions  of  the  Company  appeared  from  1 724 
to  1726,  Abraham  Rogerius,  probably  the  best  scholar  of  them  all, 
who  was  at  Pulicat  from  1631  to  1641,  and  whose  Gentilismus  Reseratus 
was  described  by  A.  C.  Burnell  in  1898  as  "still,  perhaps,  the  most 
complete  account  of  South  Indian  Hinduism,  though  by  far  the 
earliest".  The  principal  author,  too,  of  the  famous  botanical  work 
Hortus  Malabaricus,  which  under  the  patronage  of  Van  Reede  tot 
Drakensteyn  appeared  in  1678  and  following  years,  was  a  minister  of 
the  church — Johannes  Casearius.  But  the  Dutch  predikants  had  little 
of  the  missionary  zeal  which  distinguished  the  Roman  Catholic  priests, 
and  they  made  far  less  impression  on  the  native  populations  in  whose 
midst  they  lived.  In  Ceylon,  seminaries  for  the  training  of  native 
missionaries  were  founded  in  1690,  but  until  the  governorship  of 
Baron  van  Imhoff,  1737-40,  when  only  one  at  Colombo  survived, 
they  led  a  precarious  existence.1  Afterwards  half-caste  Malabar  and 
Sinhalese  pupils  regularly  passed  from  the  Colombo  seminary  to 
Holland,  and,  after  a  course  of  theology  at  the  universities  of  Utrecht 
or  Leyden,  returned  to  their  native  land  fully  qualified  ministers  of 
the  Dutch  Reformed  Church.  Their  influence  was  never  very  deep 
however,  and  in  spite  of  all  repressive  measures — no  doubt  greatly 
relaxed  during  the  second  half  of  the  eighteenth  century — Catholicism 
continued  to  show  much  vitality.  Portuguese  remained  the  language 
of  the  slave  population  and  this,  added  to  the  deplorable  failure  to 
provide  good  education  for  them,  had  unfortunate  effects  on  the 
children  of  the  officials,  who  frequently  entered  the  Company's 
service  when  they  grew  up.  The  number  of  Dutch  free  burghers  who 
settled  in  Ceylon  was  never  very  great.  There  was,  in  short,  no  healthy 

1  Van  Troostenburg  de  Bruyn,  De  Hervormde  Kerk  in  Mdarl.  Oost-Indic  onder  de  0.  /. 
Compagme,  pp.  574  sqq. 


54  THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 

public  opinion  to  restrain  corruption  and  loose  living  among  the 
official  class,  and  the  efforts  of  several  able  and  energetic  governors 
to  improve  this  state  of  affairs  had  little  effect. 

Nor  could  the  Company's  general  policy  be  called  inspiring.  While 
conflicts  with  the  native  powers  were  anxiously  avoided  and  the  armed 
forces  in  the  island  lost  all  martial  spirit,  and  fortresses  were  allowed 
to  fall  into  ruin,  the  underpaid  officials  were  everywhere  urged  to 
increase  the  financial  profits.  It  was  particularly  private  trading  in 
areca-nuts  with  which  they  enriched  themselves  at  the  Company's 
expense,  but  the  abuses  which  a  reforming  governor  at  the  beginning 
of  the  eighteenth  century  (Hendrik  Becker)  discovered  and  tried  to 
stamp  out  were  of  many  other  kinds  besides. 

It  so  happened  that  not  long  after  Becker's  governorship  there  were 
two  governors  in  succession  against  whom  the  central  authorities 
were  constrained  to  take  extreme  measures.1  The  first  was  Pieter 
Vuyst,  a  man  born  in  the  East,  and  who  behaved  like  the  worst  type 
of  eastern  tyrant.  In  1 732  he  was  arrested  by  a  commissioner,  specially 
sent  over  from  Holland  by  the  Seventeen,  and,  having  been  found 
guilty  of  the  most  revolting  abuse  of  power,  he  was  executed  at 
Batavia.  The  commissioner,  who  became  governor  in  his  stead,  Pieter 
Versluys,  reduced  the  people  to  despair  by  speculating  in  rice.  Again 
the  home  authorities  interfered.  A  new  governor  was  sent  out,  who 
had  Versluys  arrested  and  sent  to  Batavia,  where  after  long  delays 
he  escaped  with  a  fine.  The  misconduct  of  these  men  shook  Dutch 
authority  in  the  island.  At  the  same  time  the  cinnamon-peelers 
complained  of  undue  exactions  imposed  on  them,  while  agrarian 
unrest  was  rife  in  the  Sinhalese  districts.  So  in  1736  a  very  serious 
rebellion  broke  out  in  the  cinnamon  region,  soon  spreading  over  the 
whole  south  and  south-west  of  the  island,  and  secretly  encouraged  by 
the  king  of  Kandi.  The  Dutch  suffered  some  serious  reverses  and  the 
situation  might  have  taken  a  disastrous  turn,  had  not  in  1737  a 
vigorous  governor  appeared  on  the  scene,  Baron  van  Imhoff,  who 
soon  restored  order. 

The  events  of  1736  were  a  foretaste  of  the  much  more  serious  war 
that  broke  out  in  1760,  under  the  governorship  of  Jan  Schreuder. 
It  began  with  a  rebellion  in  the  district  of  Colombo,  in  which  the 
Chalias,  supported  by* the  maharaja,  soon  joined.  In  1761,  the 
maharaja,  who  was  especially  aggrieved  by  the  refusal  of  the  Dutch 
to  allow  him  freedom  of  trade  from  his  last  remaining  ports  of  Chilaw 
and  Puttalam,  openly  took  the  part  of  the  rebels,  and  the  deterioration 
of  the  Company's  military  forces  soon  became  evident.  The  forts  of 
Matara,  Kalutara  and  Hanwella  were  captured  by  the  Sinhalese, 
and  although  they  could  not  long  maintain  their  position  in  the  plains, 
the  Dutch  were  very  greatly  alarmed.  The  governor-general  at 
Batavia  tried  to  pacify  the  king  by  sending  him  a  letter  couched  in 

1  Van  Kampen,  Gesckiedems  der  Ncderlanders  buiten  Europa  (1832),  m,  19. 


TREATY  WITH  KANDI  55 

flattering  terms  and  transmitted  with  the  greatest  ceremony.  Fear 
of  the  English,  from  whom  the  Dutch  had  just  suffered  a  severe 
humiliation  on  the  Hugli  and  who  were  known  to  be  in  communi- 
cation with  the  king,  no  doubt  contributed  to  inspire  this  policy  .When 
it  failed,  nothing  remained  but  to  make  a  military  effort,  and  the 
suspicion  of  English  intentions  now  served  to  drive  home  the  necessity 
of  carrying  it  through  to  a  definite  conclusion.  A  new  governor,  Van 
Eck,  repeatedly  attempted  to  invade  the  mountain  kingdom.  Troops 
were  collected  in  Malabar,  Coromandel  and  Java.  In  1765,  Van  Eck 
succeeded  in  penetrating  to  the  capital,  which  was  plundered  dis- 
gracefully. Van  Eck  died  soon  afterwards.  The  garrison  of  1800  men 
left  behind  at  Kandi  could  not  maintain  itself  owing  to  lack  of 
provisions.  Its  withdrawal  became  a  disaster.  In  spite  of  this,  such 
was  the  distress  of  the  Sinhalese  that,  while  the  new  governor,  Iman 
Willem  Falck,  a  young  man  of  great  ability,  was  making  vigorous 
preparations  for  a  new  invasion,  the  king  opened  negotiations.  On 
14  February,  1766,  a  treaty  was  signed  which  restored  peace  and 
placed  the  relations  between  the  Dutch  and  the  king  on  a  more 
satisfactory  basis  than  that  afforded  by  the  treaties  of  1638  and  1640. 
The  Dutch  Company's  absolute  sovereignty  over  the  regions  which 
they  had  held  before  the  war  was  recognised.  In  addition,  the 
sovereignty  over  a  strip  of  land  four  miles  in  width  from  the  sea  coast 
round  the  whole  of  the  island  was  expressly  ceded  to  the  Dutch,  who 
had  occupied  Chilaw  and  Puttalam  early  in  the  war.  For  the  rest 
the  king's  sovereignty  was  recognised,  but  he  lost  the  power  to  permit 
or  forbid  the  Company's  trading  in  such  produce  of  his  dominions  as 
experience  had  shown  to  be  indispensable  or  profitable.  The  degrading 
ceremonies  attending  the  annual  embassy  to  the  court  were  abolished. 
Finally,  while  the  Company  pledged  itself  to  protect  his  dominions 
from  all  external  aggression,  he  promised  not  to  enter  into  any  treaty 
with  any  European  or  Indian  power,  and  to  deliver  up  all  Europeans 
coming  within  his  territory. 

The  Dutch  could  congratulate  themselves  that  the  treaty  of  1 766 
had  consolidated  their  position  in  Ceylon.  Falck,  moreover,  proved 
one  of  the  best  governors  the  island  had  ever  known.  Much  was  done 
during  his  term  of  office  to  improve  the  administration  and  to  in- 
crease the  economic  prosperity  of  the  people.  But  meanwhile  the  rise 
of  English  power  constituted  a  menace  against  which  nothing  availed. 
In  1781,  the  king  of  Kandi  appeared  to  be  unwilling  to  support  the 
English  in  their  enterprise  against  Dutch  rule  on  the  island.  In  1796, 
his  aloofness  no  longer  mattered :  Dutch  power,  as  we  shall  see,  col- 
lapsed at  the  first  touch. 

In  the  seventeenth  century,  the  Dutch  Company's  position  in 
India  rested  on  sea-power.  While  the  English  made  of  Surat,  where 
they  were  dependent  on  friendly  relations  with  the  Moghul,  the  centre  of 
their  Indian  system  and  obtained  a  footing  at  Goa  itself  by  an  amicable 


56  THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 

arrangement  with  the  Portuguese,  the  Dutch  broke  down  the  Portu- 
guese monopoly  by  the  open  and  persistent  use  of  force,  capturing 
their  ships  and  supplanting  them  as  the  actual  rulers  of  one  strong- 
hold after  another.  Even  in  their  relations  with  the  Moghul  they 
occasionally  brought  their  naval  superiority  into  play.  So  conscious 
were  they  of  their  naval  supremacy  that  in  1652  the  outbreak  of  war 
with  both  England  and  Portugal  was  welcomed  at  Batavia  as  likely 
to  turn  to  the  Company's  advantage,1  The  advantage,  as  against 
England  at  any  rate,  was  confined  to  the  occasional  capture  of  prizes. 
The  factories  of  the  English  Company  were  protected  by  the  Moghul's 
peace.  In  the  third  Anglo-Dutch  War  (1672-4)  communications 
between  Surat  and  the  new  English  settlement  of  Bombay  were 
constantly  threatened,  and  three  home-bound  English  ships  were 
captured  in  the  Bay  of  Bengal.  France  was  England's  ally  in  that 
war,  and  in  1671  Louis  XIV  had  already  dispatched  to  India  a  fleet 
of  twelve  sail  under  the  command  of  Admiral  de  la  Haye.  Even 
before  war  had  been  declared  in  Europe,  the  French  occupied  some 
abandoned  forts  in  the  bay  of  Trinkomali.  Van  Goens,  who  was  then 
governor  of  Ceylon,  without  losing  time,  collected  such  ships  as  were 
available  and  attacked  the  intruders.  Soon  reinforcements  arrived 
from  Batavia,  and  de  la  Haye  was  forced  to  leave  Ceylon  with  the  loss 
of  several  of  his  ships.2  With  the  remainder  he  sailed  for  St  Thom6 
and  captured  that  town.  Van  Goens  was  soon  on  the  spot  and  block- 
aded the  town  from  the  sea  side,  while  the  king  of  Golconda,  its 
rightful  sovereign,  invested  it  by  land.  The  English  and  the  French 
were  too  jealous  of  each  other  to  co-operate,  and  an  English  fleet 
of  ten  sail  allowed  itself  to  be  beaten  separately  off  Petapoli.8  About 
a  year  afterwards,  6  September,  1674,  de  la  Haye  capitulated.  He 
had  lost  all  his  ships,  and  the  900  men  left  to  him  out  of  the  2000  with 
whom  he  had  started,  were  transported  to  Europe  in  Dutch  vessels. 
While  the  naval  power  of  the  Dutch  was  the  despair  of  their  rivals, 
they  themselves  often  were  inclined  to  envy  the  English,  who  were 
able  to  carry  on  their  trade  without  incurring  the  vast  expenses  for 
the  upkeep  of  a  navy  and  of  fortresses  and  garrisons  which  burdened 
the  budget  of  the  Dutch  Company.  The  recollection  that  it  was  the 
Dutch  attacks  on  the  Spanish-Portuguese  monopoly  which  had  opened 
the  Indian  trade  to  their  rivals  as  well  as  to  themselves  added  bitter- 
ness to  these  feelings.  In  fact,  the  settlements  where  they  had  not 
taken  up  the  responsibilities  of  sovereignty  were  by  far  the  most 
profitable  in  the  eyes  of  the  Company,  which  never  learnt  to  separate 
its  purely  trading  accounts  from  its  political  budgets.  In  the  years 
1683-1757,  therefore,  the  only  period  for  which  these  figures  are 

1  Aalbcrs,  Rijklofvan  Goens,  p.  81. 

*  De  Jonge,  Geschiedenis  van  net  Nederlandsch  zeewezen,  n,  768. 

•  Shafaat  Ahmed  Khan,  Sources  for  the  History  of  British  India  in  the  Seventeenth  Century, 
pp.  245-6. 


FINANCE  AND  ORGANISATION  57 

available,1  Surat,  Bengal  and  Coromandel  figure  in  the  Company's 
books  with  annual  profits  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  guilders  each, 
although  Bengal,  after  1720,  very  frequently  shows  a  loss.  Ceylon 
and  Malabar  on  the  other  hand  constantly  showed  heavy  losses, 
although  we  know  from  other  sources  that  Malabar  ceased  to  be 
"a  bad  post"  towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.2  In  these 
figures  profit  and  loss  made  by  commercial  transactions  are  lumped 
together  with  the  yield  of  taxation  and  tributes  and  the  expenses  of 
administration,  and  no  account  is  taken  of  profits  made  in  Holland 
by  the  sale  of  merchandise. 

All  through  the  eighteenth  century  the  Company's  commitments 
as  a  sovereign  power  increased:  garrisons  became  more  numerous, 
the  expenses  of  administration  grew.  As  a  result,  although  its  trade 
continued  to  prosper,  the  Company's  finances  became  more  and  more 
involved.  Something  like  50  per  cent,  profit  was  regularly  made  on 
the  Company's  turnover  even  as  late  as  the  seventies  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  very  largely  owing  to  the  enormously  profitable  trade  of 
Surat,  Bengal  and  Ceylon.3  At  the  same  time  the  general  balance- 
sheet  showed  a  steady  decline.  In  1700  there  were  still  21,000,000 
guilders  on  the  credit  side;  in  1724  the  zero  point  was  passed,  and 
the  deficit  grew  uninterruptedly  until  in  the  eighties  of  the  eighteenth 
century  it  surpassed  100,000,000  guilders.4 

Obviously  the  Company's  system  suffered  from  grave  defects. 
Great  as  it  had  been  as  an  empire-builder,  able  as  it  still  was  as  a 
merchant,  it  failed  as  a  colonial  ruler.  Its  strict  adherence,  against  the 
advice  of  all  its  ablest  governors-general,  to  the  policy  of  commercial 
monopoly  was  perhaps  its  gravest  mistake.  The  settlement  of  "free 
burghers,"  which  might  have  brought  in  its  train  a  much  more  in- 
tensive economic  development  of  countries  like  the  Malay  Archipelago 
and  Ceylon,  was  consistently  discouraged  by  the  directors  at  home. 
Another  defect,  and  one  which  more  nearly  concerns  the  Company's 
possessions  in  India,  was  the  severe  subordination  of  the  whole  of  its 
system  to  the  administrative  and  commercial  centre  at  Batavia. 
Ceylon  was  the  only  place  whence  direct  communications  with 
Holland  were  more  or  less  regularly  conducted,  and  its  governors 
were  allowed  to  correspond  with  the  Seventeen,  while  the  chiefs  of 
all  other  settlements  could  only  correspond  with  the  governor-general 
and  his  council.  One  unfortunate  result  of  the  distance  of  the  central 
authority  was  the  prevalence  of  corruption.  No  posts  in  the  Company's 
employ  were  considered  so  lucrative  as  those  in  what  were  called 
"the  Western  Quarters".6 

1  G.  C.  Klerk  de  Reus,  Geschichilicher  Ueberblick,  Bcilage  DC. 
1  See  above,  p.  36,  note  a. 

*  Klerk  de  Reus,  Geschichtlicher  Ueberblick,  p.  193. 
4  Klerk  de  Reus,  op.  cit.  Beilage  vra. 

*  This  term  in  the  early  days  was  applied  more  particularly  to  Surat  and  the  Persian  and 
Arabian  factories. 


58  THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 

The  commonest  form  of  peculation  was  private  trading.  While 
the  Company  jealously  suppressed  the  rise  of  a  class  of  independent 
traders  within  its  sphere  of  influence,  it  was  powerless  to  prevent 
its  own  servants  from  infringing  its  monopoly  to  their  own  private 
advantage.  As  early  as  1609  the  directors  bitterly  complained  of  the 
prevalence  of  the  abuse,  but  while  they  continued  grievously  to  under- 
pay their  employees,  the  constantly  reiterated  edicts  prohibiting  the 
practice,  threatening  penalties,  prescribing  oaths,  remained  entirely 
without  effect.  In  1626,  the  directors  resolved1  that  all  the  establish- 
ments in  the  East  were  to  be  visited  every  year  by  two  inspectors,  to 
one  of  whom  "the  Western  Quarters"  were  allotted;  they  were  to 
report  both  to  Batavia  and  to  the  Seventeen  themselves.  In  spite  of 
another  resolution  to  the  same  effect  in  1632,  nothing  came  of  this 
annual  inspection,  and  even  requests,  made  by  the  directors  in  1650* 
and  repeated  afterwards,  that  an  inspection  should  be  held  every 
two  years  had  no  result.  The  Batavia  government  excused  themselves 
by  the  difficulty  of  finding  suitable  men  for  so  arduous  a  task,  but  no 
doubt  they  were  themselves  lukewarm  in  the  cause  of  integrity. 
Inspections  were  actually  ordered  only  when  there  were  special 
reasons  to  suspect  mismanagement,  but  even  then  an  energetic  and 
honest  man  like  Van  Goens,  who  inspected  Surat  in  1654,  had  to 
confess3  that  it  was  difficult  to  bring  the  wrong-doers  to  book,  as  they 
knew  well  how  to  escape  detection.  In  1684  the  Seventeen,  de- 
spairing of  ever  getting  the  Batavia  government  to  act  with  requisite 
firmness,  themselves  appointed  a  commissioner-general  to  inspect  the 
Western  Quarters,  Hendrik  Adriaan  van  Reede  tot  Drakensteyn, 
formerly  commandeur  of  Malabar,  whom  we  have  met  on  the  Coro- 
mandel  Coast.  For  seven  years  Van  Reede  laboured  at  his  herculean 
task;  when  he  died  in  1691,  it  was  still  far  from  being  completed,  and 
the  results  of  the  inspections  actually  carried  out  soon  vanished.  From 
then  onwards  no  serious  attempts  were  made  to  put  down  the  evil, 
and  it  grew  steadily.  So  much  had  it  become  an  accepted  thing  that 
directors  themselves  began  to  traffic  in  appointments,  and  about  1 720 
an  Amsterdam  burgomaster  accepted  3500  guilders  for  conferring  on 
a  candidate  the  post  of  under-merchant,  the  official  salary  for  which 
was  only  480  guilders  a  year.4 

As  in  course  of  time  the  Company,  from  being  a  purely  trading 
body,  became  the  sovereign  of  many  Eastern  lands,  its  servants  could 
enrich  themselves  in  other  ways  than  by  infringing  its  monopoly  or 
embezzling  its  money.  Oppressions  and  exactions  at  the  expense  of 
the  subject  populations  were  no  less  lucrative  and  no  less  common. 
We  have  seen  in  the  cases  of  Vuyst  and  Versluys  that  the  supreme 
authorities  were  not  prepared  to  countenance  the  worst  excesses. 

1  J.  A.  van  der  Chijs,  Nederlandsch-Indisch  Plakkaatbock,  i,  188. 

*  Aalbers,  Rijklofvan  Goens ,  p.  30.  *  Op.  cit.  p,  107. 


Golenbrander,  Kolonialt  Geschudcnis,  u,  219 


ATTEMPTED  REFORM  59 

Vuyst's  judicial  murders  even  caused  them  to  introduce  a  general 
reform.  Governors  and  directors  had  until  then  always  presided  over 
the  Council  of  Justice  in  their  governments.  In  1738  this  function 
was  transferred  to  the  second.  Nor  are  these  causes  the  only  ones  to 
show  that  the  growth  of  humanitarian  ideas  during  the  eighteenth 
century  occasionally  inspired  the  authorities  at  Batavia  or  at  home  to 
energetic  interference  on  behalf  of  the  Company's  wronged  native 
subjects.  In  1765,  for  instance,  the  Seventeen  ordered  action  to  be 
taken  against  the  governor  of  Coromandel,  Christiaan  van  Teylingen, 
on  the  strength  of  serious  charges  which  a  minister  of  the  king  of 
Tanjore,  Paw  Idde  Naiker,  had  succeeded  in  bringing  directly  to 
their  knowledge.1 

If  the  directors  occasionally  exerted  themselves  to  put  down  some 
crying  abuse;  if  now  and  again  an  able  and  energetic  man  rose  to 
some  high  executive  post  in  the  Indies;  no  radical  reform  of  the 
Company's  defective  system  was  ever  attempted.  Van  Imhoff,  whom 
we  have  met  as  governor  of  Ceylon,  became  governor-general  in  1 743, 
and  high  expectations  were  founded  on  him,  which  were  hardly 
realised.  He  attempted,  among  other  things,  to  put  down  the  illicit 
trade  in  Bengal  opium  by  allowing  officials  to  form  an  "Opium 
Society"  among  themselves,  thus  legalising  private  trade  in  this  one 
instance.  When,  however,  another  generation  of  officials  had  arisen 
who  did  not  own  any  shares  in  the  "Society",  matters  were  as  bad 
as  ever.  In  1 747,  again,  the  Orangist  restoration  at  home  seemed  to 
offer  better  prospects,  but  the  new  stadtholder,  William  IV,  for  whom 
in  1748,  under  the  direct  pressure  of  public  opinion,  the  office  of 
director-general  of  the  Company  was  created,  did  not  effect  any 
essential  or  permanent  changes. 

At  the  same  time  circumstances  had  arisen  which  made  the  need 
for  reform  more  urgent.  Towards  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
the  English  Company,  realising  the  insecurity  of  its  position  in  the 
troubled  Moghul  Empire,  had  copied  from  "the  wise  Dutch"  their 
policy  of  the  strong  arm.  The  first  attempts  ended  in  failure,  but,  as 
the  eighteenth  century  proceeded,  just  when  the  Dutch  had  allowed 
their  navy  hopelessly  to  decay,  and  in  their  relations  with  native 
rulers  trusted  to  flattery  and  presents,  it  became  clearer  that  the 
position  of  the  European  nations  in  India  had  no  solid  basis  except 
in  naval  and  military  power.  The  rise  of  French  influence  in  the 
southern  part  of  the  peninsula  caused  the  Dutch  many  alarms.  Par- 
ticularly obnoxious  was  Dupleix's  capture  of  Masulipatam  in  1 750. 
In  the  War  of  the  Austrian  Succession,  the  Dutch  Republic,  although 
technically  neutral,  had  in  fact  sided  with  England.  In  the  Seven 
Years'  War,  on  the  other  hand,  its  neutrality  was  real,  with,  if  any- 

1  A.  K.  A.  Gysberti  Hodenpyl,  De  Gouverneurs  van  Koromandel:  Christiaan  van 
Teylingen  (1761-65)  en  Pieter  Haksteen  (1765-71),  Bijdragen  voor  Vaderlandsche  Gc- 
sckudeids,  v,  x  (1993)9  136  sqq. 


6o  THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 

thing,  a  bias  against  England.  Clive's  successes  in  Bengal  were  viewed 
by  the  authorities  at  Batavia  with  deep  suspicion.  It  was  felt  that  the 
power  to  which  the  English,  through  their  ally  and  tool  Mir  Ja'far, 
had  now  attained,  threatened  the  prosperity,  if  not  the  existence,  of 
establishments  which  were  looked  upon  as  constituting  one  of  the 
Dutch  Company's  main  supports.  Immediately  after  Plassey,  Dutch 
trade  on  the  Hugli  was  reported  to  be  suffering,  and  exactions  on  the  part 
of  the  Indian  authorities  became  more  unbearable.  So  the  governor- 
general  and  his  council  resolved  to  make  an  attempt  to  retrieve  the 
position.1  It  only  served  to  make  it  apparent  to  all  the  world  how 
far  the  Dutch  Company  had  left  the  days  of  Coen  and  of  Van  Goens 
behind  it.  The  ships  sent  up  the  Hugli  were  captured,  the  troops  cut 
to  pieces.  Nothing  remained  but  to  make  a  speedy  submission,  and 
the  Dutch  retained  their  factories,  but  had  to  promise  not  to  garrison 
them  with  more  than  a  small  number  of  troops.  They  were  now  worse 
off  than  before,  but  the  next  crisis,  in  1781,  was  to  leave  them  even 
more  helpless. 

In  the  American  War  the  Dutch  Republic,  tossed  by  violent  party 
struggles,  recklessly  provoked  England,  and  when  England,  at  the 
end  of  1 780  declared  war,  the  republic  proved  entirely  incapable  of 
defending  its  own  interests.  Its  trade  came  to  a  dead  stop.  In  the 
colonial  world,  the  English  took  Negapatam,  which  in  spite  of  its 
large  garrison  offered  little  resistance.  Trinkomali  was  lost,  and  re- 
gained only  by  the  efforts  of  the  French.  But  at  the  peace  congress 
Holland  could  not  be  saved  from  all  loss  by  its  ally.  Negapatam  had 
to  be  given  up,  and  free  access  to  the  waters  of  the  Archipelago  had 
to  be  granted  to  English  commerce. 

The  war,  moreover,  had  revealed  the  Company's  financial  distress. 
The  state  had  had  to  assist  it  when  it  proved  unable  to  raise  the  money 
needed  for  its  own  armaments  and  for  the  reimbursement  of  the 
French.  In  1783  only  a  public  guarantee  of  the  Company's  shares 
enabled  it  to  carry  on.  Everybody  realised  that  the  state  must  take 
in  hand  the  reform  of  a  body  which  had  the  care  of  such  important 
national  interests.  Unfortunately,  the  state  was  too  much  shaken  by 
internal  dissensions  to  be  capable  of  energetic  action.  When  in  1787 
the  Orangist  regime  was  restored  by  England  and  Prussia,  still  very 
little  was  done.  In  1793  the  republic  was  involved  in  the  Revolu- 
tionary War,  and  only  in  1795,  when  the  Batavian  Republic  was 
established  under  French  influence,  did  the  state  formally  take  over  the 
administration  of  the  Company's  possessions.  But  at  the  same  time 
these  were  exposed  to  the  attacks  of  England,  with  whom  the  Batavian 
Republic  found  itself  automatically  at  war. 

1  G.  G.  Klerk  de  Reus,  "De  cxpeditie  naar  Bcngale  in  1759",  DC  Indischt  Gids,  1889 
and  1890. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  FRENCH  FACTORIES  IN  INDIA 

JL  HE  French  appeared  in  India  long  before  the  time  of  Louis  XIV. 
In  the  second  quarter  of  the  sixteenth  century,  about  thirty  years  after 
the  Portuguese  had  reached  the  Malabar  Coast  by  way  of  the  Cape, 
in  July,  1527,  a  Norman  ship  belonging  to  the  Rouen  merchants 
appeared,  according  to  the  Portuguese  JoSo  de  Barros,  at  Diu.  In  the 
next  year  the  Marie  de  Bon  Stcours,  also  called  the  Grand  Anglais,  was 
seized  by  the  Portuguese,  at  the  very  time  when  one  of  Jean  Ange's 
most  famous  captains  was  proposing  to  that  famous  merchant  to  sail 
to  Sumatra  and  even  to  the  Moluccas.  In  1530  the  Sacre  and  the 
Pensh  actually  reached  the  west  coast  of  Sumatra;  but  they  did  so 
without  touching  at  any  intermediate  point  on  the  shores  of  Asia; 
and  contemporary  documents  do  not  indicate  the  arrival  of  any  other 
French  ships  in  Indian  harbours  in  the  later  years  of  the  sixteenth 
century  or  the  earlier  ones  of  the  seventeenth. 

However,  many  facts  show  at  the  beginning  of  the  latter  a  desire 
to  open  maritime  and  commercial  relations  with  India.  In  1601  we 
have  the  equipment  by  a  company  of  St  Malo  merchants,  de  Laval 
and  de  Vitre,  of  the  two  ships,  the  Croissant  and  the  Corbin,  the  voyages 
of  which  have  been  related  by  Francois  Pyrard  de  Laval  as  far  as  the 
Maldives,  and  by  Francois  Martin  de  Vitre  to  Sumatra  by  way  of 
Ceylon  and  the  Nicobars;  in  1604-9  came  the  attempts  of  Henry  IV 
to  set  up  a  French  East  India  Company,  like  those  just  established  in 
the  Netherlands  and  England;  then  in  1616  a  fleet  sailed  from  St 
Malo  for  the  Moluccas,  while  in  that  year  and  1619  the  two  so-called 
"fleets  of  Montmorency"  sailed  from  Honfleur  for  Malaya  and  Japan. 
But  the  scanty  success  of  these  enterprises,  and  the  violence  of  the 
Dutch,  eager  to  keep  for  themselves  the  monopoly  of  that  profitable 
trade  with  the  Far  East,  soon  checked  these  bold  attempts  of  the 
French  sailors.  In  1625  Isaac  de  Razilly  declared  that  "as  regards 
Asia  and  the  East  Indies  there  is  no  hope  of  planting  colonies,  for  the 
way  is  too  long,  and  the  Spaniards  and  Dutch  are  too  strong  to  suffer 
it".1  A  little  later  Richelieu  observes  in  his  Testament  Politique  that 
"the  temper  of  the  French  being  so  hasty  as  to  wish  the  accomplish- 
ment of  their  desires  in  the  moment  of  their  conception,  long  voyages 
are  not  proper  for  them";  but  nevertheless  he  admits  that  "the  trade 
that  could  be  done  with  the  East  Indies  and  Persia. .  .ought  not  to 
be  neglected".8 

1  Le*on  Deschamps,  "Un  Colonisateur  au  temps  de  Richelieu",  Rev.  de  Gfographie,  xnc, 
460,  December,  1886. 
1  Ed.  Amsterdam,  1708,  pp.  154-5- 


62  THE  FRENCH  FACTORIES  IN  INDIA  . 

However,  some  captains,  especially  the  Normans,  attempted, 
though  their  accomplishment  is  on  many  points  obscure,  if  not  to 
reach  India  itself,  at  least  to  make  it  easier  of  attainment  by  securing 
near  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  a  place  of  refreshment,  whence  they 
could  make  their  way  to  Arabia,  Persia,  the  Deccan  ports,  Bengal, 
or  the  Malayan  Islands.  Such  were  Gilles  de  Rezimont  and  Rigault, 
the  latter  of  whom  obtained  in  1642  from  Richelieu  for  himself  and 
his  associates  the  privilege  of  sailing  to  Madagascar  and  the  neigh- 
bouring islands,  to  establish  colonies  and  trade  there.1  Indeed  the 
French  almost  at  once  established  themselves  on  the  south-east  coast 
of  Madagascar,  setting  up  their  first  post  at  Fort  Dauphin,  easily 
reached  by  ships  coming  from  or  going  to  India.  Moreover,  some  of 
their  ships  or  smaller  vessels  between  1650  and  1660  proceeded  to  the 
Arabian  or  Indian  coasts.  Thus  was  confirmed  the  opinion  expressed 
some  years  earlier  by  the  navigator,  Augustin  de  Beaulieu,  who  had 
commanded  one  of  the  Montmorency  fleets,  in  a  memoir  of  1631-2, 
still  unpublished : 

I  find  the  said  island  [Madagascar]  proper,  once  we  are  established  there,  for 
adventures  to  any  p>lace  whatever  in  the  East  Indies. .  .for  from  the  said  place  at 

the  due  season  Persia  can  be  reached where  a  very  useful  and  important  trade 

can  be  established ....  And  when  the  said  trade  with  Persia  is  inconvenient,  that 
with  the  countries  of  the  Great  Moghul,  Ceylon,  Masulipatam,  Bengal,  Pegu, 
Kedda,  Achin,  Tiku  and  Bantam,  can  easily  be  followed. 

By  way  of  Persia,  which  Beaulieu  recognises  as  a  valuable  market, 
it  was  easy  to  reach  India.  While  French  sailors  were  exploring  the 
sea-route  by  the  Cape,  various  travellers  and  merchants  were  ex- 
ploring the  much  shorter  land-route,  which  leads  from  the  shores  of 
the  Levant  through  Asia  Minor  right  on  to  the  valleys  of  the  Indus 
and  the  Ganges.  After  the  Italian,  Pietro  della  Valle  and  the  English- 
man, Thomas  Herbert  (only  to  mention  the  most  recent)  several 
Frenchmen  tried  this  way,  such  as  Capuchin  missionaries,  including 
Father  Raphael  du  Mans  in  1643,  inspired  by  the  ideas  of  Father 
Joseph  du  Tremblay  (the  famous  eminence  Grise)y  and  before  him  the 
well-known  traveller  Tavernier  who  thus  began  in  1632-3  his  nu- 
merous journeys  in  the  East,  and  who  on  his  return  became  controller 
of  the  household  to  theOuke  of  Orleans,  brother  of  Louis  XIII.  Soon 
afterwards  (1642-8)  he  returned  eastwards,  and  reached  India  by 
way  of  Ispahan,  followed  speedily  by  the  Angevin  noble  La  Boullaye 
le  Gouz,  whose  travels  were  so  popular  when  they  were  published  in 
1653.  Thus  was  heightened  the  eager  desire  felt  in  France  on  the  eve 
and  at  the  beginning  of  the  personal  reign  of  Louis  XJV  to  share  with 
Dutch  and  English  in  bringing  to  Europe  the  precious  goods  of  India. 
Neither  Fouquet,  superintendent  of  finances,  whose  father  had  been 

1  Flacourt,  Relation  de  la  Grande  fie  Madagascar,  cd.  1658,  p.  193.  Gf.  "Les  Documents 
in£dits  relatifs  a  la  Constitution  dc  la  Compagnie  dcs  Indcs  dc  1648",  Bull,  du  comtt  de 
Madagascar,  October,  1898,  pp.  481-503. 


COLBERTS  COMPANY  63 

concerned  in  all  the  maritime  enterprises  of  Richelieu,  nor  Colbert, 
who  had  been  employed  in  the  private  business  of  Mazarin  before 
coming  to  play  his  great  part  under  Louis  XIV,  were  unaware  of 
these  travels,  and  sometimes  even  received  direct  reports.  Thus  the 
latter  became  the  interpreter  of  the  unanimous  desire  of  the  merchants 
and  mariners  of  the  kingdom,  as  well  as  of  all  those  who  desired  its 
economic  development,  when  he  proposed  to  his  master  the  creation 
of  "a  French  company  for  the  trade  of  the  East  Indies".1 

His  personal  convictions  even  more  than  public  opinion  had  led 
Colbert  to  regard  the  establishment  of  a  company  of  this  kind  as 
likely  to  render  the  greatest  services  to  and  powerfully  to  aid  the 
development  of  French  maritime  trade,  on  condition  that  it  should  be 
strong  in  a  very  different  way  from  the  numerous  associations  of  a  like 
nature  that  had  formerly  sprung  up  throughout  the  kingdom.  Those 
had  hardly  been  more  than  municipal,  such  as  the  Company  of 
St  Malo,  the  de  Laval  and  de  Vitr6  Company,  or  the  coral  companies 
of  Marseilles;  or  provincial,  such  as  the  Company  de  Morbihan, 
and  had  never  included  more  than  a  small  number  of  shareholders. 
Their  financial  resources  had  always  been  limited,  and  their  influence 
and  prestige  alike  slight.  No  attempt  had  been  yet  made  to  create  a 
national  association,  uniting  the  whole  forces  of  the  country.  But  that 
was  just  what  Colbert  desired  the  new  Compagnie  des  Indes  Orientales 
to  do.  He  laboured  therefore  in  every  way  before  constituting  it  to 
educate  public  opinion,  and,  when  it  had  been  formed,  to  secure  it 
full  success.  Hence  the  publication  in  April,  1664,  of  a  Discourse  of 
a  faithful  subject  of  the  King  touching  the  establishment  of  a  French  company 
for  the  East  India  trade  addressed  to  all  Frenchmen,  prepared  by  Fran£ois 
Charpentier,  the  Academician,  and  printed  at  the  king's  expense; 
hence  a  little  later  the  formation  of  a  company  to  which  Louis  XIV 
not  only  gave  his  full  approval,  but  also  advanced  3,000,000  livres 
free  of  interest,  from  which  were  to  be  deducted  all  losses  that  the 
company  might  incur  for  the  first  ten  years;  moreover  he  made  the 
members  of  the  royal  family  subscribe,  and  displayed  his  interest 
strongly  enough  to  make  the  courtiers  follow  his  example.  Hence 
also  Colbert's  own  subscription  to  the  new  Compagnie  des  Indes  Orientales ', 
and  the  campaign  which  he  conducted  throughout  the  country  to 
induce  the  officials  and  merchants  of  the  chief  towns  to  prove  their 
real  interest  in  a  project  thus  royally  patronised. 

By  letters-patent  in  the  form  of  an  edict  the  Compagnie  was  placed 
under  the  management  of  a  general  chamber  of  twenty-one  directors 
(twelve  for  the  capital  and  nine  for  the  provinces)  and  received  for 
a  term  of  fifty  years  an  exclusive  privilege  of  trade  from  the  Cape  of 
Good  Hope  to  India  and  the  South  Seas.  It  also  received  a  perpetual 
grant  of  Madagascar  and  the  neighbouring  islands,  on  condition  of 
promoting  Christianity  there,  a  perpetual  grant  with  all  rights  of 

1  Souches  de  Rennefort,  Histoire  des  Indes  Orientales,  p.  2. 


64  THE  FRENCH  FACTORIES  IN  INDIA 

seigneurie  of  all  lands  and  places  conquered  from  its  enemies,  and 
ownership  of  all  mines  and  slaves  which  it  might  take.  The  king  was 
to  supply  the  Company  at  cost  price  with  all  the  salt  required  for  its 
fleets,  to  pay  it  a  bounty  of  fifty  livres  on  every  ton  of  goods  exported 
from  France  and  seventy-five  on  every  ton  imported  into  the  country, 
to  allow  the  Company  to  establish  a  free  port  on  the  French  coast, 
with  a  reduction  of  duties  on  the  articles  of  trade  with  France,  and 
a  special  exemption  of  duties  on  all  stores  needed  for  the  building  of 
ships.  The  General  Chamber,  which  was  to  be  renewed  one-third 
every  year  and  to  prepare  accounts  every  six  months,  was  entrusted 
with  the  duty  of  appointing  governors  of  its  possessions,  and  the 
king  limited  himself  to  giving  them  their  formal  investiture.  The 
chamber  was  also  to  give  account  of  its  management  every  year 
to  an  assembly  of  shareholders  each  possessing  at  least  six  shares. 
The  capital  of  the  Company  was  divided  into  15,000  shares  of  1000 
livres  each. 

The  privileges  thus  granted  were  very  considerable.  But  in  order 
to  form  a  complete  idea  of  them  it  is  necessary  also  to  take  account  of 
certain  other  privileges,  also  of  value,  enumerated  in  the  forty-eight 
articles  of  the  charter  establishing  the  Company  as  an  official  body 
and  confirming  at  once  its  rights  and  duties.  On  his  part  the  king 
promised  to  protect  the  new  Company  and  to  escort  its  ships  with  his 
own  men-of-war;  he  allowed  the  Company  to  send  ambassadors  to 
make  treaties  with,  and  declare  war  on,  the  sovereigns  of  India;  and, 
at  the  same  time  as  he  allowed  it  to  fly  the  royal  flag,  he  granted  it 
arms  and  a  motto — Florebo  quocumqueferar — signifying  the  great  hopes 
placed  by  both  him  and  Colbert  in  the  new  association. 

If  the  country  had  responded  with  enthusiasm  to  the  appeals  made 
to  it,  the  Company  would  doubtless  have  realised  those  hopes  and 
become  that  "mighty  company  to  carry  on  the  trade  of  the  East 
Indies  "  anticipated  in  the  preamble  of  the  letters-patent.  But  nothing 
of  the  sort  happened.  For  various  reasons — lack  of  enterprise  among 
the  trading  classes  and  the  lesser  noblesse  de  robe  outside  the  ports  and 
a  few  great  cities ;  dislike  of  most  wealthy  men  for  distant  expeditions ; 
losses  of  the  war  with  Spain  still  not  made  good;  revival  of  thtfrondeur 
spirit  in  the  face  of  an  admittedly  official  propaganda;  fear  lest  the 
subscription  should  be  merely  a  device  to  tax  the  nobles  and  other 
exempt  persons1 — the  king's  appeal  addressed  to  the  mayors  and 
bailiffs  of  the  principal  towns  in  the  form  of  a  lettre  de  cachet 9  was 
unheeded  and  the  royal  example  followed  by  few.  So  that  of  the 
15,000,000  livres  of  which  the  capital  was  to  have  consisted,  only  about 
8,200,000  livres  were  actually  subscribed,  and  of  that  only  a  third  was 
called  up  when  the  letters-patent  of  August,  1664,  had  given  legal 
existence  to  the  new  Company.  Thus  the  Compagnie  des  Indes  Orientales 

1  Unsigned  letter  to  Colbert  (Depping,  Correspondance  administrative  sous  le  rtgne  de 
Lottis  XIV,  m,  476). 


INITIAL  PLANS  65 

began  its  existence  with  a  capital  of  about  5,500,000  Kms9  including 
the  3,000,000  advanced  by  the  king. 

Colbert  in  fact  was  in  haste  to  secure  for  France  a  share  in  the 
considerable  profits  which  foreigners  were  then  drawing  from  the 
East  India  trade,  and  which  were  rendering  the  Dutch,  as  Char- 
pentier  said,  the  wealthiest  people  in  Europe.1  So  from  October, 
1664,  he  sought  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  traders  whom  the  new 
Company  was  meaning  to  send  as  soon  as  possible  to  the  most  distant 
shores  of  the  Indian  seas.  To  the  shah  of  Persia  and  to  the  Great 
Moghul  he  sent  by  way  of  Aleppo  representatives  of  the  king  and 
agents  of  the  Company  with  orders  to  secure  the  favour  of  those 
princes  and  to  hold  preliminary  discussions  for  the  conclusion  of  real 
treaties  of  commerce.  At  the  same  time  he  was  busy  with  the  pre- 
paration of  the  first  fleet.  After  passing  the  Cape  the  Company's  ships 
were  to  put  into  Madagascar  to  strengthen  the  position  of  the  French 
colonists  already  settled  on  the  east  and  south-east  coasts  of  the  lie 
Dauphine,  as  the  island  was  now  officially  called,  and  to  set  up  a  post 
for  victualling  and  refreshment  for  French  vessels  on  their  way  to 
India;  they  would  then  push  up  the  East  African  coast  to  Arabia, 
leaving  it  to  a  later  fleet  to  reach  the  Deccan  ports  and  establish 
factories  there. 

At  first  sight  the  plan  seems  wise  and  well  concerted.  Was  it  not 
wise  in  fact  to  secure  to  French  vessels  a  good  port  of  call  on  the  long 
voyage  to  India,  and  to  place  it  at  a  point  from  which  the  Company's 
ships  could  easily  push  on  in  all  directions?  By  establishing  them- 
selves at  Table  Bay  in  1652,  by  seeking  to  establish  themselves  at 
Mauritius  from  1638,  by  trying  to  form  a  colony  on  the  west  coast  of 
Madagascar  at  St  Augustine's  Bay,  both  the  Dutch  and  English  had  in 
a  way  imposed  this  policy  on  Colbert,  rendering  it  the  more  necessary 
by  the  jealousy  which  they  displayed  of  the  young  French  Company. 
His  real  error,  explained,  however,  by  his  love  for  his  country  and 
his  master,  by  the  ambition  of  Louis  XIV,  and  the  devotion  of  France 
to  the  king  at  the  outset  of  his  personal  rule,  lay  in  not  discerning 
sharply  enough  how  the  position  of  the  French  Company  differed 
from  that  of  the  Dutch  in  the  East;  the  result  was  that  he  imposed  on 
the  former  from  the  first  the  task  of  conducting  at  the  same  time 
two  distinct  enterprises — a  considerable  colonising  effort  as  well 
as  the  establishment  of  a  commerce  full  of  risks;  perhaps  also  he 
reckoned  too  lightly  the  mishaps  and  successive  disappointments  of 
every  new  enterprise,  especially  in  a  field  so  remote  from  the  seat 
of  control.  In  point  of  fact  the  Company  escaped  no  kind  of  misfor- 
tune, so  that  Colbert's  elaborate  plans  were  hardly  realisable.  Even 
if  any  of  the  five  nobles  and  merchants  who  set  out  for  the  Middle 
East  at  the  end  of  1664  had  been  able  to  fulfil  their  instructions,  none 
of  the  four  ships  that  made  up  the  first  fleet  sailing  in  March,  1665, 

1  Discours  (Tunfidllc  sujet  du  roi. 


CHI  v 


66  THE  FRENCH  FACTORIES  IN  INDIA 

got  further  than  Madagascar.  The  second  fleet  often  vessels  that  sailed 
a  year  later,  made,  like  the  first,  a  very  long  voyage  to  Fort  Dauphin; 
so  that,  only  at  the  beginning  of  1668,  nearly  four  years  after  the 
formation  of  the  Company,  did  any  of  its  qualified  representatives 
arrive  by  the  sea-route  in  the  Swally  Roads  on  the  coast  of 
Gujarat. 

There  one  of  the  agents  sent  in  1664  had  long  been  awaiting  his 
chiefs.  B^ber  (for  so  he  was  named),  after  accompanying  La  Boullaye 
le  Gouz  to  Agra  in  August-September,  1666,  had  returned  to  Surat, 
where  he  proceeded  to  act  on  a  farman  of  Aurangzib  granting  the 
French  a  site  and  factory  at  Swally  and  permission  to  trade  in  the 
neighbouring  town  on  the  same  terms  as  the  Dutch  and  the  English. 
A  man  of  zeal  and  ability,  as  one  of  his  chiefs  testifies,  B£ber  had  so 
well  prepared  for  the  new  arrivals  that  they  were  able  to  establish 
themselves  at  once,  purchase  a  certain  quantity  of  goods,  and  send 
them  back  by  one  of  the  ships  that  had  accompanied  them  from 
Madagascar. 

Unluckily  there,  as  at  Madagascar,  jealousies  and  misunderstandings 
between  the  directors  themselves,  and  between  them  and  their  sub- 
ordinates, led  to  disastrous  results.  A  good  beginning  had  been  made; 
from  Surat  several  of  the  Company's  ships  had  sailed  up  the  Persian 
Gulf,  visiting  Bandar  Abbas  (where  Mariage,  who  had  set  out  from 
France  with  B6ber,  had  a  short  time  before  established  a  factory), 
and  even  reaching  Basra;  a  footing  had  been  also  secured  on  the 
Malabar  Coast  as  a  stage  on  the  way  to  Ceylon  and  Malaya.  But 
Francois  Caron,  an  old  servant  of  the  Dutch  Company  and  a  man  OJL 
experience  and  intelligence  whom  Colbert  had  engaged  in  the  French 
service,  relying  on  his  knowledge,  tried  to  keep  all  business  in  his  own 
hands,  while  he  was  also  influenced  by  his  personal  sympathies  and 
dislikes.  Hence  resulted  many  differences,  of  which  the  Dutch,  irre- 
concilable enemies  of  the  French  establishment  in  India,  took 
advantage  the  more  easily  because  Caron  had  quarrelled  with  the 
Moghul  governor  of  Surat. 

Meanwhile  many  events  had  induced  Colbert  to  modify  his  original 
project.  In  France  what  enthusiasm  had  at  first  been  aroused  by  the 
formation  of  the  Company  had  quite  disappeared ;  many  shareholders, 
who  had  only  subscribed  in  order  to  pay  their  court  to  the  king  and 
minister,  preferred  to  lose  what  they  had  already  paid  than  to  meet 
the  demand  for  the  second  instalment,  called  up  in  December,  1665, 
and  it  was  still  worse  with  the  demand  for  the  remaining  third  a  year 
later;  so  that  the  king  had  had  to  promise  (September,  1668)  two 
more  millions  to  the  company  to  enable  it  to  carry  on.  Moreover, 
the  reports  from  the  fie  Dauphine  had  shown  Colbert  that  matters 
there  were  going  ill,  that,  as  he  said,  considerable  sums  had  been 
absolutely  squandered.  Without  yet  deciding  to  give  up  the  Mada- 
gascar project,  the  minister  agreed  for  the  present  to  relieve  the 


LA  HAYE'S  SQJJADRON  67 

Company  of  the  task  of  planting  that  great  unsettled  island,  in  order 
to  employ  all  its  resources  in  the  eastern  trade,  and,  as  the  directors 
demanded,  go  straight  to  India.1  But  on  the  advice  of  La  Boullaye 
le  Gouz  and  Garon,  who  from  their  knowledge  of  the  country  had 
urged  him  "to  show  a  little  sample  of  his  master's  power"  to  the 
princes  of  Asia,  Colbert  resolved  early  in  1669  to  send  a  considerable 
fleet  into  the  Indian  seas.  It  was  to  display  the  fours  de  lys>  to  give  the 
native  sovereigns  "a  high  opinion  of  the  justice  and  goodness  of  His 
Majesty,  at  the  same  time  that  they  learnt  his  power",  and  to  disprove 
the  assertions  of  the  Dutch  who  had  never  ceased  attempting  to  ruin 
the  French  reputation  among  the  people  of  India.  Accordingly  a 
squadron  of  ten  vessels,  under  the  command  of  Jacob  Blanquet 
de  la  Haye,  "governor  and  Lieutenant-general  for  the  King  in  the 
lie  Dauphine  and  in  all  India",  sailed  from  La  Rochelle  30  March, 
1670. 

The  "squadron  of  Persia",  as  it  was  called  to  show  the  public;  and 
especially  the  shareholders  of  the  Company,  the  new  direction  of 
policy,  took  no  less  than  eighteen  months  to  reach  Surat,  instead  of 
the  six  or  seven  months  Colbert  had  expected.  When  it  arrived  at 
last,  in  the  middle  of  October,  1671,  Caron  was  no  longer  there.  In 
spite  of  the  divisions  among  the  tiny  group  of  Frenchmen,  he  had 
succeeded  in  the  preceding  months  in  founding  certain  factories  on 
the  Malabar  Coast  and  another  at  Masulipatam,  and  had  then  set 
out  to  establish  yet  another  at  Bantam,  in  the  extreme  west  of  Java. 
Thus  the  directors  charged  by  Colbert  with  the  restoration  of  amity 
in  the  French  factory,  and  de  la  Haye's  great  squadron,  arrived  during 
his  absence.  De  la  Haye,  who  had  taken  the  title  of  viceroy  on  his 
arrival  in  India,  had  been  instructed  above  all  "to  establish  the 
company  so  strongly  and  powerfully  that  it  shall  be  able  to  maintain 
itself  and  to  increase  and  augment  itself  in  the  course  of  time  by  its 
own  power".  Such  was  the  "sole  and  single  purpose"  of  this  im- 
portant squadron  in  Indian  waters.  De  la  Haye  was  to  effect  it  by 
establishing  fortified  posts  at  points  reckoned  most  favourable  for 
trade,  in  Ceylon  especially,  and  by  force  if  necessary.  Doubtless  such 
an  enterprise  would  injure  the  European  peoples  already  established 
in  India,  especially  the  Dutch;  but  such  a  consideration  would  weigh 
little  with  Louis  XIV  or  Colbert,  who  could  not  forgive  the  United 
Provinces  for  their  manifestations  of  political  and  economic  hostility. 
Colbert  wrote  to  de  la  Haye,  "The  Dutch,  though  powerful,  will  not 
dare  to  prevent  the  execution  of  His  Majesty's  designs;  but  it  will  be 
necessary  to  be  on  your  guard  against  any  surprise  on  their  part". 
And  in  this  connection,  as  in  all  others,  de  la  Haye  was  "to  act  in 
concert  with,  and  even  follow  the  views  and  orders  of,  the  directors 
of  the  company  who  are  in  India;. .  .and  even  though  the  Sieur  de 

1  Dernis,  Recueil  et  collection  des  titres  concernant  la  Compagnie  des  Indes  Orientates,  i,  187. 

5-2 


68  THE  FRENCH  FACTORIES  IN  INDIA 

la  Haye  knows  that  they  are  doing  ill,  [he  should]  after  representing 
his  opinions  to  them,  exactly  follow  their  judgment".1 

In  the  face  of  instructions  so  formal  and  even  imperative,  what 
could  de  la  Haye  do  but  await  the  return  of  Caron,  whom  Colbert 
had  mentioned  by  name  as  "having  a  profound  knowledge,  by  reason 
of  his  twenty-two  years'  service  with  the  Dutch,  of  all  that  can  and 
ought  to  be  done  in  India  for  the  profit  of  the  company"?  He  there- 
fore awaited  his  return  from  Bantam.  Hence  followed  a  delay  by 
which  the  Dutch  profited,  strengthening  their  defences,  especially  as 
at  the  end  of  1671,  in  India  as  in  Europe,  war  had  been  expected 
between  France  and  the  republic.  To  crown  this,  even  when  Caron 
and  the  newly  arrived  directors  had  met,  they  could  not  agree,  which 
added  to  the  delay  in  the  sailing  of  the  squadron.  Not  until  the  be- 
ginning of  January,  1672,  could  de  la  Haye  and  his  ships  leave  Swally 
Roads  "to  carry  into  the  Indies  the  first  knowledge  of  the  arms  and 
might  of  His  Majesty". 

The  viceroy's  instructions  ordered  him  to  neglect  no  means  of 
attaining  this  end.  He  spent,  therefore,  six  weeks  sailing  down  the 
Malabar  Coast,  trying  "  to  show  it  off,  and  to  display  to  advantage  its 
beauty,  power,  guns,  and  crews",  firing  numberless  salutes  in  every 
port  he  visited — Daman,  Bombay,  Goa,  Calicut,  Kranganur,  Cochin, 
etc.  Just  as  he  was  about  to  quit  the  coast  and  make  for  Ceylon,  he 
learnt  of  the  approach  of  a  Dutch  fleet;  on  21  February  he  sighted 
twelve  ships  out  toseaoff  CapeComorin.  He  desired  to  approach  them, 
and  even  to  attack;  but  "M.  Caron  was  as  displeased  [de  la  Haye 
wrote  to  Louis  XIV  some  months  later]  as  if  I  had  proposed  to  him 
a  crime.  How  often  [he  adds  with  some  bitterness  and  not  a  little 
reason]  have  I  regretted  my  express  orders  to  follow  the  opinions  of 
the  directors".  He  was  indeed  right;  and  Caron,  overwhelmed  as  he 
had  been  with  benefits  by  Colbert,  was  already  beginning  to  exhibit 
a  strange,  dubious  conduct,  which  later  developments  were  to  prove 
still  more  dubious. 

Leaving  then  with  great  regret  his  enemies  to  sail  away,  de  la  Haye 
coasted  round  the  south  and  west  of  Ceylon,  where  the  Dutch  were 
already  established,  and  then  ran  up  the  east  coast  as  his  instructions 
directed.  Soon  he  was  off  Trinkomali  Bay,  the  one  natural  harbour 
of  the  island,  which  he  entered  at  once,  but  only  to  find  that  the  Dutch 
had  been  beforehand  with  him,  and  had  improvised,  if  not  solidly 
built,  various  defences.  Thus  the  position  reckoned  on  by  Colbert  in 
December,  1669,  had  totally  changed  by  March,  1672. 

Was  he  then  to  give  up  that  considerable  settlement  on  Ceylon, 
which  the  minister's  instructions  said  was  to  open  the  cinnamon 
trade  to  the  Company?  Was  he  to  disregard  the  king's  view,  that 
nothing  could  be  more  for  the  benefit  of  the  Company?  De  la  Haye 
thought  not.  Since  then  he  was  sent  to  choose  a  site,  build  a  post 

1  Clement,  Lettres,  instructions  et  mtmoires  de  Colbert,  ra  (2),  461-70. 


SIEGE  OF  ST  THOMfi  69 

there,  put  it  in  a  state  of  defence,  and  provide  it  with  every  necessity, 
he  paid  no  heed  to  "the  insolent  orders"  of  the  Dutch  to  leave  the 
harbour.  But  he  went  no  further.  Once  more  at  the  repeated  in- 
stances of  Caron  he  abandoned  his  project,  which  was  to  fight  the 
fleet  of  the  Admiral  Rijckloff  van  Goens,  and  contented  himself  with 
procuring  from  the  king  of  Kandi  a  grant  of  the  bay  of  Trinkomali, 
with  the  country  of  Kutiari  and  its  dependencies,  taking  possession 
in  the  king's  name,  and  building  a  little  fort  there.  He  did  not  know 
that  the  Dutch  had  told  the  natives  that  he  had  not  dared  to  fight 
them,  that  they  were  isolating  him,  and  that  they  were  about  to 
deprive  his  crews  and  sick  of  victuals.  A  victory  would  have  estab- 
lished the  prestige  of  the  "squadron  of  Persia",  and  made  the  French 
undisputed  masters  of  Trinkomali,  if  not  of  India;  but  on  9  July 
de  la  Haye  quitted  the  bay  without  having  given  battle,  merely 
leaving  on  one  of  the  little  islands  within  it  a  handful  of  men  whom 
the  Dutch  seized  a  few  days  later,  thus  justifying  in  the  eyes  of  all  the 
assertions  of  his  enemies. 

A  little  later,  on  his  arrival  before  St  Thome  (or  Mailapur,  as  the 
Indians  called  it)  on  the  Coromandel  Coast,  de  la  Haye  reaped  the 
fruits  of  his  error;  the  officers  sent  to  ask  for  victuals  met  with  an 
unreasonable  refusal  from  the  Muhammadan  officials  and  insults 
from  the  populace.1  On  the  advice  of  Caron,  who  was  certainly  the 
evil  genius  of  this  campaign,  and  who  may  with  cause  be  suspected 
of  treason,  the  viceroy  resolved  to  strike  a  blow;  on  25  July,  1672,  five 
days  after  dropping  anchor  before  the  place,  he  carried  it  by  escalade, 
to  the  great  alarm  of  the  Muhammadans  and  even  of  the  Europeans 
scattered  along  the  coast  in  the  various  factories. 

Ten  years  earlier  the  king  of  Golconda  had  conquered  St  Thome 
from  the  Portuguese,  and  had  also  occupied  the  neighbouring  part 
of  the  Carnatic.  The  loss  of  the  place  irritated  this  sovereign;  he  at 
once  set  to  work  to  recover  it,  and  quickly  surrounded  it  with  horse 
and  foot,  elephants,  and  work-people  with  everything  needed  for  a 
blockade.2  In  spite  of  the  diligence  with  which  he  had  sought  to 
consolidate  his  position,  de  la  Haye  had  had  no  time  in  which  to  lay 
in  provisions;  and  from  the  beginning  of  October  he  had  to  revictual 
himself  by  sea.  As  yet  the  Dutch  had  not  joined  the  Muhammadans, 
although  they  had  learnt  a  month  earlier  of  the  outbreak  of  war 
between  France  and  England  on  the  one  side  and  the  Netherlands 
on  the  other.  By  dint  of  his  own  energy,  the  bravery  and  spirit  of  his 
troops,  the  zeal  and  intelligence  of  his  subordinates,  volunteers  or 
agents  of  the  company,  the  French  leader  held  St  Thom£  for  two 
years  against  the  king  of  Golconda  and  the  Dutch,  with  no  help 
from  the  English.  But  courage  and  good  will  themselves  are  not 
always  enough ;  and  even  after  Caron's  departure  for  France  (October, 

1  M&noires  de  Bellanger  de  Lespinqy,  p.  143. 
•  Carr£,  Voyage  des  Indes  Orientates,  f.  289. 


yo  THE  FRENCH  FACTORIES  IN  INDIA 

1672),  dc  la  Haye  fatted  to  make  the  most  of  his  opportunities.  Even 
when  he  had  obliged  the  Muhammadans  once  to  raise  the  siege 
(March,  1673),  he  failed  either  to  make  peade  with  the  king  or  to 
prevent  him  from  allying  with  his  European  enemies;  so  that  his 
position  became  entirely  unfavourable  when  the  Muhammadans  and 
the  Dutch  joined  against  him.  Little  by  little  his  army  had  melted 
away,  and  his  ships  had  either  been  captured  by  the  enemy  or  become 
unserviceable  for  want  of  repairs.  De  la  Haye  sadly  admits  this  when, 
after  a  few  weeks'  absence,  the  Muhammadans  began  to  press  him 
again,  and  especially  when  the  Dutch  admiral,  Rijckloff,  lent  them 
help  ashore  and  blockaded  the  place  by  sea  (September,  1673).  His 
stubborn  spirit  still  prolonged  resistance  for  another  year.  In,  fact  he 
did  not  sign  the  capitulation  till  6  September,  1674,  and  then  the 
honour  of  the  defenders  was  fully  safeguarded,  for  the  town  was  only 
to  be  occupied  by  the  Dutch  in  case  the  French  received  no  succour 
within  the  next  fifteen  days. 

Among  the  causes  permitting  this  prolonged  resistance  to  be  made 
must  be  set  in  the  front  rank  the  activity  displayed  by  several  of  the 
French  Company's  agents — Francois  Baron,  one  of  the  directors  in 
India  and  formerly  French  Consul  at  Aleppo;  and  Frangois  Martin, 
director  of  the  Masulipatam  factory.  Bellanger  de  Lespinay,  one  of 
the  volunteers  who  accompanied  de  la  Haye,  should  also  be  mentioned. 
Sent  in  November,  1672,  to  Porto  Novo  to  seek  from  the  governors 
of  the  rival  kingdom  of  Bijapur  the  provisions  needed  by  the  defenders 
of  St  Thom£,  the  young  Venddmois  had  performed  his  mission  with 
much  skill.  It  is  true  that  the  governor  of  Valikondapuram  had 
already  sent  to  Fra^ois  Martin  favourable  proposals,  to  which  Caron, 
the  misguided  or,  more  probably,  treacherous  adviser  of  de  la  Haye, 
had  prevented  him  from  replying.  But  the  latter's  departure  now 
left  Bellanger  de  Lespinay  free  to  act.  He  obtained  from  the  governor, 
Sher  Khan  Lodi,  not  only  munitions  and  victuals,  but  also  a  site  for 
a  factory.  Just  as  Lespinay  was  about  to  take  leave,  2  January,  1673, 
an  agent  of  the  Dutch  Company  arrived  in  order  to  prejudice  Sher 
Khan  Lodi  against  the  French.  But  he  received  a  sharp  answer.  The 
other  said  "loudly  that  merchants  were  not  soldiers,  and  that  he 
knew  the  difference  between  the  Dutch  and  the  French".  He  con- 
cluded, to  the  great  surprise  and  joy  of  his  guest,  by  declaring  that 
"as  the  Dutch  and  French  were  neighbours  in  Europe,  so  they  should 
be  in  India,  and  therefore  he  gave  us  Pondichery  as  a  place  where 
our  nation  might  settle".1 

Sher  Khan  Lodi's  gift  was  a  little  village  near  the  borders  of  the 
hostile  kingdom  of  Golconda,  on  the  coast,  and  well  placed  for  the 
assistance  of  the  besieged  in  St  Thom6.  "Indeed  it  was  a  most  con- 
venient place  for  me",  wrote  Lespinay  in  his  Mtmoires.  By  order  of 
his  leader,  he  established  himself  there  on  4  February,  1673,  and,  as 

1  Mjmoirts  de  Lispinav,  pp.  203-4. 


PONDICHERY  71 

long  as  his  countrymen  held  out,  he  did  not  cease  to  send  them,  with 
the  constant  help  of  Sher  Khan,  supplies  of  victuals,  munitions,  and 
even  men.  Thus  began  in  modest  fashion  the  historic  role  of  Pon- 
dichery. 

When  on  the  morrow  of  the  capitulation  Bellanger  de  Lespinay 
quitted  the  few  fishers'  and  traders'  huts  that  surrounded  the  French 
factory,  he  did  not  suspect  what  a  future  awaited  the  tiny  place.  But 
he  left  there  Francois  Martin,  the  man  whose  great  courage,  in- 
telligence, and  perseverance  were  to  develop  it,  transform  it,  and 
render  it  the  capital  of  the  French  settlements  in  India. 

At  the  beginning  of  1674  Martin  had  been  sent  by  the  viceroy  to 
second  Lespinay,  and  this  he  had  done  effectively,  thanks  to  his  in- 
telligence, knowledge  of  affairs,  and  patriotism.  From  21  September, 
1674,  he  was  left  at  Pondichery  with  six  Frenchmen  "to  act  as  affairs 
may  require".  At  first,  together  with  Baron,  he  sought  to  obtain 
from  Golconda  the  grant  of  St  Thom6.  But  though  under  pressure 
from  Dutch  and  English  alike  the  place  was  demolished,  neither  lost 
heart.  Perceiving  clearly  that  the  Company  could  drive  a  profitable 
trade  with  two  well-established  factories,  one  on  the  Malabar  and 
one  on  the  Coromandel  Coast,  and  deeming  that  Surat  would  serve 
for  one  of  the  two,  they  set  to  work  to  procure  the  other,  though  they 
had  to  surmount  many  difficulties  merely  to  secure  the  maintenance 
of  a  French  factory  at  Pondichery,  while  in  Europe  the  war  between 
the  Great  King  and  his  enemies  was  going  forward.  Sivaji's  defeat 
of  Sher  Khan  Lodi,  the  persistent  jealousy  of  the  Dutch,  the  Com- 
pany's neglect  of  its  agents  in  India,  all  added  to  their  difficulties. 
Martin  however  maintained  the  position.  When  Baron  recalled  him 
to  Surat,  he  convinced  Colbert  of  the  commercial  value  of  Pondichery, 
and,  after  the  Peace  of  Nimweguen,  succeeded  in  carrying  through 
a  little  business  for  the  Company.  But  would  he  be  able  to  secure  all 
that  was  needed,  and  make  good  the  complete  lack  of  goods  and 
money  in  which  he  was  left  by  the  Company,  at  a  time  when  the 
Company  was  in  great  straits  and  obliged  to  abandon  not  only  Caron's 
factory  at  Bantam  but  also  its  new  factory  in  Tonkin?  Or  would  he 
be  able  with  so  few  people  to  survive  the  political  and  economic  crisis 
through  which  the  Moghul  Empire  was  passing  in  spite  of  Aurangzib's 
early  conquests?  Pondichery  was,  indeed,  falling  into  that  stagnation 
which  precedes  decay,  but  though  Martin  knew  it,  he  did  not  hesitate 
to  return  thither  in  1686  and  to  make  it  again  the  centre  of  his 
activities. 

At  that  moment  Colbert's  son  and  successor  at  the  ministry  of 
marine,  the  Marquis  de  Seignelay,  had  just  procured  for  the  Com- 
pany new  capital,  reorganised  its  directorate,  and  restored  it  to 
greater  activity  than  it  had  long  known.  As,  besides,  there  was  peace 
in  Europe,  there  was  at  least  officially  peace  also  among  the  European 
nations  in  India.  Of  these  favourable  circumstances,  though  counter- 


72  THE  FRENCH  FACTORIES  IN  INDIA 

acted  by  war,  famine  and  pestilence  in  the  country  itself,  Martin 
made  good  use.  Not  content  with  enlarging  the  trade  of  Pondichery 
and  its  dependencies,  he  laboured  to  consolidate  and  extend  the 
French  factories.  The  re-establishment  of  the  French  at  Masulipatam, 
the  dispatch  of  Deslandes  to  Bengal,  where  a  French  agent  had 
appeared  so  early  as  1674,  and  co-operation  with  the  great  Siam 
enterprise  which  was  for  a  while  at  this  time  the  pet  scheme  of  the 
royal  government,  form  the  chief  evidences  of  Martin's  activity, 
though  they  were  not  all  equally  successful. 

But  soon  again  the  outbreak  of  war  in  Europe  threatened  the  fruit 
of  his  labours.  Though  the  trade  of  Pondichery  was  not  much  hurt 
by  the  complete  failure  of  the  Siam  expedition,  it  was  brought  into 
grave  danger  by  the  war  between  the  French  and  Dutch,  and  soon 
after  by  the  close  union  between  the  Dutch  and  English  resulting 
from  the  Revolution  of  1688. 

The  decay  of  trade  and  the  abandonment  of  the  project  to  set  up 
a  factory  near  Cape  Comorin  were  the  first  fruits  of  the  renewal  of 
the  war,  although  the  English  governor  of  Fort  St  David  expressed 
his  desire  to  maintain  peace  in  India.  But  soon  Dutch  hostility  took 
shape  in  action.  When  in  January,  1691,  the  French  squadron  sent 
out  by  Seignelay  the  year  before  quitted  the  Bay  of  Bengal,  for  lack 
of  a  port  where  the  vessels  could  be  repaired,  the  enemies  of  France, 
who  had  been  much  alarmed,  sought  at  once  to  crush  this  rivalry 
which  they  deemed  a  political  danger  and  an  economic  injury. 
Martin  had  long  been  endeavouring,  in  the  face  of  great  difficulties, 
to  fortify  Pondichery,  to  make  up  a  little  garrison  for  it,  and  had 
procured,  though  at  a  high  rate,  from  the  court  of  Jinji  the  grant  of 
almost  all  rights  of  sovereignty;  but  with  all  his  efforts  he  could  not 
repel  the  attack  of  the  Dutch  when  (23  August,  1693)  they  besieged 
the  place  both  by  land  and  sea.  Deserted  by  the  natives,  and  unable 
to  answer  the  fire  of  the  enemy,  on  6  September  he  had  to  sign  a 
capitulation,  honourable  indeed,  but  one  article  of  which  seemed  to 
rob  him  of  all  hope  of  ever  making  the  place  a  French  settlement. 

But  the  event  turned  out  otherwise.  Inspired  by  their  Indian 
servants,  the  Company  desired  the  king,  in  the  negotiations  ending 
in  the  Treaty  of  Ryswick  (21  September,  1697),  to  procure  the  ren- 
dition of  "the  fort  and  settlement  of  Pondichery";  and  with  some 
difficulty  it  was  secured.  Further  negotiations,  patiently  followed,  in 
the  next  year  ensured  to  the  Company  the  restoration  of  the  place 
with  "all  the  additions  and  improvements  made  by  the  Dutch  com- 
pany both  in  the  place  and  in  the  neighbourhood".  But  in  India 
Martin  only  obtained  full  execution  of  this  agreement  after  long 
discussions,  and  had  to  wait  till  3  October,  1699,  for  the  Dutch 
garrison  to  take  its  departure. 

But  thenceforward  he  was  free  to  act  and  possessed  the  base  of 
operations,  without  which,  since  1693,  the  French  had  been  reduced 


DECADENCE  OF  THE  COMPANY  73 

to  a  state  of  complete  impotence.  Since  the  Company,  radically 
reformed  once  more  in  1697,  had  recovered  some  activity,  and  was 
able  to  send  one  after*  another  several  fleets  into  the  Indian  seas,  to 
which  indeed  its  privileges  were  now  limited,  Martin  took  advantage 
of  this  appearance  of  French  vessels  to  demonstrate  to  all  how  brief 
had  been  the  duration  of  Dutch  naval  supremacy;  and  when  a  final 
attempt  at  diplomatic  intervention  in  Siam  had  met  with  a  final 
failure,  he  sought  to  develop  and  strengthen  the  Company's  position 
at  Pondichery,  at  Chandernagore,  where  Deslandes  had  established 
himself  in  1690,  and  even  at  Surat,  the  importance  of  which  factory 
was,  however,  daily  declining. 

For  now  he  saw  clearly  the  situation  of  the  country  and  discerned 
the  essential  conditions  for  the  complete  success  of  the  French  enter- 
prise, foreseeing  the  approaching  decadence  of  the  Moghul  Empire, 
and  planning  for  the  French  the  acquisition  of  a  political  predomi- 
nance as  the  essential  condition  of  free  commercial  development. 
"Prosperous  settlements  and  a  few  well-fortified  places  will  give 
[the  Company]  a  great  position  among  these  people",  he  wrote  on 
15  December,  1700,  to  Jerome  Pontchartrain,  the  new  minister  of 
marine.  Martin  therefore  surrounded  Pondichery  with  the  solid  walls 
that  had  hitherto  been  wanting;  and  at  the  same  time  under  his 
vigorous  lead  the  company's  trade  made  real  progress  in  Bengal, 
while  even  the  Surat  factory  itself  seemed  about  to  shake  off  its  ever- 
growing torpor. 

Unluckily  this  promising  situation  did  not  last.  In  1701  the  War 
of  the  Spanish  Succession  broke  out,  and  round  the  Grand  Alliance 
grouped  themselves  all  who  disliked  the  thought  of  a  son  of  Louis  XIV 
succeeding  to  the  throne  of  Spain.  The  effects  of  the  new  war  were 
soon  felt  in  India.  Trade  was  once  more  interrupted;  the  factories  of 
Bengal  and  Surat  fell  back  into  inactivity;  while  at  Pondichery  the 
preparation  for  defence  (now  completed  by  the  building  of  Fort 
St  Louis),  and  the  need  of  checking  Dutch  intrigue,  fully  occupied 
the  aged  but  still  active  Martin,  left  to  his  own  resources  without  the 
least  help  from  Europe. 

Long  after  the  death  (31  December,  1706)  of  the  founder  of  the 
first  French  settlements  in  India,  this  wretched  situation  continued 
and  actually  grew  worse,  more  owing  to  the  distress  of  the  Company 
than  the  events  of  the  war  or  the  worthless  nature  of  Martin's  suc- 
cessors. The  failure  of  a  fleet  sent  in  1706  to  the  western  coasts  of 
South  America  in  defiance  of  the  monopoly  granted  to  another 
Company  in  1697  for  the  trade  of  the  South  Seas,  the  difficulties  of 
meeting  the  Company's  obligations,  and  at  last  the  cession  of  its 
privileges  to  the  Malouins  in  1712,  were  the  real,  essential  causes  of 
the  languor  of  the  French  factories  in  India  in  the  early  years  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  That  condition  persisted  until  the  death  of 
Louis  XIV  (i  September,  1715),  or  rather  till  May,  1719,  when  a 


1*  THE  FRENCH  FACTORIES  IN  INDIA 

acted  by  war,  famine  and  pestilence  in  the  country  itself,  Martin 
made  good  use.  Not  content  with  enlarging  the  trade  of  Pondichery 
and  its  dependencies,  he  laboured  to  consolidate  and  extend  the 
French  factories.  The  re-establishment  of  the  French  at  Masulipatam, 
the  dispatch  of  Deslandes  to  Bengal,  where  a  French  agent  had 
appeared  so  early  as  1674,  and  co-operation  with  the  great  Siam 
enterprise  which  was  for  a  while  at  this  time  the  pet  scheme  of  the 
royal  government,  form  the  chief  evidences  of  Martin's  activity, 
though  they  were  not  all  equally  successful. 

But  soon  again  the  outbreak  of  war  in  Europe  threatened  the  fruit 
of  his  labours.  Though  the  trade  of  Pondichery  was  not  much  hurt 
by  the  complete  failure  of  the  Siam  expedition,  it  was  brought  into 
grave  danger  by  the  war  between  the  French  and  Dutch,  and  soon 
after  by  the  close  union  between  the  Dutch  and  English  resulting 
from  the  Revolution  of  1688. 

The  decay  of  trade  and  the  abandonment  of  the  project  to  set  up 
a  factory  near  Cape  Comorin  were  the  first  fruits  of  the  renewal  of 
the  war,  although  the  English  governor  of  Fort  St  David  expressed 
his  desire  to  maintain  peace  in  India.  But  soon  Dutch  hostility  took 
shape  in  action.  When  in  January,  1691,  the  French  squadron  sent 
out  by  Seignelay  the  year  before  quitted  the  Bay  of  Bengal,  for  lack 
of  a  port  where  the  vessels  could  be  repaired,  the  enemies  of  France, 
who  had  been  much  alarmed,  sought  at  once  to  crush  this  rivalry 
which  they  deemed  a  political  danger  and  an  economic  injury. 
Martin  had  long  been  endeavouring,  in  the  face  of  great  difficulties, 
to  fortify  Pondichery,  to  make  up  a  little  garrison  for  it,  and  had 
procured,  though  at  a  high  rate,  from  the  court  of  Jinji  the  grant  of 
almost  all  rights  of  sovereignty;  but  with  all  his  efforts  he  could  not 
repel  the  attack  of  the  Dutch  when  (23  August,  1693)  they  besieged 
the  place  both  by  land  and  sea.  Deserted  by  the  natives,  and  unable 
to  answer  the  fire  of  the  enemy,  on  6  September  he  had  to  sign  a 
capitulation,  honourable  indeed,  but  one  article  of  which  seemed  to 
rob  him  of  all  hope  of  ever  making  the  place  a  French  settlement. 

But  the  event  turned  out  otherwise.  Inspired  by  their  Indian 
servants,  the  Company  desired  the  king,  in  the  negotiations  ending 
in  the  Treaty  of  Ryswick  (21  September,  1697),  to  procure  the  ren- 
dition of  "the  fort  and  settlement  of  Pondichery";  and  with  some 
difficulty  it  was  secured.  Further  negotiations,  patiently  followed,  in 
the  next  year  ensured  to  the  Company  the  restoration  of  the  place 
with  "all  the  additions  and  improvements  made  by  the  Dutch  com- 
pany both  in  the  place  and  in  the  neighbourhood".  But  in  India 
Martin  only  obtained  full  execution  of  this  agreement  after  long 
discussions,  and  had  to  wait  till  3  October,  1699,  for  the  Dutch 
garrison  to  take  its  departure. 

But  thenceforward  he  was  free  to  act  and  possessed  the  base  of 
operations,  without  which,  since  1693,  the  French  had  been  reduced 


DECADENCE  OF  THE  COMPANY  73 

to  a  state  of  complete  impotence.  Since  the  Company,  radically 
reformed  once  more  in  1697,  had  recovered  som^s  activity,  and  was 
able  to  send  one  after*  another  several  fleets  into  ttie  Indian  seas,  to 
which  indeed  its  privileges  were  now  limited,  Martin  tpok  advantage 
of  this  appearance  of  French  vessels  to  demonstrate  to^l  how  brief 
had  been  the  duration  of  Dutch  naval  supremacy;  and  when  a  final 
attempt  at  diplomatic  intervention  in  Siam  had  met  with  a  final 
failure,  he  sought  to  develop  and  strengthen  the  Company's  position 
at  Pondichery,  at  Chandernagore,  where  Deslandes  had  established 
himself  in  1690,  and  even  at  Surat,  the  importance  of  which  factory 
was,  however,  daily  declining. 

For  now  he  saw  clearly  the  situation  of  the  country  and  discerned 
the  essential  conditions  for  the  complete  success  of  the  French  enter- 
prise, foreseeing  the  approaching  decadence  of  the  Moghul  Empire, 
and  planning  for  the  French  the  acquisition  of  a  political  predomi- 
nance as  the  essential  condition  of  free  commercial  development. 
"Prosperous  settlements  and  a  few  well-fortified  places  will  give 
[the  Company]  a  great  position  among  these  people",  he  wrote  on 
15  December,  1700,  to  Jerome  Pontchartrain,  the  new  minister  of 
marine.  Martin  therefore  surrounded  Pondichery  with  the  solid  walls 
that  had  hitherto  been  wanting;  and  at  the  same  time  under  his 
vigorous  lead  the  company's  trade  made  real  progress  in  Bengal, 
while  even  the  Surat  factory  itself  seemed  about  to  shake  off  its  ever- 
growing torpor. 

Unluckily  this  promising  situation  did  not  last.  In  1701  the  War 
of  the  Spanish  Succession  broke  out,  and  round  the  Grand  Alliance 
grouped  themselves  all  who  disliked  the  thought  of  a  son  of  Louis  XIV 
succeeding  to  the  throne  of  Spain.  The  effects  of  the  new  war  were 
soon  felt  in  India.  Trade  was  once  more  interrupted;  the  factories  of 
Bengal  and  Surat  fell  back  into  inactivity;  while  at  Pondichery  the 
preparation  for  defence  (now  completed  by  the  building  of  Fort 
St  Louis),  and  the  need  of  checking  Dutch  intrigue,  fully  occupied 
the  aged  but  still  active  Martin,  left  to  his  own  resources  without  the 
least  help  from  Europe. 

Long  after  the  death  (31  December,  1706)  of  the  founder  of  the 
first  French  settlements  in  India,  this  wretched  situation  continued 
and  actually  grew  worse,  more  owing  to  the  distress  of  the  Company 
than  the  events  of  the  war  or  the  worthless  nature  of  Martin's  suc- 
cessors. The  failure  of  a  fleet  sent  in  1 706  to  the  western  coasts  of 
South  America  in  defiance  of  the  monopoly  granted  to  another 
Company  in  1697  for  the  trade  of  the  South  Seas,  the  difficulties  of 
meeting  the  Company's  obligations,  and  at  last  the  cession  of  its 
privileges  to  the  Malouins  in  1712,  were  the  real,  essential  causes  of 
the  languor  of  the  French  factories  in  India  in  the  early  years  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  That  condition  persisted  until  the  death  of 
Louis  XIV  (i  September,  1715),  or  rather  till  May,  1719,  when  a 


FREJW 


74  THE  FRENCH  FACTORIES  IN  INDIA 

famous  edict  united/the  Company  of  the  East  Indies  and  China  with 
the  Company  of  the  West  founded  by  Jean  Law  a  little  earlier  (August, 
1717),  giving  to  the  united  body  the  name  of>the  Compagnie  des  Indes 
and  confiding  to  it  the  whole  of  French  colonial  trade. 

In  Law's  mind  it  was  to  have  been  even  more  than  that — the  single 
trading  boAy  of  the  kingdom,  and  perhaps  the  most  important  of  the 
institutions  by  means  of  which  he  hoped  to  restore  French  finance. 
Thus  the  privileges  granted  to  the  great  Company  which  it  had  just 
absorbed  were  extended  for  fifty  years;  and  besides  this  it  received 
«>o  many  other  privileges  and  so  wide  an  extension  of  its  domain  that, 
as  has  been  said  with  truth,  it  became  not  so  much  a  colonial  enter- 
prise as  a  sort  of  farm  general  of  the  state.1 

But  could  even  so  powerful  a  Compagnie  des  Indes  transform  into 
realities  the  fair  dreams  of  Colbert?  By  no  means.  In  fact  the  speedy 
bankruptcy  of  the  System  ruined  all  hopes.  In  order  not  to  burden 
the  state  with  the  shares  issued  on  different  occasions,  first  by  the 
Company  of  the  West,  and  then  by  the  Company  of  the  Indies  itself, 
the  liquidators  named  by  the  king  (10  April,  1721)  had  to  re-establish 
the  Company  in  its  original  form.  Two  years  later  (23  March,  1723) 
its  administration  was  confided  to  a  council  of  the  Indies  consisting 
of  a  chief,  a  president,  and  twenty  councillors  nominated  by  the 
crown;  but,  soon  after,  to  enable  shareholders  to  have  representatives, 
there  were  introduced,  besides  twelve  directors  and  four  inspectors 
named  by  the  crown,  eight  syndics  appointed  by  the  shareholders. 

Such  was  in  its  main  lines  the  home  administration  of  the  Company 
which,  as  in  the  time  of  Louis  XIV,  held  the  exclusive  privilege  OA 
trade  from  the  west  coast  of  Africa  round  the  Cape  up  to  the  Red  Sea, 
the  islands  of  the  Indian  seas  of  which  two  had  already  been  occupied 
by  the  French  (the  Isle  of  Bourbon  in  1664  and  the  Isle  of  France  in 
1721),  and  finally  India  itself  and  the  Further  East. 

For  various  reasons  deriving  from  the  general  history  of  the  time 
and  the  particular  history  of  the  Company,  the  French  had  made  no 
progress  in  India  since  1 706.  No  doubt  the  governors  who  succeeded 
Martin  were  less  able  than  he;  but  it  must  also  be  remembered  that 
from  1707  to  1720  no  less  than  five  governors  ruled  in  succession  at 
Pondichery.  Each  in  turn  adopted  a  line  of  policy  different  from  that 
of  his  predecessor,  until,  in  1 720,  the  new  Compagnie  des  Indes  put  an 
end  to  this  series  of  conflicts  and  inconsistencies  by  taking  possession 
of  the  existing  factories  and  imposing  an  active  and  coherent  policy. 
Masulipatam,  Calicut,  Mah£,  and  Yanam  were  occupied  between 
1721  and  1723.^  Although  the  attempt  to  found  a  settlement  on  Pulo 
Kondor— the  lies  d'OrUans— south  of  the  Mekong  delta  failed  alto- 
gether, the  Company  was  able  to  take  vengeance  for  the  insult  of  the 
prince  Bayanor  in  driving  the  French  from  Mah6.  It  re-established 
itself  there  by  force,  for  ten  months  its  troops  victoriously  met  the 

1  Cultru,  Dupkix,  p.  2. 


LATER  POLICY  75 

attempts  of  Bayanor  and  four  other  rajahs  to  expel  them,  and  obliged 
them  to  make  peace,  first  in  I726,1  and  later,  after  a  blockade  of 
eighteen  months,  in  1741.  Clearly  there  was  a  change  in  the 
attitude  of  the  Compagnie  des  Indes. 

It  must,  however,  be  observed,  that  the  two  governors  who  fceld 
office  from  1 720  to  1 742  (Lenoir  till  1 735  and  then  Benoist  Duirias2) 
had  none  but  commercial  objects  in  mind.  It  was  with  a  purely 
commercial  object,  the  protection  of  a  factory  expected  to  yield  k 
profitable  pepper  trade,  that  the  Company  in  1724  built  a  fort  at 
Mah£,  which  was  long  a  source  of  great  expense;  it  was  with  a  purely 
commercial  object  too  that  Dumas  brought  to  reason  by  a  show  of 
force  the  governor  of  Mokha  where  the  French  had  a  factory,8  and 
occupied  in  February,  1 739,  Karikal,  at  the  request  of  a  native  prince. 
There  was  nothing  in  this  exclusively  interested  conduct  that  allows 
us  to  credit  the  Company  with  political  views  and  still  less  ideas  of 
conquest;  its  factories  were  more  or  less  fortified,  but  for  motives  of 
simple  security;  and  although  it  enlisted  troops,  it  used  them  only  for 
purposes  of  police.  In  1664  perhaps  Louis  XIV  and  Colbert  dreamt 
of  securing  conquests  in  the  Indies ;  but  in  1 730  none  of  the  Company's 
servants  dreamt  of  supplying  funds  for  trade  out  of  the  regular  revenues 
of  territorial  possessions,  or  conceived  the  idea  of  obtaining  them 
by  interfering  in  the  lawless  conflicts  that  arose  out  of  the  decadence 
of  the  Moghul  Empire,  or  attempted  to  interfere  in  any  persistent, 
methodical  way  in  the  affairs  of  native  princes.  Only  in  the  period 
that  begins  in  1740  does  this  notion  first  germinate  and  then  begin 
to  develop  in  the  admirable  brain  of  Dupleix. 

1  Martineau,  Les  Origines  de  Make.   Cf.  Les  Mtmoires  du  Chevalier  de  la  Farelle  sur  la  prise 
de  MM. 

2  Martineau,  "Benoist  Dumas'*,  Rev.  de  I9 hist,  des  col.fr.  ix,  145  sqq. 

8  Martineau,  "La  politique  de  Dumas",  Rev.  de  Vhist.  des  col.  Jr.  xrv,  I  sqq. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

JLHE  success  of  the  Portuguese  in  establishing  a  lucrative  commerce 
../With  the  East  naturally  excited  a  desire  among  the  other  nations  of 
Western  Europe  to  follow  so  tempting  an  example.  The  Portuguese, 
however,  had  a  long  start,  and  it  was  nearly  a  century  before  any 
rival  made  an  effective  entry  into  the  field.  The  reasons  for  this  were 
largely  political.  The  papal  bulls  of  1493,  and  the  subsequent  agree- 
ment with  Spain  at  Tordesillas,  prevented  any  attempt  on  the  part  of 
the  Catholic  powers  to  infringe  the  monopoly  claimed  by  Lisbon;  and 
if  the  union  of  the  crowns  of  Spain  and  Portugal  in  1580  exposed  the 
latter  to  the  attacks  of  the  revolted  Netherlands,  on  the  other  hand  it 
deterred  the  cautious  Elizabeth  of  England  from  countenancing  too 
openly  the  audacious  schemes  of  her  subjects  for  ventures  into  the 
forbidden  area.  For  a  time,  therefore,  English  merchants  concen- 
trated their  attention  upon  the  discovery  of  a  new  sea-road  to  the 
East,  either  through  or  round  America  on  the  one  side  or  by  the 
northern  coasts  of  Europe  and  Asia  on  the  other;  and  either  route 
had  the  additional  attraction  that  it  would  bring  the  adventurers  to 
Northern  China,  which  was  out  of  the  Portuguese  sphere  and  would, 
it  was  hoped,  afford  for  English  woollens  a  market  hardly  to  be 
expected  in  the  tropical  regions  to  the  southward.  The  story  of  these 
attempts  to  find  a  north-eastern  or  north-western  passage  to  the  Indies 
belongs  rather  to  the  general  history  of  exploration  than  to  our  special 
subject,  and  no  detailed  account  of  them  is  necessary.  Their  failure 
directed  attention  afresh  to  the  Portuguese  route  by  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope,  especially  when  in  1580  Francis  Drake  returned  that  way  from 
his  voyage  round  the  world.  New  energy  was  infused  into  the  project 
by  the  defeat  of  the  Spanish  Armada,  by  the  return  (1591)  of  Ralph 
Fitch  from  some  years  of  travel  in  India  and  Burma,  and  by  the  riches 
found  in  Portuguese  carracks  captured  by  English  privateers.  At  last 
in  1591-3  a  ship  under  James  Lancaster  succeeded  in  penetrating  the 
Indian  Ocean  and  visiting  the  Nicobars  and  the  island  of  Penang. 
Three  years  after  Lancaster's  return  another  fleet  started  under  Ben- 
jamin Wood,  but  the  enterprise  ended  in  disaster.  The  Dutch,  who 
had  alrefady  imitated  the  English  in  endeavouring  to  discover  a  north- 
east passage,  now  joined  in  the  attempt  to  force  the  Portuguese  barrier; 
and  in  1596  a  squadron  under  Houtman  reached  Java,  returning  in 
safety  a  year  later.  As  a  result,  in  1598  over  twenty  ships  were  dis- 
patched from  Holland  to  the  East  by  way  of  the  Cape. 

The  merchants  of  England  were  in  no  mood  to  see  the  prize  they 
had  so  long  sought  snatched  away  from  them  by  their  Dutch  rivals. 


THE  EARLY  VOYAGES  77 

Preparations  were  therefore  commenced  in  the  autumn  of  1599  for 
a  fresh  expedition  to  the  East;  but  this  had  to  be  abandoned  owing  to 
Queen  Elizabeth's  fear  of  prejudicing  her  negotiations  with  King 
Philip  for  a  peace.  In  the  following  year,  however,  these  negotiations 
having  failed,  the  scheme  was  revived,  and  early  in  1601  a  fleet  sailed 
for  the  East  under  the  command  of  Lancaster.  In  the  meantime,  by 
a  charter  dated  31  December,  1600,  those  interested  in  the  venture 
had  been  incorporated  under  the  title  of  "The  Governor  and  Company 
of  Merchants  of  London  Trading  into  the  East  Indies",  and  the 
monopoly  of  English  commerce  in  eastern  waters  (from  the  Cape  of 
Good  Hope  to  the  Straits  of  Magellan)  had  been  granted  to  them 
and  their  successors  for  a  term  of  fifteen  years.1 

England  being  still  at  war  with  Spain  and  Portugal,  and  the  im- 
mediate aim  being  the  acquisition  of  the  spices  and  pepper  of  the 
Far  East,  the  First  (1601-3)  and  Second  (1604-6)  Voyages2  were 
made,  not  to  India,  but  to  Achin  (in  Sumatra),  Bantam  (in  Java), 
and  the  Moluccas.  However,  in  August,  1604,  peace  was  at  last 
concluded,  though  without  any  recognition  of  the  English  claim  to 
share  in  the  commerce  of  the  Indian  seas ;  while  it  was  becoming 
evident  that  English  manufactures — which  it  was  particularly  de- 
sirable to  export,  in  order  to  avoid  carrying  out  so  much  silver — 
could  find  no  satisfactory  market  in  the  Malay  Archipelago.  When, 
therefore,  a  Third  Voyage  was  under  preparation  (1606-7),  it  was 
resolved  that  the  fleet  should,  on  its  way  to  Bantam,  endeavour  to 
open  up  trade  at  Aden  and  Surat.  For  this  purpose  the  post  of  second 
in  command  was  given  to  William  Hawkins,  a  merchant  who  had 
had  considerable  experience  in  the  Levant  and  could  speak  Turkish; 
and  he  was  provided  with  a  letter  from  King  James  to  the  emperor 
Akbar  (whose  death  was  as  yet  unknown  in  London),  desiring  per- 
mission to  establish  trade  in  his  dominions. 

The  Hector,  which  was  the  vessel  commanded  by  Hawkins,  anchored 
off  the  mouth  of  the  Tapti  on  24  August,  1608,  and  her  captain  at 
once  proceeded  up  the  river  to  Surat,  the  principal  port  of  the  Moghul 
Empire.  Early  in  October  the  ship  departed  for  Bantam,  and  four 
months  later  Hawkins  set  out  on  his  long  journey  to  the  court.  He 
reached  Agra  in  the  middle  of  April,  1609,  and  wets  graciously  received 
by  the  emperor  Jahangir.  For  some  time  he  was  in  high  favour,  and 
was  admitted  to  share  the  revels  of  that  jovial  monarch,  who 
far  as  to  take  him  into  his  service  and  marry  him  to 
damsel.  But  the  Portuguese,  alarmed  at  the  prospect  of 
petition,  were  working  hard  to  displace  him,  both 
they  found  willing  helpers  among  the  courtiers,  and  i 
arguments  and  threats  prevailed  upon  the  timid 
chants  of  that  province  to  make  representations  agair 

1  Patent  Rolls,  43  Eliz.  pt  vi.  *+**— 

1  Narratives  of  the  early  expeditions  will  be  found  in  The  Voyages  omtpffftes  fltmcaster. 


8o  THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

and  that,  if  their  recourse  to  his  ports  was  to  be  prevented,  the  Portu- 
guese themselves  must  undertake  the  task.  In  the  end,  towards  the 
close  of  1615,  an  agreement  was  reached,  without  any  stipulation  on 
this  point. 

The  position  of  the  newcomers  was,  however,  still  precarious,  owing 
to  the  certainty  that  the  Goa  authorities  would  continue  their  efforts 
to  induce  the  emperor  to  forbid  further  trade;  while,  as  they  well 
knew,  mercantile  interests  in  Gujarat  were  greatly  disturbed  by  the 
resultant  bickerings,  and  the  Indian  officials  were  asking  themselves 
whether  it  was  worth  while,  for  the  sake  of  the  small  trade  brought 
by  the  English,  to  risk  the  large  and  well-established  commerce 
between  their  ports  and  Goa.  It  was,  therefore,  with  much  joy  that 
the  English  factors  greeted  the  arrival  (September,  1615)  of  a  new 
fleet,  bringing  out  an  ambassador  from  King  James,  in  the  person  of 
Sir  Thomas  Roe.  The  East  India  Company  had  decided  to  make  a 
great  effort  to  establish  permanent  relations  with  India,  and  the  surest 
way  of  effecting  this  seemed  to  be  the  dispatch  of  a  royal  envoy  to  the 
Moghul,  for  the  purpose  of  concluding  a  treaty  which  should  put  the 
trade  between  the  two  countries  on  a  regular  footing.  This  plan  had, 
moreover,  the  advantage  of  refuting  the  allegations  of  the  Portuguese 
that  the  Company's  attempts  to  trade  in  Eastern  waters  were  not 
authorised  by  the  English  sovereign,  while  it  threw  the  aegis  of  the 
latter  over  his  subjects  at  Surat  and  thus  discouraged  further  attacks 
from  Goa. 

Roe  reached  the  court,  which  was  then  at  Ajmir,  in  December, 
1615;  and  for  nearly  three  years  he  followed  in  the  train  of  the 
emperor,  striving  diligently  to  carry  out  the  objects  of  his  mission, 
He  found,  however,  that  the  conclusion  of  any  form  of  treaty  for 
commercial  purposes  was  entirely  foreign  to  Indian  ideas.  Moreover, 
his  demands  included  concessions  for  trade  in  Bengal  and  Sind,  which 
Jahangir's  advisers  opposed  on  the  ground  that  the  struggle  between 
the  two  European  nations  would  thereby  be  extended  to  other  parts 
of  India;  while  most  of  the  remaining  demands  were  looked  upon  as 
matters  coming  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  emperor's  favourite  son, 
Prince  Khurram  (Shah  Jahan),  who  was  then  viceroy  of  Gujarat  and 
was  not  disposed  to  brook  any  interference  in  his  administration  of 
that  province.  In  the  end  Roe  had  to  content  himself  with  concluding 
an  arrangement  with  the  prince,  who  willingly  conceded  most  of  the 
privileges  desired.  The  ambassador  thus  failed  in  achieving  the 
particular  end  for  which  he  had  been  sent;  yet  he  had  done  all  that 
was  really  necessary,  and  indirectly  had  contributed  greatly  to  the 
establishment  of  his  countrymen's  position.  His  own  character  and 
abilities  raised  considerably  the  reputation  of  the  English  at  court; 
while  his  success  in  obtaining  the  punishment  of  the  local  officials 
when  guilty  of  oppression  taught  them  and  their  successors  to  be 
circumspect  in  their  dealings  with  the  English  traders.  His  sage 


ROE'S  EMBASSY  81 

advice  to  the  Company  did  much  also  in  guiding  the  development 
of  its  commerce  along  safe  and  profitable  lines,  particularly  in  regard 
to  the  commerce  with  Mokha  and  Persia. 

By  the  time  Roe  embarked  for  home  (February,  1619)  there  were 
regular  English  factories  at  Surat,  Agra,  Ahmadabad,  and  Broach. 
All  these  were  placed  under  the  authority  of  the  chief  factor  at  Surat, 
who  was  now  styled  the  President,1  and  who  in  addition  controlled  the 
trade  which  had  been  opened  up  with  the  Red  Sea  ports  and  in 
Persia.  These  trade  developments  led  to  trouble;  the  first  with  the 
Surat  merchants  who  had  so  long  enjoyed  this  commerce;  and  the 
second  with  the  Portuguese,  who,  if  now  hopeless  of  excluding  the 
English  from  India,  were  determined  to  keep  them,  if  possible,  from 
interfering  with  the  commerce  of  the  Persian  Gulf,  from  which  they 
derived  a  considerable  revenue.  In  this,  however,  they  failed  to  take 
sufficiently  into  account  the  attitude  of  the  Persian  monarch,  Shah 
Abbas,  who  had  already  extended  his  dominions  to  the  sea  and  was 
by  no  means  pleased  to  find  the  trade  of  Southern  Persia  controlled 
by  the  Portuguese  fortress  on  the  island  of  Ormuz.  He  was  desirous 
of  developing  the  new  port  of  Gombroon  (the  present  Bandar  Abbas), 
which  was  situated  on  the  mainland  opposite  to  Ormuz;  but  little 
headway  could  be  made  in  this  respect  while  the  Portuguese  compelled 
all  vessels  to  pay  dues  at  the  latter  place.  Naturally,  too,  he  welcomed 
English  overtures  for  a  seaborne  trade  with  Europe,  since  the  raw 
silk  of  his  northern  provinces  was  largely  in  his  hands  and  he  was 
anxious  to  divert  the  trade  as  much  as  possible  from  its  ordinary 
channel  through  the  dominions  of  his  hereditary  enemies  the  Turks. 
The  Portuguese,  on  their  side,  far  from  endeavouring  to  conciliate 
him,  dispatched  an  envoy  to  demand  the  restitution  of  Gombroon 
and  other  territory  conquered  from  their  vassal,  the  titular  king 
of  Ormuz,  together  with  the  exclusion  of  all  other  Europeans  from 
trade  in  his  country.  Both  demands  were  firmly  refused,  and  the 
shah  declared  his  intention  of  supporting  English  commerce  in  his 
dominions. 

The  determination  of  the  Company's  factors  to  take  full  advantage 
of  the  Persian  monarch's  friendship  quickly  led  to  fresh  hostilities 
with  the  Portuguese;  and  at  the  end  of  1620  a  fight  took  place  off 
Jask,  in  which  the  English  ships  gained  a  fresh  success.  Their  opponents 
once  more  committed  the  error  of  driving  an  Asiatic  power  into 
alliance  with  the  English,  for  they  now  declared  war  against  Shah 
Abbas  and  sent  a  fleet  to  destroy  his  port  towns.  The  enraged  monarch 
in  his  turn  dispatched  an  army  to  turn  the  Portuguese  out  of  Ormuz 
and  the  neighbouring  island  of  Kishm  ;  but  this  was  impossible  without 
the  aid  of  naval  power,  and  when  in  December,  1621,  a  strong 
English  fleet  arrived  to  cover  the  embarkation  of  the  Company's  silk, 
its  commanders  were  practically  forced,  by  threats  of  exclusion  from 

1  English  Factories  in  India,  1618-21,  p.  ix. 


cm  v 


84  THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

the  amenability  of  the  English  to  the  Dutch  tribunals  at  Batavia  and 
elsewhere;  while  soon  money  was  lacking  to  pay  the  English  share  of 
the  military  and  naval  charges.  The  result  was  that  the  English 
president  and  council  resolved  to  withdraw  their  factors  from  the 
various  Dutch  settlements,  since  they  could  no  longer  carry  out  their 
financial  engagements.  Before  this  could  be  effected  occurred  the 
famous  "Massacre  of  Amboina"  (February,  1623),  ten  members  of 
the  English  factory  there  being  tortured  and  put  to  death  by  the  Dutch 
authorities,  after  an  irregular  trial,  on  a  charge  of  conspiring  to  seize 
the  fortress.  This  virtually  put  an  end  to  the  alliance,  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  at  home,  after  protracted  negotiations,  a  fresh  agreement 
had  been  concluded  (January,  I623),1  which  removed  a  few  of  the 
causes  of  friction.  Early  in  1624  the  English  quitted  Batavia  and 
proceeded  to  form  a  new  head  settlement  of  their  own  upon  an  un- 
inhabited island  in  the  neighbouring  Straits  of  Sunda.  This,  however, 
proved  so  unhealthy  that  a  return  had  to  be  made  (with  Dutch 
assistance)  to  their  former  quarters  at  Batavia;  and  there  they  re- 
mained until  1628,  when  they  removed  once  again  to  their  old  station 
at  Bantam,  the  king  of  which  was  unfriendly  to  the  Dutch  and  power- 
ful enough  to  maintain  his  independence. 

As  we  have  seen,  the  treaty  of  1619  did  not  extend  to  Western  India, 
Persia,  or  the  Red  Sea,  being  in  fact  intended  only  for  the  regulation 
of  the  spice  and  pepper  trade.  But  the  Dutch  had  now  important 
interests  in  those  parts,  having  established  themselves  at  Surat  (1616), 
Ahmadabad  and  Agra  (1618),  Mokha  (1620),  and  in  Persia  (1623); 
and  they  were  quite  aware  that  the  surest  way  to  inflict  a  damaging 
blow  on  their  enemy  was  to  attack  him  in  Indian  and  Persian  waters. 
The  war  which  broke  out  in  1625  between  England  and  Spain, 
together  with  the  efforts  the  Portuguese  were  making  to  retrieve  their 
position  in  those  waters,  induced  the  Company's  servants  at  Surat  to 
join  the  Hollanders  in  active  hostilities.  Early  in  1625  an  Anglo- 
Dutch  fleet  defeated  a  Portuguese  squadron  near  Ormuz,  and  in  the 
following  year  a  similar  joint  expedition  destroyed  the  small  Por- 
tuguese settlement  on  the  island  of  Bombay.  Some  desultory  fighting 
took  place  during  the  next  few  years,  culminating  in  an  attack  on 
shore  at  SwaHy  (1630);  but  here  the  Portuguese  were  easily  routed 
by  a  small  force  of  English  sailors,  to  the  surprise  of  the  Indians,  who 
had  hitherto  deemed  the  former  invincible  on  land. 

In  this  same  year  peace  was  concluded  between  King  Charles  and 
King  Philip.  It  was  expected  in  London  that*  the  Portuguese  would 
recognise  the  futility  of  their  opposition  to  English  trade  in  the  East 
and  would  agree  to  admit  its  continuance;  but  the  Lisbon  authorities 
proved  unyielding  on  the  point,  and  the  Treaty  of  Madrid  left  matters 

1  British  Museum,  Add.  MSS,  22866,  f.  466  6;  also  Hague  Transcripts  (India  Office), 
series  i,  vol.  57,  no.  2,  The  version  given  in  Col.  S.P.,  E.  Indies,  1622-24,  no>  2^3>  " 
incorrect. 


CONVENTION  OF  GOA  85 

as  they  were  in  the  East  Indies.  However,  the  viceroy  of  Goa  and  his 
councillors  soon  began  to  listen  to  suggestions  of  accommodation. 
Hard  pressed  by  the  Dutch  and  involved  also  with  various  Asiatic 
foes,  with  ever-dwindling  resources  in  Portuguese  India  itself,  they 
thought  it  wise  to  remove  at  least  one  source  of  difficulty  and  danger 
by  making  a  truce  with  the  English.  The  latter,  on  their  side,  were 
eager  for  the  cessation  of  a  warfare  which  hampered  their  commercial 
operations  (already  suffering  greatly  from  the  effects  of  the  severe 
famine  of  1630-1)  and  necessitated  the  employment  of  costly  fleets  in 
maintaining  communication  with  4heir  other  settlements  and  with 
Europe;  and,  moreover,  they  were  well  aware  of  the  advantages  which 
would  result  from  the  opening  of  the  Portuguese  harbours  to  their 
ships  and  the  Portuguese  settlements  to  their  trade.  The  negotiations 
extended  over  a  considerable  period;  but  at  last,  in  January,  1635, 
William  Methwold,  the  English  president  at  Surat,  who  had  been  the 
moving  spirit,  had  the  satisfaction  of  signing  at  Goa  (on  his  way  home) 
an  accord1  with  the  viceroy,  which  established  a  truce  for  an  indefinite 
period — as  it  proved,  a  lasting  peace.  The  accord  was  extended  by 
the  Anglo-Portuguese  treaty  of  1642,  which  also  provided  for  the 
appointment  of  commissioners  to  settle  outstanding  questions;  but  it 
was  not  until  the  conclusion  of  Cromwell's  treaty  in  July,  1654,  that 
the  right  of  the  English  to  trade  freely  with  the  Portuguese  possessions 
in  the  East  (with  the  exception  of  Macao)  was  formally  recognised. 
The  Dutch  on  their  side  continued  the  war  with  increased  vigour 
and  almost  unvarying  success.  Year  after  year  they  blockaded  Goa 
during  the  season  for  the  arrival  and  departure  of  shipping;  allying 
themselves  with  the  king  of  Kandi,  they  captured  several  of  the  Por- 
tuguese strongholds  in  Ceylon;  and  in  1641,  aided  by  an  Achinese 
force,  they  made  themselves  masters  of  the  city  of  Malacca,  which 
controlled  the  traffic  between  India  and  China.  By  this  time  Portugal 
had  regained  her  independence  of  Spain  (December,  1640)  and  had 
opened  up  negotiations  with  Holland,  which  resulted  in  a  treaty 
suspending  hostilities  for  ten  years  and  leaving  the  Dutch  in  possession 
of  their  conquests  (June,  1641).  The  authorities  at  Batavia,  however, 
were  unwilling  to  halt  in  their  victorious  career,  and  it  was  not  until 
sixteen  months  later  that  the  truce  was  proclaimed  there.  Even  then 
there  were  disputes,  and  the  peace  did  not  become  effective  until 
November,  1644.  Troubles  over  Brazil  brought  about  a  renewal  of 
the  war  in  1652,  upon  the  expiration  of  the  truce.  Colombo  fell  in 
May,  1656,  and  Jaffna  (the  last  Portuguese  stronghold  in  Ceylon) 
two  years  later;  while  on  the  coast  of  India  Negapatam  and  all  the 
Portuguese  possessions  on  the  Malabar  littoral  to  the  southward  of 
Goa  were  taken  between  1658  and  1663.  Peace  between  the  two 
countries  had  been  concluded  in  1661;  but  the  news  of  this  did  not 
come  in  time  to  save  Cochin  and  Kannanur.  The  only  consolation 

1  English  Factories,  1634-6,  p.  88. 


86  THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

for  the  Portuguese  was  that  Dutch  schemes  for  the  conquest  of  their 
remaining  settlements  were  thus  foiled;  while  the  danger  of  attacks 
in  the  future  was  warded  off  by  an  English  guarantee,  as  related 
below. 

Meanwhile  England  had  in  1652  become  involved  in  a  war  with 
Holland.  At  home  the  Commonwealth  fleet  proved  victorious,  after 
a  hard  struggle,  and  Cromwell  was  able  to  dictate  practically  his  own 
terms  when  peace  was  made  in  1654.  In  the  East,  however,  the 
interests  of  the  English  had  suffered  considerably,  owing  to  the  pre- 
ponderance of  Dutch  naval  power  in  those  waters.  Though  the 
Company's  settlements  were  not  attacked,  for  fear  of  offending  the 
monarchs  in  whose  dominions  they  were  situated,  ship  after  ship  fell 
into  the  hands  of  the  Hollanders,  with  the  result  that  not  only  was 
heavy  loss  inflicted  upon  the  Company  but  English  prestige  suffered 
greatly,  both  in  India  and  in  Persia.  There  was,  however,  some  com- 
pensation in  the  outcome  of  the  war;  for  the  commissioners  appointed 
under  the  Treaty  of  Westminster  to  assess  damages  awarded  the 
English  Company  £85,000*  in  settlement  of  its  claims  against  its  Dutch 
rival,  decreed  the  restitution  of  the  island  of  Pulo  Run2  (in  the  Bandas) , 
and  provided  for  the  payment  of  damages  to  the  representatives  of 
those  Englishmen  who  had  suffered  at  Amboina  in  1623.  Of  these 
decisions  the  most  unpalatable  to  the  Dutch  was  the  second,  since  to 
allow  the  English  a  footing  in  the  Spice  Islands  meant  a  serious  breach 
in  the  Dutch  monopoly  of  cloves.  Every  mode  of  evasion  was  there- 
fore practised;  and  although  the  surrender  was  again  stipulated  in 
a  fresh  treaty  concluded  in  1662,  it  was  not  until  March,  1665,  that 
the  island  was  actually  made  over — only  to  be  retaken  in  the  following 
November,  on  the  receipt  of  the  news  of  the  outbreak  of  the  Second 
Dutch  War.  The  long-standing  dispute  was  finally  settled  by  the  peace 
of  1667,  which  assigned  the  island  to  Holland. 

A  further  consequence  of  the  hostilities  with  the  Dutch  in  1652-4 
was  a  tendency  on  the  part  of  both  English  and  Portuguese  in  the 
East  to  draw  together  for  mutual  support;  and  also  an  increased 
desire  on  the  part  of  the  former  to  find  some  defensible  spot  on  the 
western  coast  of  India,  where  they  could  be  secure  against  both  the 
exactions  of  Ijidian  officials  and  the  attacks  of  European  foes.  The 
provision  of  such  a  retreat  came,  however,  not  from  any  action  on 
the  part  of  the  East  India  Company  but  from  the  turn  of  events  upon 
the  accession  of  Charles  II.  By  a  secret  article  of  the  marriage  treaty 
with  Portugal  (1661)  England  guaranteed  the  Portuguese  possessions 

1  Of  this  amount  the  Commonwealth  government  at  once  borrowed  £50,000,  and  the 
loan  was  never  repaid  (Court  Minutes  of  the  E.  India  Co.,  1655-9,  P-  v)* 

*  This  island  had  been  made  over  to  the  English  by  its  inhabitants  in  1616,  in  hopes  of 
protection  against  the  Dutch,  who,  however,  took  advantage  of  the  subsequent  hostilities 
to  effect  its  capture.  By  the  Anglo-Dutch  accord  of  1623  it  was  recognised  as  English 
property,  but  the  weakness  of  the  East  India  Company  was  such  that  no  serious  attempt 
was  made  to  take  over  so  distant  a  possession,  though  proposals  to  that  effect  were  mooted 
from  time  to  time. 


CO-OPERATION  WITH  THE  PORTUGUESE         87 

in  the  East  against  the  Dutch,  and  to  facilitate  this  the  island  of 
Bombay  was  included  in  the  dowry  of  the  new  queen.  Owing  to 
difficulties  placed  in  the  way  by  the  local  officials,  to  whom  the 
arrangement  was  distasteful,  the  island  was  not  made  over  to  the 
king's  representatives  until  February,  1665.  Experience  soon  showed 
that  the  outlay  on  the  maintenance  and  development  of  the  new 
possession  would  make  too  heavy  a  demand  upon  the  royal  purse; 
and  on  27  March,  1668,  in  consideration  of  a  temporary  loan  of 
£50,000  at  6  per  cent.,  Charles  transferred  it  to  the  Company  at  a 
quitrent  of  £10  per  annum.1  The  actual  date  of  the  handing  over 
was  23  September  in  the  same  year. 

It  is  time  now  to  turn  our  attention  to  more  peaceful  topics  and  to 
note  the  progress  made  by  English  commerce  in  India  and  the  neigh- 
bouring countries.  The  friendly  relations  established  with  the  Por- 
tuguese by  the  convention  of  Goa  (1635)  much  improved  the  position 
of  the  East  India  Company's  servants  in  those  regions.  It  became 
possible  to  dispatch  ships  singly  to  and  from  England  and  to  develop 
unhindered  the  port-to-port  traffic,  using  for  this  purpose  mainly 
small  India-built  vessels  in  lieu  of  the  cumbrous  and  expensive  ships 
built  for  the  long  sea-voyage  out  and  home.  The  Malabar  Coast,  too, 
was  opened  to  English  trade,  with  the  result  that  saltpetre,  pepper, 
cardamoms,  and  cassia  lignea  (wild  cinnamon)  from  those  parts 
figured  largely  in  the  cargoes  of  the  homeward-bound  vessels.  The 
tightening  of  the  Dutch  monopoly  over  the  pepper  and  spice  trade 
of  the  Far  East  and  Ceylon  drove  the  English  to  rely  chiefly  on  the 
Malabar  trade  for  these  products.  In  Gujarat  agriculture  and  the 
textile  industry  had  not  yet  recovered  from  the  terrible  famine  of 
1 630-1 ,  and  the  Company's  factors  were  forced  to  look  for  fresh  sources 
of  supply  to  make  good  the  deficiency.  Now  that  the  menace  of  the 
Portuguese  flotilla  at  Maskat  was  removed,  trade  was  extended 
to  Lahribandar  and  Tatta  in  the  Indus  delta  (1635),  anc^  t°  Basra 
(1640);  while  at  the  same  time  the  commerce  with  Gombroon  was 
largely  developed,  partly  owing  to  the  eagerness  with  which  Asiatic 
merchants  availed  themselves  of  the  English  and  Dutch  vessels  for 
transporting  their  goods  between  India  and  Persia,  especially  during 
the  long  war  between  those  two  countries  over  the  possession  of 
Kandahar.  Ventures  were  even  made  to  Macao  and  Manilla;  but 
these  were  discouraged  by  the  Portuguese  and  Spaniards  respectively, 
as  soon  as  it  was  found  that  the  English  were  not  willing  to  risk  trouble 
with  the  Dutch  by  carrying  contraband  of  war;  and  so  no  permanent 
trade  resulted.  Further,  we  may  reckon  among  the  consequences  of 
the  Anglo-Portuguese  entente  the  establishment  of  an  English  settle- 
ment at  Madraspatam,  on  the  Coromandel  Coast;  for,  had  hostilities 
continued,  it  would  scarcely  have  been  prudent  to  settle  so  near  the 

1  The  payment  of  this  rent  has  been  traced  down  to  the  year  1730.  After  that  the 
treasury  seems  to  have  neglected  to  apply  for  it. 


88  THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

Portuguese  fortress  of  St  Thom<§.  Regarding  this  development 
something  must  now  be  said. 

We  have  already  noted  that  as  early  as  1 61 1  the  English  had  followed 
the  example  of  the  Dutch  in  starting  a  factory  at  Masulipatam,  the 
chief  port  of  the  kingdom  of  Golconda.  The  trade  here  was  valuable, 
particularly  in  piece-goods  for  export  to  Persia  and  to  Bantam;  while 
the  grant  in  1634  of  freedom  from  all  duties  gave  the  Company  a 
considerable  advantage  over  their  competitors,  including  the  Dutch. 
It  had  already  been  discovered,  however,  that  most  of  the  piece-goods 
wanted  for  the  trade  of  the  Far  East  were  procurable  at  cheaper  rates 
in  the  Hindu  territory  to  the  southwards,  under  the  dominion  of  the 
raja  of  the  Carnatic,  the  shrunken  remnant  of  the  once  extensive 
kingdom  of  Vijayanagar;  and  in  1626  the  factors  at  Masulipatam 
established  a  subsidiary  settlement  at  Armagon,  a  little  to  the  north- 
ward of  the  Dutch  fortress  at  Pulicat.  This  place  proved  to  have  many 
disadvantages,  especially  in  the  shallowness  and  exposed  nature  of 
the  roadstead;  and  so  in  1639  an  agreement  was  made  with  a  local 
ruler  a  little  further  south,  by  which  permission  was  obtained  to  erect 
a  fortified  factory  close  to  the  little  town  of  Madraspatam.  Thither 
the  English  removed  from  Armagon  in  February,  1640^  and  in 
September,  1641,  Fort  St  George  (as  the  new  station  was  named) 
superseded  Masulipatam  as  their  headquarters  on  the  Coromandel 
Coast.  In  thus  acquiring  a  fortified  settlement — a  privilege  which 
would  never  have  been  granted  in  Golconda  territory — the  factors 
were  only  just  in  time;  for  the  Hindu  kingdom  of  the  Carnatic  was 
already  tottering  under  the  attacks  of  its  Muhammadan  neighbours, 
and  in  1647  the  district  round  Madras  fell  into  the  hands  of  Mir 
Jumla,  the  leader  of  the  Golconda  forces.  The  English,  however,  were 
on  good  terms  with  him  and  easily  procured  his  confirmation  of  their 
privileges,  which  included  the  government  of  Madraspatam,  subject 
to  sharing  with  the  royal  treasury  the  customs  paid  by  strangers.1 

By  this  time  English  trade  on  the  eastern  side  of  India  had  been 
extended  from  Masulipatam  to  the  seaports  of  Orissa,  and  factories 
had  been  started  (1633)  at  Hariharpur  (in  the  Mahanadi  delta)  and 
at  Balasore.  In  1650-1,  following  the  example  of  the  Dutch,  this 
commerce  wa§  carried  into  Bengal  itself  and  a  settlement  made  at 
Hugli.  Before  long  factories  were  planted  at  Patna  and  Kasimbazar; 
but  for  some  years  little  benefit  resulted  to  the  Company,  owing  to 
the  large  amount  of  private  trade  carried  on  by  its  servants.  However, 
the  commerce  on  the  eastern  side  of  India  grew  steadily  in  importance 
as  the  merits  of  the  Coromandel  piece-goods  came  to  be  recognised 
at  home  and  as  Bengal  sugar  and  saltpetre  were  likewise  found  to  be 

1  This  division  of  the  customs  continued  until  1658,  when  it  was  agreed  that  an  annual 
sum  of  380  pagodas  should  be  paid  as  the  royal  share.  After  much  dispute,  the  agreement 
was  revised  in  1672  and  the  amount  was  raised  to  1200  pagodas  per  annum.  For  eighty 
years  that  sum  was  regularly  paid,  and  then  it  was  remitted  altogether  by  Muhammad 
'All,  nawab  of  the  Carnatic. 


COROMANDEL  FACTORIES  89 

in  demand;  and  a  considerable  trade  was  consequently  established 
between  the  coast  and  England.  In  1652,  under  the  stress  of  the  war 
with  the  Dutch,  the  seat  of  the  eastern  presidency  wets  removed  from 
Bantam  to  Fort  St  George.  Three  years  after,  however,  camo  the 
partial  collapse  of  the  Company  described  on  a  later  page.  Orders 
were  sent  out  for  the  abandonment  of  the  factories  in  Bengal  and  the 
reduction  of  those  on  the  coast  to  two,  viz.  Fort  St  George  and 
Masulipatam,  with  a  corresponding  diminution  of  staff.  From  a 
presidency  the  coast  became  once  more  an  agency,  though  Greenhill, 
who  had  succeeded  to  the  post  of  president  before  the  Company's 
orders  arrived,  was  generally  accorded  the  higher  title  until  his  death 
at  the  beginning  of  1659.  The  period  of  his  administration  was  the 
low-water  mark  of  the  Company's  trade  in  those  parts,  owing  to  the 
financial  weakness  at  home  and  the  competition  of  private  ventures. 
The  revival  that  followed  the  grant  by  Cromwell  of  a  new  charter 
will  be  the  theme  of  a  later  page. 

Meanwhile  we  must  look  back  to  1635  an^  follow  the  course  of  the 
Company's  affairs  at  home.  The  Convention  of  Goa,  which  produced 
such  beneficial  results  in  the  East,  had  in  England  the  unexpected 
result  of  arousing  a  dangerous  competition.  Financially  the  success 
of  the  Company  had  by  no  means  answered  expectations.  The  earliest 
voyages,  it  is  true,  had  proved  very  profitable;  but  when  the  full 
burden  of  maintaining  so  many  factories  was  felt,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  losses  caused  by  Dutch  competition  and  the  resulting  quarrels, 
the  profits  fell  off  and  the  capital  required  to  carry  on  the  trade  was 
raised  with  ever-increasing  difficulty.  The  system  adopted — that  of 
terminable  stocks — each  of  which  was  wound  up  in  turn  and  its  assets 
distributed,  had  many  drawbacks.  The  plan  was  perhaps  the  only 
practicable  one;  but  it  tended  to  prevent  the  adoption  of  any  con- 
tinuous or  long-sighted  policy,  and  it  concentrated  attention  on 
immediate  profits;  while,  since  it  necessitated  a  fresh  subscription 
every  few  years,  it  exposed  the  Company  to  the  effects  of  any  stringency 
prevailing  in  the  money  market.  Owing  largely  to  political  troubles, 
the  period  from  1636  to  1660  was  one  of  general  depression  of  trade, 
especially  towards  the  end  of  the  Commonwealth ;  and  this  depression, 
together  with  the  practical  loss  of  its  monopoly,  went  perilously  near 
to  extinguishing  the  Company.  During  the  twenty  years  following 
1 6g6  the  capital  raised  for  four  successive  Stocks  aggregated  only 
about  £600,000,  whereas  in  1631  a  single  subscription  (that  for  the 
Third  Joint  Stock)  had  produced  over  £420,000,  while  further  back 
still  (1617)  no  less  a  sum  than  £1,600,000  had  been  subscribed  for 
the  Second  Joint  Stock. 

These  financial  difficulties,  and  the  small  amount  of  profit  earned 
in  comparison  with  the  Dutch  East  India  Company,  evoked  much 
criticism  of  the  Company's  general  policy,  together  with  some  im- 
patience that  so  large  a  sphere  of  possible  commercial  activity  should 


go  THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

be  monopolised  by  a  body  that  was  apparently  incapable  of  dealing 
with  more  than  a  portion  of  it.  The  colonising  movement — stimulated 
by  the  success  of  the  plantations  on  the  American  seaboard  and  in  the 
West  India  islands — produced  suggestions  that  something  more  was 
required  than  the  leaving  of  a  few  factors  here  and  there  in  the  East 
Indies,  and  that  English  trade  in  those  regions  would  never  flourish 
until  it  was  based,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Dutch  and  the  Portuguese, 
upon  actual  settlements  independent  of  the  caprice  of  local  rulers  and 
strong  enough  to  resist  their  attacks.  The  prospect  of  a  considerable 
extension  of  commerce  as  the  result  of  the  Convention  of  Goa,  and 
the  apparent  inability  of  the  existing  Company  to  take  full  advantage 
of  this  opportunity,  provided  a  plausible  excuse  for  those  who  were 
eager  to  engage  in  the  trade  on  their  own  lines;  and  by  the  close  of 
the  same  year  (1635)  a  rival  body — commonly  known  as  Courteen's 
Association,  from  the  name  of  its  principal  shareholder — was  formed 
in  London  to  trade  with  China,  Japan,  the  Malabar  Coast,  and  other 
parts  in  which  the  East  India  Company  had  not  yet  established 
factories.  Endymion  Porter,  one  of  the  royal  favourites,  was  an  active 
supporter  of  the  project,  and  it  was  doubtless  owing  in  great  part  to 
his  influence  that  King  Charles  lent  his  countenance  to  the  new  asso- 
ciation by  issuing  a  royal  commission  for  the  first  voyage  and  by 
granting  to  Courteen  and  his  partners  letters-patent  which  practically 
established  them  as  a  rival  East  India  Company  (1637).  The  pro- 
moters of  the  new  venture,  however,  soon  found  their  expectations 
disappointed.  The  result  of  the  first  voyage  was  a  heavy  loss,  for  the 
leaders,  Weddell  and  Mountney,  disappeared  with  their  two  vessels 
beneath  the  waves  of  the  Indian  Ocean  on  their  homeward  way  in 
1639.  Sir  William  Courteen  had  died  shortly  after  the  departure  of 
that  fleet,  and  his  son  had  succeeded  to  a  heritage  much  encumbered 
by  the  cost  of  the  venture;  still,  he  struggled  hard  to  maintain  the 
trade,  with  the  assistance  of  friends  and  of  other  merchants  anxious 
to  compete  with  the  regular  Company.  Factories  were  established  at 
various  places  on  the  Malabar  Coast — Rajapur,  Bhatkal,  Karwar; 
and  Courteen's  captains  did  not  hesitate,  in  spite  of  the  limitations 
in  his  patent,  to  visit  Surat,  Gombroon,  Basra,  and  other  places  within 
the  sphere  of  the  East  India  Company.  But  what  was  gained  in  one 
direction  was  lost  in  another;  money  was  wasted  in  ill-judged  enter- 
prises, such  as  the  attempt  to  establish  a  colony  at  St  Augustine's  Bay 
in  Madagascar  ( 1 645-6) ; *  and  supplies  from  home  were  both  irregular 
and  inadequate,  with  the  result  that  one  factory  after  another  had  to 
be  abandoned.  About  1645  Courteen  himself  withdrew  to  the  con- 
tinent to  escape  the  importunities  of  his  creditors;  and  although  other 
merchants  continued  to  send  out  ships  under  licence  from  him,  their 
interference  with  the  operations  of  the  East  India  Company  became 
almost  negligible. 

1  For  this  sec  Foster,  "An  English  settlement  in  Madagascar,"  in  the  English  Historical 
Review,  xxvn,  239. 


TROUBLES  OF  THE  COMPANY  91 

However,  the  monopoly  of  the  latter,  once  broken,  was  not  easily 
re-established;  especially  as,  after  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War,  the 
Company  was  no  longer  able  to  invoke  the  protection  of  its  royal 
charter,  and  the  efforts  made  to  induce  the  parliament  to  grant  a 
fresh  one  proved  fruitless.  An  attempt  in  1649  to  ra^se  capital  for  a 
new  joint  stock  was  frustrated  by  the  appearance  of  another  rival 
body  (consisting  partly  of  those  who  had  acted  with  Courteen), 
headed  by  Lord  Fairfax,  with  a  scheme  for  establishing  colonies  in 
the  East,  particularly  on  Assada  (an  island  off  the  north-western  coast 
of  Madagascar),  on  Pulo  Run  (when  it  should  be  recovered  from  the 
Dutch),  and  on  some  part  of  the  coast  of  India — all  these  being  in- 
tended to  serve  as  fortified  centres  of  commerce,  after  the  pattern  of 
Goa  and  Batavia.  Under  pressure  from  the  Council  of  State,  both 
bodies  agreed  to  a  modified  scheme  under  which  the  trade  was  con- 
tinued by  a  "United  Joint  Stock"  for  five  years,  much  on  the  previous 
lines.  The  attempt  to  colonise  Assada  proved  an  utter  failure,  and  the 
chief  outcome  of  the  new  stock  was  the  establishment  of  trade  at 
Hugli  and  other  inland  places  in  Bengal.  In  1653-4  (as  already 
noted)  the  position  of  the  English  in  the  East  was  severely  shaken  by 
the  successes  of  the  Dutch  in  the  war  that  had  broken  out  between 
the  two  nations;  and  when  the  five  years  for  which  the  United  Joint 
Stock  had  undertaken  to  send  out  ships  came  to  an  end,  it  was  found 
impossible,  in  the  disturbed  state  of  England,  to  raise  further  capital. 
Private  merchants  took  advantage  of  the  situation  to  dispatch  a 
considerable  number  of  ships  and,  although  the  Company  did  not 
altogether  cease  its  operations,  they  were  on  a  much  diminished  scale. 
The  retrenchments  made  in  consequence  on  the  eastern  side  of  India 
have  been  already  noted ;  in  the  MoghuFs  dominions  Agra  and  other 
inland  stations  were  ordered  to  be  abandoned;  and  English  trade 
was  practically  confined  to  a  few  seaports.  Such  was  the  state  of  things 
when  the  grant  of  a  fresh  exclusive  charter  by  Cromwell  in  1657  put 
new  life  into  the  Company  and  enabled  an  effective  trading  stock  to 
be  raised. 

The  commerce  of  the  English  in  India,  though  temporarily  at  a 
low  ebb,  was  by  this  time  firmly  established;  and  it  may  be  well  to 
examine  briefly  its  general  character  and  the  conditions  under  which 
it  was  carried  on.1  When  the  English  commenced  to  trade  in  the 
dominions  of  the  Moghul,  they  found  there  a  voluminous  and  valuable 
commerce  and  a  well-developed  mercantile  system.  Expert  mer- 
chants, often  commanding  large  supplies  of  capital,  were  established 
in  all  the  principal  centres;  money  could  be  remitted  readily  between 
the  chief  towns  by  means  of  bills  of  exchange;  and  marine  insurance 
is  mentioned  as  early  as  1622.  The  chief  trend  of  trade  was  westwards, 
either  by  land  through  Kandahar  to  Persia  or  else  by  sea  through  the 

1  For  a  detailed  account  see  Foster,  "English  commerce  with  India  1608-58,"  in  the 
Journal  of  the  Royd  Society  of  Arts,  19  April,  1918. 


94  THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

that  the  English  and  Dutch  were  mighty  at  sea  and  could  easily  stop 
the  commerce  of  a  port — thereby  injuring  the  customs  revenue — 
formed  a  powerful  restraint.  As  President  Blackman  explained  in 
1652  to  the  governor  of  a  Malabar  port  that  was  undergoing  dis- 
ciplinary treatment  in  this  way,  "God  hath  given  us  power  on  the  sea 
that,  if  wee  bee  wronged  on  the  land,  wee  may  right  ourselves  there" ; 
and  although  such  action  involved  serious  risks,  neither  the  English 
nor  the  Dutch  hesitated  to  take  it  when  more  peaceable  methods 
failed. 

One  great  hindrance  to  the  Company's  trade,  both  outwards  and 
homewards,  was  the  competition  of  goods  brought  out  or  taken  home 
by  its  own  servants.  For  some  time  attempts  were  made  to  suppress 
this  private  trade  by  requiring  the  factors  and  ships'  officers  to  sign 
penalty  bonds  and  by  confiscating  their  goods  when  they  offended; 
later  on,  lists  were  drawn  up  of  commodities  in  which  the  Company's 
employees  might  legitimately  speculate,  while  leaving  to  their  masters 
the  trade  in  the  more  valuable  items.  But  all  was  in  vain.  The  articles 
which  the  Company  wished  to  engross  were  naturally  those  most  in 
demand  and  yielding  the  highest  profits.  Men  went  to  the  East  to  make 
money — for  their  meagre  wages  offered  no  temptation — and  though 
some  refrained  from  trenching  upon  their  employers'  monopolies, 
most  had  no  scruple  in  taking  advantage  of  every  opportunity  that 
presented  itself.  Capital  was  easily  procured  from  friends  at  home  or 
from  Indian  merchants,  who  were  only  too  glad  to  share  thus  in  the 
benefits  of  the  privileges  accorded  to  English  goods,  including  favour- 
able terms  of  freight  and  freedom  from  customs  at  Gombroon,  Fort 
St  George,  Masulipatam,  and  elsewhere.  At  last,  finding  it  hopeless 
to  suppress  such  competition  in  the  port-to-port  trade  (which  the 
factors  could  carry  on,  if  necessary,  under  the  names  of  Indian  mer- 
chants), the  Company  in  1661  resolved  to  confine  itself  to  the  direct 
trade  between  England  and  India.  Another  step  in  the  same  direction 
was  taken  in  1664,  when  the  trade,  outwards  and  homewards,  in 
jewels,  musk,  civet,  ambergris,  etc.,  was  thrown  open,  subject  to 
registration  and  the  payment  of  a  small  percentage  for  "permission 
and  freight".  After  this  the  Company's  efforts  were  mainly  devoted 
to  preventing  at  home  the  exportation  or  importation  of  forbidden 
goods,  seizing  them  when  found  and  inflicting  penalties  on  those 
responsible.  Even  then  its  success  was  by  no  means  great;  and  at 
home,  as  in  the  East,  its  profits  suffered  considerably  by  this  illicit 
traffic. 

Cromwell's  hesitation  to  grant  a  fresh  monopoly  of  Eastern  trade 
on  the  lines  of  previous  charters  was  largely  due  to  an  acute  difference 
of  opinion  amongst  those  concerned  as  to  the  advisability  of  continuing 
the  \oiat-stock  Astern,  A  strong  party ,  including  several  merchants 
WViose  inStaence  wfti  foe^ioXecXoi  vm  com&tT&Jte,  ycdtitt^  ^cvt 
" regulated  system"  followed  by  the  Levant  and  certain  other  com- 


CROMWELL'S  CHARTER  95 

panics,  permitting  members  to  trade  independently.  The  controversy 
lasted  long  enough  to  give  the  system  of  more  or  less  open  trade  a 
trial;  for  since  the  United  Joint  Stock  virtually  ceased  to  send  out 
capital  after  1654,  while  the  charter  restrictions  were  quite  inopera- 
tive, for  about  three  years  the  markets  of  the  East  were  free  to  all 
comers.  As  we  have  seen,  advantage  was  taken  of  this  by  a  number 
of  merchants,  including  many  members  of  the  Company,  to  dispatch 
ships  to  the  Indies;  but  the  results  were  far  from  satisfactory  to  those 
responsible  for  the  ventures.  In  India  itself  there  ensued  a  ruinous 
competition  among  their  agents,  both  in  the  sale  of  their  cargoes  and 
in  the  purchase  of  goods  for  the  return  voyage;  while  at  home  the 
rush  to  dispose  of  the  latter  produced  a  disheartening  drop  in  prices. 
The  merchants  concerned  soon  realised  that  after  all  there  were 
advantages  in  the  old  system,  under  which  such  competition  was 
eliminated.  A  further  sobering  influence  was  exerted  by  the  con- 
tinued successes  of  the  Dutch  and  their  evident  intention  of  ousting 
the  Portuguese  from  their  remaining  possessions  in  India.  The  most 
likely  method  of  countering  such  schemes  seemed  to  be  to  oppose  to 
them  a  united  front  such  as  could  scarcely  be  expected  from  a 
"regulated"  company;  and  it  may  be  added  that  the  spectacle  of 
the  prosperity  attained  by  the  Dutch  East  India  Company— itself 
working  by  means  of  a  joint  stock — probably  went  far  to  remove  the 
prejudice  which  had  been  inspired  against  the  system  by  the  poor 
results  secured  by  the  English  Company  in  recent  years.  It  is  there- 
fore not  surprising  to  find  that  by  February,  1657,  the  principal 
merchants  engaged  in  the  trade,  including  many  of  the  chief  "inter- 
lopers", were  agreed  in  desiring  the  continuance  of  the  joint-stock 
system.  At  the  same  time  the  existing  Company  resolved  to  endure 
no  further  delay,  but  to  dispose  by  auction  of  all  its  rights  and  privileges 
and  to  withdraw  from  the  trade.  This  quickly  produced  a  decision 
on  the  part  of  the  Protector  and  his  advisers  to  grant  a  charter  sub- 
stantially pn  the  lines  of  those  of  Elizabeth  and  James  I ;  and  on 
19  October,  1657,  this  document  passed  the  great  seal.1  Thereupon 
a  new  joint  stock  of  nearly  £740,000  was  subscribed,  though  as  a 
matter  of  fact  only  one-half  of  the  capital  was  ever  called  up.  The 
new  stock,  it  is  important  to  note,  was  to  be  a  permanent  one,  with 
the  proviso  that  periodical  valuations  (the  first  being  fixed  for  1664) 
were  to  be  made,  when  shareholders  were  to  be  allowed  to  withdraw 
their  proportionate  shares  of  the  assets.  For  the  first  time,  therefore, 
the  Company  acquired  a  fixed  capital,  in  lieu  of  successive  stocks 
raised  and  distributed  at  short  intervals. 

Cromwell's  charter  of  course  lost  its  validity  upon  the  restoration 
of  the  monarchy.  King  Charles,  however,  made  no  difficulty  about 
granting  a  fresh  one  (3  April,  1661),  which  repeated  with  certain 
modifications  and  additions  the  grant  of  1609.  Power  was  given  to 

1  For  its  terms  see  Court  Minutes,  1655-59,  p.  xvii. 


g6  THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

the  Company  to  seize  and  send  home  interlopers:  to  wage  war  and 
conclude  peace  with  non-Christian  princes :  and  to  appoint  governors, 
who,  in  conjunction  with  their  councils,  were  to  exercise  civil  and 
criminal  jurisdiction  at  the  various  settlements.  Under  this  authority 
the  agent  at  Madras  was  in  1666  created  governor  of  Fort  St  George; 
while  on  the  acquisition  of  Bombay  the  Company  in  like  manner 
appointed  the  Surat  president  to  be  governor  of  that  island.  In  view 
of  later  controversies,  it  is  worth  noting  that  the  Company  begged 
the  king  to  get  the  new  charter  confirmed  by  parliament.  Some  steps 
were  taken  in  that  direction,  but  nothing  was  achieved.  Similarly, 
in  the  case  of  Cromwell's  charter,  the  Protector  had  promised  to 
obtain  parliamentary  sanction  for  the  Company's  privileges,  but  had 
failed  to  do  so. 

The  East  India  Company  now  entered  upon  a  period  of  great 
commercial  prosperity,  due  chiefly  to, the  increasing  demand  for 
calicoes,  tea,  and  coffee.  Although  for  some  years  it  prudently  re- 
frained from  distributing  its  profits,  using  them  instead  to  strengthen 
its  position,  a  dividend  of  20  per  cent,  on  the  paid-up  capital  was 
distributed  in  each  of  the  years  1662-4,  and  one  of  double  that  amount 
in  1665.  The  losses  sustained  in  the  two  wars  with  Holland  (1665-7 
and  1672-4)  caused  a  temporary  set-back;  but  in  the  main  a  satis- 
factory rate  of  dividend  was  maintained,  and  in  1682  the  Company 
was  able  not  only  to  pay  50  per  cent,  in  money  but  also  to  declare  a 
bonus  of  double  that  figure,  crediting  each  shareholder  with  the  half- 
payment  still  due  on  the  original  subscription.  John  Evelyn,  who 
had  been  one  of  the  subscribers  in  1657,  records  in  his  diary  that  he 
now  sold  his  share  of  £500  (on  which  he  had  paid  £250)  to  the  Royal 
Society  for  £750.  Had  he  retained  it  until  1691,  it  would  have  given 
him  an  annual  average  of  nearly  22  per  cent,  on  his  original  outlay. 

The  prosperity  enjoyed  by  the  Company  throughout  the  reign  of 
Charles  II  excited  some  dissatisfaction  among  the  general  body  of 
English  merchants,  who  felt  themselves  aggrieved  that  this^  profitable 
commerce  should  be  confined  by  royal  charter  within  so  narrow  a 
channel.  In  the  East  there  were  not  wanting  interlopers  who  boldly 
defied  the  Company's  authority;  while  at  home  the  right  of  any 
power  other  than  parliament  to  impose  such  restrictions  upon  foreign 
trade  was  continually  questioned.  Some  attempts  were  made  within 
the  Company  itself  to  widen  its  membership  and  give  greater  elas- 
ticity; but  these  had  little  result,  as  the  majority  held  firmly  to  their 
rights  of  monopoly.  In  1683-5  the  *ssue  was  fought  out  in  the  law 
courts,  with  the  result  that  Chief  Justice  Jeffreys  upheld  the  legality 
of  the  Company's  privileges  and  confirmed  its  claim  to  seize  inter- 
lopers. The  victory  seemed  complete.  Sir  Josia  Child,  who  was  the 
dominant  figure  in  the  Company's  administration,  had  secured  the 
favour  of  both  King  Charles  and  his  brother  James ;  and  the  latter, 
a  year  after  his  accession,  gave  the  Company  a  fresh  charter  confirming 


ATTACKS  ON  THE  COMPANY  97 

all  its  privileges.  Then  came  an  unexpected  blow  in  the  shape  of  the 
Revolution.  The  new  government  was  largely  dependent  on  the  Whig 
party,  and  the  hopes  of  the  opponents  of  monopoly  rose  high.    A 
vigorous  campaign  was  organised  in  support  of  the  demand  for  a 
revision  of  the  existing  system;  while  the  press  teemed  with  pamphlets 
for  and  against  the  Company,  to  whose  enemies  were  now  added  the 
various  traders  who  were  affected  by  its  importation  of  printed 
calicoes  and  manufactured  silks.  The  battle  was  long  and  furious. 
The  Company  defended  itself  ably  and  at  times  unscrupulously;  but 
the  arguments  of  its  opponents  made  a  great  impression,  and  public 
feeling  was  on  the  whole  in  favour  of  their  claims.   Early  in  1690  a 
parliamentary  committee  recommended  that  the  trade  should  be 
granted  to  a  new  joint-stock  body,  to  be  established  by  act;  and  two 
years  later  the  House  of  Commons,  after  the  failure  of  a  bill  intended 
to  widen  the  existing  Company  by  increasing  its  capital  to  £i  ,500,000, 
presented  an  address  to  King  William,  praying  him  to  withdraw  the 
current  charter  and  grant  a  fresh  one  on  such  terms  as  he  might  see 
fit.  This  could  not  be  done  without  three  years'  notice;  but  while 
discussion  was  proceeding,  the  Company  itself,  by  omitting  to  pay 
punctually  a  tax  recently  imposed,  forfeited  its  charter.1  A  new  grant 
was  made  in  October,  1693,  which  practically  carried  out  the  wishes 
of  parliament  by  doubling  the  capital,  restricting  the  amount  of  stock 
that  could  be  held  by  any  one  member,  and  providing  that  any  mer- 
chant might  join  on  payment  of  £5.  This  arrangement,  however, 
though  it  considerably  increased  the  number  of  shareholders,  did  not 
pacify  the  Company's  opponents.   Attempts  were  still  made  to  dis- 
regard the  charter  by  sending  out  private  ships;  and,  upon  the  Com- 
pany endeavouring  to  stop  one  of  these  (nominally  bound  for  a  Spanish 
port),  the  matter  was  carried  to  the  House  of  Commons.  A  committee 
was  appointed  which  reported  that  the  detention  was  illegal,  and  in 
January,  1694,  the  House  passed  a  resolution  "that  all  the  subjects 
of  England  have  equal  right  to  trade  to  the  East  Indies,  unless  pro- 
hibited by  Act  of  Parliament".  This  naturally  caused  much  exulta- 
tion among  the  Company's  enemies,  who  were  now  able  to  allege 
parliamentary  authority  for  trading  in  the  forbidden  area. 

In  1695  competition  was  threatened  from  an  unexpected  quarter. 
Seventy-eight  years  earlier  James  I  had  granted  a  patent  for  a  Scottish 
East  India  Company,  but  had  soon  cancelled  it  under  pressure  from 
his  English  subjects.  Now  the  project  was  revived,  and  the  Scottish 
Parliament  passed  an  act  incorporating  a  company  for  the  purpose  of 
trading  to  Africa  and  the  East  and  West  Indies.  By  the  terms  of  the 
act  half  the  capital  might  be  held  outside  Scotland;  and  when  it  was 

1  Sir  William  Hunter  has  suggested  (History  of  British  India,  n,  310)  that  this  was  done 
of  set  purpose,  Child  being  convinced  that  his  lavish  bribery  at  court  would  enable  him 
to  secure  a  fresh  charter  on  favourable  terms.  It  seems,  however,  unlikely  that  the  Company 
would  in  this  way  put  itself  at  the  mercy  of  the  government,  and  the  actual  outcome  was 
that  it  had  to  concede  many  of  the  demands  it  had  so  long  resisted. 


CM  v 


98  THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

found  that  £300,000  had  been  secretly  subscribed  in  London,  the 
English  Company  in  alarm  brought  the  matter  before  both  Houses 
of  Parliament.  National  jealousy  came  at  once  into  play,  with  the 
result  that  the  Commons  resolved  to  take  drastic  action  against  the 
subscribers  and  to  impeach  the  promoters  of  the  scheme.  This  deterred 
the  English  members  from  paying  up  their  subscriptions,  and  so  the 
financial  position  of  the  new  venture  was  seriously  weakened.  The 
dreaded  competition  in  the  East  Indies  never  eventuated,  for  the  new 
Company's  energies  were  exhausted  in  a  disastrous  attempt  to  found 
a  settlement  at  Darien,  in  Central  America;  yet  the  opposition  of 
England  rankled  long  in  Scottish  breasts,  despite  the  fact  that  one 
of  the  articles  for  the  union  of  the  two  kingdoms  provided  for  the 
repayment  to  the  shareholders  of  their  capital  with  interest. 

In  England  the  uncertainty  prevailing  as  to  the  validity  of  the  East 
India  Company's  privileges  led  that  body  to  apply  in  1696  for  par- 
liamentary sanction  to  its  trade;  but  this  proved  unsuccessful.  How- 
ever, two  years  later  the  financial  needs  of  King  William's  government 
brought  the  matter  to  an  issue.  The  monopoly  was  virtually  put  up 
to  auction  between  the  contending  bodies.  The  existing  Company, 
which,  owing  to  great  losses  during  the  war  with  France,  was  not  in 
a  position  to  make  a  high  bid,  offered  to  increase  its  capital  to 
£1,500,000,  and  out  of  this  to  make  a  loan  to  the  government  of 
£700,000  at  4  per  cent,  interest;  while  its  competitors  undertook  to 
form  a  new  company  which  would  lend  £2,000,000  at  8  per  cent. 
The  latter  terms,  despite  the  higher  rate  of  interest,  proved  the  more 
attractive,  and  a  bill  providing  for  a  loan  on  these  conditions  was 
introduced.  Thereupon  the  East  India  Company  offered  to  find  the 
£2,000,000  required,  since  its  privileges  could  not  be  saved  on  any  other 
terms;  but  the  proposal  came  too  late,  and  the  bill  received  the  royal 
assent  in  July,  1698.  It  provided  for  a  subscription  of  £2,000,000 
sterling  as  a  loan  to  the  state,  which  in  return  would  grant  to  a 
"General  Society",  made  up  of  the  subscribers,  the  exclusive  right 
of  trading  to  the  East  Indies,  with  a  saving  clause  allowing  the  existing 
Company  to  continue  its  operations  until  the  expiry  of  the  three  years' 
notice  required  by  its  charter,  i.e.  until  September,  1701.  The  con- 
cession made  to  the  new  body  was  to  last  until  the  government  repaid 
the  loan,  and  this  was  not  to  be  done  until  after  1711.  The  members 
of  the  "General  Society"  might  either  trade  separately,  to  the  value 
each  year  of  the  amounts  they  had  severally  subscribed,  or  they  might 
unite  in  a  fresh  joint-stock  company  to  which  His  Majesty  was  em- 
powered to  grant  a  suitable  charter.  The  great  bulk  of  the  subscribers 
chose  the  latter  alternative,  and  on  5  September,  1698,  they  were 
accordingly  incorporated  by  royal  charter  under  the  style  of  "The 
English  Company  Trading  to  the  East  Indies".  The  management 
was  entrusted  to  twenty-four  directors,  who  were  to  appoint  from 
among  themselves  a  chairman  and  deputy-chairman;  and  we  may 


THE  UNITED  COMPANY  99 

note  in  passing  that  the  shareholders  were  not  required,  as  in  the 
earlier  Company,  to  pay  a  separate  sum  for  admission  to  the 
freedom. 

The  new  body  set  to  work  with  energy.  Ships  and  factors  were 
dispatched  to  the  East ;  while  a  special  ambassador,  Sir  William  Norris, 
was  sent  to  obtain  from  the  Moghul  emperor  the  grant  of  all  necessary 
privileges.  However,  it  soon  became  apparent  that  to  oust  the  older 
Company  from  its  well-established  position  was  a  task  beyond  the 
strength  of  the  new  corporation.  Its  original  capital  having  been  lent 
to  the  government  and  the  interest  received  thereon  being  insufficient 
to  maintain  the  trade,  fresh  money  had  to  be  raised  from  the  members, 
and  this  proved  difficult  of  accomplishment.  Moreover,  the  "Old 
Company"  (as  it  was  now  termed)  had  taken  the  precaution  to  sub- 
scribe, in  the  name  of  its  treasurer,  £315,000  to  the  loan,  thereby 
obtaining  the  right  to  trade  in  his  name  each  year  to  that  amount, 
even  after  the  expiration  of  its  privileges;  while  the  difficulty  that 
the  Company  would  cease  to  be  a  corporate  body  when  its  notice 
expired  was  surmounted  in  April,  1 700,  by  obtaining  an  act  permitting 
its  continuance  under  its  own  name  until  the  repayment  of  the 
£2,000,000  loan.  This  astute  move  decided  the  issue.  The  "New 
Company"  had  already  made  tentative  proposals  for  an  amalgama- 
tion, and  as  time  went  on  this  was  seen  on  both  sides  to  be  the  only 
possible  solution.  Under  pressure  from  the  government,  an  agreement 
was  reached  early  in  1702.  The  actual  direction  of  the  trade  during 
the  process  of  amalgamation  was  entrusted  to  a  body  of  "Managers", 
half  to  be  appointed  by  each  Company,  the  annual  exports  being 
provided  in  equal  proportions  by  the  two  bodies.  This  arrangement 
was  to  last  for  seven  years,  during  which  the  servants  of  both  Com- 
panies in  the  East  were  to  clear  all  debts  and  wind  up  the  separate 
stocks  sent  out  before  the  union.  At  the  end  of  the  time  the  Old 
Company  was  to  surrender  its  charter  and  make  over  the  islands  of 
Bombay  and  St  Helena  to  the  New  Company,  the  charter  of  which 
was  to  be  henceforth  the  basis  of  "The  United  Company  of  Merchants 
of  England  Trading  to  the  East  Indies".  Further,  the  Old  Company 
was  to  purchase  from  the  New  sufficient  stock  to  equalise  their 
respective  shares;  while  the  latter  was  to  pay  to  the  former  half 
the  difference  between  the  values  of  the  respective  "dead  stocks" 
(i.e.  buildings,  etc.)  in  the  East. 

This  agreement  still  left  room  for  disputes,  to  settle  which  an  act 
was  passed  in  March,  1708,  under  which  the  Earl  of  Godolphin  was 
appointed  arbitrator;  the  term  of  the  Company's  privileges  was 
extended  by  another  fifteen  years ;  and  it  was  given  the  right  of  buying 
out  those  members  of  the  "General  Society"  who  had  elected  to  trade 
on  their  own  account.  In  return  for  these  concessions  the  United 
Company  was  required  to  lend  the  exchequer  a  further  sum  of 
£1,200,000  without  interest — thus  reducing  the  rate  of  interest  on 

7-* 


ioo  THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

the  whole  debt  to  5  per  cent.  Godolphin's  award  was  issued  in 
September,  1 708,  and  the  union  was  consummated  in  the  following 
March.  The  struggle  was  now  at  an  end;  and  it  is  interesting  to  note 
that  its  result  was  to  confirm  the  monopoly  of  the  trade  to  a  chartered 
joint-stock  company,  though  on  an  improved  basis.  The  right  of 
parliament  to  control  the  conditions  of  this  concession  had,  however, 
been  established;  also  the  principle  of  requiring  in  return  some 
assistance  towards  the  national  finances. 

Having  thus  reviewed  the  course  of  events  at  home,  we  must  now 
follow  the  development  of  English  trade  in  India  during  the  same 
fifty  years,  a  period  which  synchronised  roughly  with  the  long  reign 
of  the  Emperor  Aurangzib.  Soon  after  the  Restoration  the  Company 
withdrew  from  the  port- to-port  trade;  and  as  the  factories  in  Upper 
India  (Agra,  Lucknow,  etc.)  had  been  abandoned,  the  English  settle- 
ments were  now  in  groups  centring  at  Surat,  Madras,  and  Hugli 
respectively.  It  will  therefore  be  convenient  to  deal  with  them  more 
or  less  as  separate  entities. 

In  Western  India  the  outstanding  feature  of  the  period  is  the  gradual 
rise  of  Bombay,  which  had  been  ceded  by  the  Portuguese  to  King 
Charles  II  in  1661,  taken  possession  of  on  his  behalf  in  1665,  and 
made  over  by  him  to  the  East  India  Company  three  years  later.  That 
its  development  was  slow  is  no  matter  for  surprise.  The  island  was 
far  from  healthy;  the  neighbouring  mainland  produced  little  of  com- 
mercial value,  and  the  barrier  of  the  Western  Ghats — to  say  nothing 
of  the  insecurity  resulting  from  the  constant  warfare  between  the 
Moghuls  and  the  Marathas — precluded  any  regular  communication 
in  that  direction  with  Indian  trade  centres;  while  the  depredations 
of  the  bold  pirates  of  the  Malabar  Coast  were  a  perpetual  menace 
to  shipping.  For  nearly  twenty  years,  therefore,  Surat  retained  its 
position  as  the  headquarters  of  English  commerce  and  the  seat  of 
the  presidency.  Bombay,  however,  could  afford  to  bide  its  time.  It 
possessed  a  magnificent  harbour;  its  security,  thanks  to  its  position 
and  its  fortifications,  afforded  a  striking  contrast  to  the  experience  of 
Surat,  which  was  sacked  by  the  Maratha  chief,  Sivaji,  in  1664  and 
again  in  1670;  while  the  mild  and  impartial  rule  of  the  English  proved 
an  attraction  to  traders  who  had  suffered  from  the  tyranny  of  the 
officials  on  the  mainland.  Its  potentialities  did  not  escape  the  keen 
eye  of  Gerald  Aungier,  who  in  1669  succeeded  Sir  George  Oxenden 
as  president  at  Surat  and  governor  of  Bombay;  and  he  made  it  the 
main  task  of  his  administration  to  put  the  new  settlement  on  a  satis- 
factory basis.  Courts  of  judicature  were  established ;  the  local  revenue 
was  settled  on  equitable  terms;  a  suitable  currency  was  introduced;1 
and  inducements  were  held  out  to  merchants  and  craftsmen  to  settle 
on  the  island.  As  the  result  of  all  this,  by  the  time  of  Aungier's  death 

1  The  first  suggestion  for  this  was  made  in  1668  (English  Factories,  1668-9,  P»  S2)  •  Scc  also 
Foster, '  *  The  first  English  coinage  at  Bombay,'*  in  the  Numismatic  Chronicle^  4th  series,  vol.  vi. 


BOMBAY,  1665-1700  101 

(June,  1677)  Bombay  was  on  the  high  road  to  prosperity,  and  its 
population  (according  to  the  estimate  of  Dr  John  Fryer)  had  risen 
to  60,000,  three  times  the  number  of  its  inhabitants  under  Portuguese 
rule. 

The  one  desire  of  the  English  merchants  was  to  be  left  to  pursue 
their  calling  in  peace;  but  this  was  impossible  in  the  conditions  of  the 
time.  The  perennial  warfare  between  the  imperial  forces  and  the 
Marathas  was  quickened  in  1681  by  the  arrival  in  the  Deccan  of 
Aurangzib  himself,  who  thus  entered  upon  the  long  campaign  which 
was  to  engross  his  attention  until  his  death.  Unhappily  for  Bombay, 
the  war  was  not  confined  to  the  land  but  was  carried  on  at  sea  as  well, 
the  Sidi  of  Janjira  (about  45  miles  south  of  Bombay)  acting  on  behalf 
of  the  emperor  against  his  inveterate  foes  the  Marathas.  The  Sidi 
claimed  the  right  to  make  Bombay  harbour  a  place  of  refuge  for  his 
fleets,  and  this  could  hardly  be  gainsaid  without  offending  Aurangzib; 
but  the  effect  of  the  concession  was  to  make  the  neighbouring  waters  a 
scene  of  continual  warfare.  In  1679  Sivaji  seized  the  island  of  Khaneri 
at  the  mouth  of  the  harbour;  whereupon  the  Sidi  fortified  its  neigh- 
bour, Underi,  with  the  result  that  all  vessels  entering  the  bay  were 
liable  to  attack  from  one  or  the  other.  With  the  Marathas  themselves 
the  relations  of  the  English  were  on  an  uncertain  footing;  while 
further  south  the  Malabar  pirates  were  a  constant  source  of  trouble. 
Even  at  Surat,  which  was  distant  from  the  scene  of  action,  the  strain 
imposed  upon  the  Moghul  finances  was  felt  in  the  increased  exactions 
of  the  local  officials  and  their  arbitrary  disregard  of  the  protests  of 
the  Company's  factors. 

In  these  conditions  of  turmoil  it  became  more  and  more  evident 
that  only  by  being  strong  themselves  could  the  English  secure  the 
continuance  of  their  commerce ;  and  a  few  months  before  his  death 
Aungier,  himself  no  lover  of  war,  wrote  to  his  employers  that  the  trade 
could  only  be  carried  on  sword  in  hand.  In  earlier  times  the  home 
authorities  had  always  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  counsels  of  vigorous  action, 
and  any  outlay  on  fortifications  had  been  looked  upon  with  the  greatest 
repugnance.  Now,  however,  came  a  change,  mainly  under  the  in- 
fluence of  Sir  Josia  Child,  who,  after  seven  years'  service  in  the 
directorate,  became  governor  in  1681,  and  continued  to  be  the 
dominant  force  in  the  Company  until  his  death  (1699).  He  held 
firmly  the  view  that  the  true  line  of  action  was  to  follow  the  example 
of  the  Dutch,  by  building  up  a  power  on  the  Indian  coast-line  which 
should  be  sufficiently  strong  to  repel  all  attacks  and  to  enforce  respect 
from  its  neighbours,  even  the  Moghul  emperor  himself.  In  this  scheme 
Bombay  was  to  be  the  counterpart  of  the  Dutch  settlement  at  Batavia. 
It  was  to  be  strongly  fortified  and  provided  with  sufficient  military 
and  naval  strength  to  protect  English  trade;  while  the  cost  of  all  this 
was  to  be  met  from  increased  rents,  customs  dues,  and  municipal 
taxation.  Similar  measures  were  to  be  taken  at  Madras;  and  it  was 


102  THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

in  a  letter  to  that  place  (December,  1687)  that  the  aims  of  the  Com- 
pany were  defined,  in  an  oft-quoted  passage,  as  being  "  to  establish 
such  a  politic  of  civill  and  military  power,  and  create  and  secure  such 
a  large  revenue  to  maintaine  both ...  as  may  bee  the  foundation  of 
a  large,  well-grounded,  sure  English  dominion  in  India  for  all  time  to 


come". 


In  the  promotion  of  these  designs  Sir  Josia  found  a  willing  agent  in 
his  namesake,1  John  Child,  who  in  1682  became  president  of  Surat 
and  governor  of  Bombay.  The  firstfruits  of  the  new  policy  were, 
however,  disconcerting.  The  endeavour  to  raise  the  revenue  and  cut 
down  the  expenditure  at  Bombay  caused  a  revolt  of  the  garrison 
in  1683  under  its  commandant,  Richard  Keigwin,  who  until 
November  in  the  following  year  governed  the  settlement  in  the 
name  of  King  Charles,  submitting  only  on  the  appearance  of  a  naval 
force  with  a  royal  mandate  for  the  surrender  of  the  place.  The  re- 
bellion having  been  quelled,  the  Company  proceeded  to  develop  its 
schemes.  Already  President  Child  had  been  appointed  captain- 
general  of  the  Company's  sea  and  land  forces  on  that  coast;  and  in 
October,  1686,  when  the  Company,  goaded  by  the  injuries  received 
in  Bengal  (as  described  later),  had  resolved  to  make  a  firm  stand 
against  the  exactions  of  the  Moghul  officials,  whatever  the  conse- 
quences might  be,  a  further  step  was  taken.  Child  (who  had  been 
created  a  baronet  in  the  preceding  year)  was  given  the  imposing  title 
of  Captain-General,2  Admiral,  and  Commander-in-Chiefof  the  Com- 
pany's forces  throughout  its  possessions,  as  well  as  Director-General 
of  all  mercantile  affairs;  and  he  was  authorised  to  proceed  to  Madras 
and  Bengal  to  regulate  matters  in  those  parts,  should  he  see  fit. 
Ordinarily  he  was  to  reside  at  Bombay,  which  in  consequence  (May, 
1687)  superseded  Surat  as  the  headquarters  of  the  western  presidency. 
To  complete  the  organisation  of  the  English  possessions  (and  especially 
to  check  the  interlopers  who  were  making  such  inroads  upon  the 
Company's  trade)  a  court  of  admiralty  was  erected  at  Bombay  in 
1684,  and  another  at  Madras  two  years  later,  both  under  letters  patent 

1  It  has  been  generally  stated  that  the  two  Childs  were  brothers;  but  Mr  Oliver  Strachey 
has  shown  that  this  was  not  the  case  (Keigwin's  Rebellion,  pp.  20,  162). 

2  This  designation— usually  shortened  to  "General** — was  explained  in  a  letter  of 
August,  1687,  as  being  intended  to  give  to  its  holder  "  the  same  preheminence  and  authority 
which  the  Dutch  confer  upon  their  Generall  at  Batavia".  Its  subsequent  history  is  worth 
noting.  After  the  death  of  Sir  John  Child,  Sir  John  Goldsborough  was  sent  out  (1691)  as 
commissary  and  supervisor;  and  two  years  later  he  was  made  captain-general  and  com- 
mander-in-chief ,  with  Madras  as  his  headquarters,  while  Sir  John  Gayer  was  to  act  as  his 
lieutenant-general  and  governor  of  Bombay.    On  the  death  of  Goldsborough,  Gayer 
succeeded  to  the  post  of  "General**  (1694),  remaining  at  Bombay;  while  Higginson,  the 
Madras  president,  became  lieutenant-general.  Ten  years  later  (Gayer  being  kept  in  prison 
at  Surat  by  the  Moghul  authorities)  Sir  Nicholas  Waite,  the  new  governor  of  Bombay, 
assumed  the  title  of  "General**;  and  upon  his  dismissal  in  1708  his  successor,  Aislabie, 
laid  claim  to  the  same  designation.  The  title  was  abolished  in  1715,  when  the  new  post  of 
president  and  governor  of  Bombay  was  created,  with  Boone  as  its  first  occupant.  The  title 
of  lieutenant-general  had  lapsed  in  1698,  when  Thomas  Pitt  was  appointed  governor  of 
Madras. 


THE  GOROMANDEL  FACTORIES  103 

obtained  from  the  king  in  1683.  Further,  in  1688  a  municipality  was 
established  at  Madras,  with  a  mayor  and  twelve  aldermen,  including 
several  Portuguese  and  Indians — a  concession  intended  to  reconcile 
the  inhabitants  to  a  system  of  local  taxation. 

Into  the  war  with  the  Moghuls  which  resulted  from  the  troubles  in 
Bengal  the  English  on  the  western  coast  entered  only  after  a  long 
hesitancy  and  in  a  feeble  manner.  The  seizure  of  some  Moghul  vessels 
brought  about  a  rupture  towards  the  end  of  1688,  with  the  conse- 
quence that  the  factors  at  Surat  were  imprisoned.  Child  in  retaliation 
captured  a  number  of  richly  freighted  ships.1  Thereupon  ensued  a 
siege  of  Bombay  by  the  Moghul  forces,  until  in  1690  the  English  put 
an  end  to  the  war  by  a  humiliating  submission,  involving  the  payment 
of  a  considerable  sum.  Child,  whose  dismissal  was  one  of  the  con- 
ditions of  peace,  died  just  as  the  negotiations  were  reaching  a 
conclusion. 

The  remainder  of  the  period  was  filled  with  trouble,  owing  largely 
to  the  depredations  of  the  English  pirates  who  were  swarming  in  the 
Indian  Ocean  and  capturing  Indian  vessels.  For  these  their  peaceful 
compatriots  were  held  responsible,  with  the  result  that  for  some  time 
all  the  factors  at  Surat  and  Broach  were  kept  in  prison  by  the  Moghul 
authorities.  On  top  of  all  this  came  the  bitter  rivalry  between  the 
servants  of  the  Old  and  New  Companies,  elsewhere  alluded  to.  Before 
leaving  the  subject  mention  should  be  made  of  the  settlements  estab- 
lished during  the  half-century  on  the  Malabar  Coast,  mainly  in  order 
to  obtain  a  supply  of  pepper.  The  chief  of  these  were  at  Rajapur, 
which  factory  was  plundered  by  Sivaji  in  1661,  subsequently  re- 
established, but  abandoned  in  1679;  at  Tellicherri,  where  the  English 
settled  in  1683;  at  Anjengo,  first  established  about  1694;  and  at 
Karwar,  where  a  factory  was  maintained  (with  some  intermissions) 
from  1660  until  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  was  then 
withdrawn,  leaving  Tellicherri  and  Anjengo  to  supply  the  needs  of 
the  pepper  traffic. 

On  the  eastern  side  of  India  the  new  start,  made  upon  the  grant 
of  Cromwell's  charter,  separated  the  Coast  factories  (Fort  St  George, 
Masulipatam,  etc.)  from  those  in  Bengal  and  Bihar  (centring  at 
Hugli),  each  of  these  two  groups  forming  an  agency,  under  the  presi- 
dency of  Surat ;  but  this  arrangement  lasted  only  till  1 66 1 ,  when  Madras 
became  once  more  the  seat  of  government  for  all  the  factories  on  that 
side  of  India,  The  domestic  history  of  the  agency  for  the  next  quarter 
of  a  century  was  on  the  whole  one  of  peaceful  progress.  The  capture 
of  the  Portuguese  settlement  at  St  Thom£  by  the  forces  of  the  king 
of  Golconda  in  1662  drove  a  considerable  number  of  its  inhabitants 
to  the  shelter  of  Fort  St  George;  and  about  1670  the  population  of 

1  In  1693-4  the  Company  paid  into  the  royal  exchequer  £16,638  as  the  king's  tenth 
share  of  the  value  of  prizes  taken  during  the  war  (W.  R.  Scott's  Joint  Stock  Companies, 
nr,  537)- 


104  THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

Madras  was  estimated  roughly  at  40,000.  The  Second  Dutch  War 
(1665-7)  produced  much  disturbance  of  trade,  especially  as  it  syn- 
chronised with  internal  trouble.  Sir  Edward  Winter,  who  had  been 
superseded  in  1665  by  a  new  agent  from  home  (George  Foxcroft), 
in  the  same  year  seized  and  imprisoned  his  successor,  charging  him 
with  treason,  and  reassumed  the  government  in  the  name  of  King 
Charles.  For  nearly  three  years  Madras  remained  under  his  control; 
then  (August,  1668)  the  arrival  of  a  fleet  with  a  royal  mandate  in- 
duced him  to  yield  his  place  to  Foxcroft,  on  an  assurance  that  the 
persons  and  property  of  himself  and  his  adherents  should  be  respected. 
The  war  of  1672-4  between  Holland  on  the  one  hand  and  England 
and  France  on  the  other  brought  fresh  cause  of  alarm.  In  1673  the 
Company's  fleet  was  defeated  and  dispersed  by  a  Dutch  squadron 
ofFPetapoli;  while  on  land  there  was  much  fighting  round  St  Thome, 
which  had  been  occupied  by  the  French  in  1672  but  recaptured  by 
the  Golconda  forces,  assisted  by  the  Dutch,  in  the  following  year. 
The  incursions  of  the  Marathas  into  Southern  India  gave  an  excuse 
for  strengthening  the  fortifications  of  Madras  under  Sir  William 
Langhorn  (agent,  1672-8)  and  his  successor,  Sir  Streynsham  Master 
(1678-81);  while  the  administration  of  the  latter  is  also  memorable 
for  the  reorganisation  of  the  judicial  system  and  the  erection  of  St 
Mary's  church  in  the  fort — the  first  Anglican  church  built  in  India. 
In  r  68  r  permission  was  obtained  from  the  Maratha  ruler  at  Jinji  for 
English  settlements  at  Porto  Novo,  Cuddalore,  and  Konimedu;  while 
in  the  following  year  a  factory  was  established  at  Vizagapatam.  A 
few  years  later  the  kingdom  of  Golconda  was  finally  subjugated  by 
the  Moghul  forces,  and  Aurangzib  became  the  nominal  overlord  of 
the  English  factories  on  the  Coromandel  Coast.  Negotiations  ensued 
with  his  general,  Zulfikar  Khan,  who  in  1690  confirmed  the  existing 
grants  for  Madras,  Masulipatam,  and  other  stations;  while  in  the 
same  year  a  fort  at  Devenampatnam  (close  to  Cuddalore)  was 
purchased  and  made  into  a  new  stronghold  named  Fort  St  David. 
In  1693  the  boundaries  of  Madras  were  enlarged  by  the  grant  of  three 
adjoining  villages;  and  during  the  administration  of  Thomas  Pitt 
(1698-1709)  five  more  were  added,  though  these  were  resumed  by 
the  Moghul  officials  in  1711  and  were  not  recovered  until  six  years 
later,  under  the  grant  obtained  by  Surman  from  the  emperor 
Farrukhsiyar. 

As  in  the  case  of  the  western  presidency,  Madras  suffered  much 
from  the  rivalry  caused  by  the  establishment  of  the  New  East  India 
Company;  and  this  is  perhaps  the  most  convenient  place  to  narrate 
briefly  the  struggle  between  the  two  bodies,  so  far  as  it  affected  the 
settlements  in  India.  The  mission  of  Sir  William  Norris,  to  which 
allusion  has  already  been  made,  proved  a  fiasco,  and  the  hopes  built 
thereon  by  the  directors  of  the  New  Company  were  entirely  dis- 
appointed. After  much  trouble  and  delay  he  reached  the  camp  of 


RIVALRY  IN  INDIA  105 

Aurangzib  in  April,  1701,  and  was  graciously  received;  but  the 
emperor  was  irritated  by  the  depredations  committed  by  European 
pirates  upon  Indian  vessels  carrying  pilgrims  to  the  Red  Sea  ports, 
and  the  wazir,  whom  Norris  had  unwisely  offended,  threw  all  sorts 
of  obstacles  in  his  way.  The  ambassador  found  that  he  could  only 
obtain  the  farmans  he  desired  by  undertaking  to  make  compensation 
for  all  Indian  ships  taken  by  the  pirates;  and  thereupon  he  quitted 
the  court  abruptly  and  returned  to  Surat.  He  died  on  the  homeward 
voyage  in  1702. 

Meanwhile  the  presidents  appointed  by  the  New  Company  had 
added  to  the  difficulties  of  their  position  by  quarrelling  violently  with 
the  representatives  of  the  older  body.  All  three  of  these  new  presidents 
were  discharged  servants  of  the  Old  Company,  and  this  fact  added 
acrimony  to  the  disputes,  which  were  further  embittered  by  the  fact 
that  the  newcomers  had  been  given  the  rank  of  "King's  consul",  and 
were  not  slow  to  claim  jurisdiction  over  all  Englishmen  resident  in 
India.  This  pretension  was  indignantly  repudiated  by  the  servants  of 
the  Old  Company,  who  maintained  that  the  privileges  of  the  latter 
remained  intact  until  1701  at  least.  The  Indian  authorities,  while 
taking  little  interest  in  the  controversy,  were  naturally  inclined  to 
support  the  representatives  of  the  older  body;  and  when  at  Surat  the 
New  Company's  president,  Sir  Nicholas  Waite,  tore  down  the  flag 
that  floated  over  the  rival  factory,  it  was  at  once  replaced  under  a 
military  guard  sent  by  the  Moghul  governor.  It  is  true  that  Waite's 
charges  against  the  Old  Company,  of  complicity  in  the  piracies  from 
which  the  Indian  traders  were  suffering,  bore  fruit  in  the  seizure,  by 
the  emperor's  orders,  of  Sir  John  Gayer  and  other  servants  of  the 
older  body;  but  the  blow  recoiled  on  the  New  Company,  whose 
factors  in  Bengal  were  also  arrested  under  the  same  instructions. 
Most  of  the  Old  Company's  servants  in  that  province  secured  them- 
selves in  the  recently  erected  Fort  William  at  Calcutta;  while  Madras 
successfully  resisted  the  troops  sent  to  occupy  it.  In  the  latter  presi- 
dency John  Pitt,  the  New  Company's  representative,  had  established 
his  headquarters  at  Masulipatam,  whence  he  carried  on  a  violent  con- 
troversy with  his  relative  Thomas  Pitt,  the  governor  of  Madras,  much 
to  his  own  discomfiture.  The  distractions  caused  by  these  disputes, 
and  Norris's  failure  to  obtain  authority  for  new  settlements,  formed 
powerful  arguments  for  an  amalgamation  of  the  two  companies;  and 
when  once  this  was  effected,  the  first  task  of  the  court  of  managers 
was  to  heal  the  dissensions  in  India.  Accordingly  the  grant  of  con- 
sular powers  was  rescinded;  at  Madras  Governor  Pitt  was  confirmed 
in  his  post;  in  Bengal  a  curious  experiment  was  tried  for  a  time  of  a 
council  of  four  members  who  were  to  preside  in  turn;  while  on  the 
western  side  Gayer  was  to  be  governor  of  Bombay  and  Waite  presi- 
dent at  Surat.  A  proviso  that,  in  the  event  of  Gayer's  continued 
imprisonment,  Waite  was  to  act  for  him  enabled  the  latter  to  take 


io6  THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

possession  of  the  post,  which  he  continued  to  hold  until  his  dismissal 
in  1708. 

It  now  remains  to  trace  the  progress  of  the  English  in  Bengal,  Bihar, 
and  Orissa.  Under  the  arrangements  made  upon  Cromwell's  grant 
of  a  charter,  an  agent  was  appointed,  with  Hugli  as  his  headquarters, 
having  under  his  control  the  factories  of  Patna,  Kasimbazar,  and 
Balasore,  the  last  named  being  the  port  at  which  all  cargoes  were 
received  or  shipped.1  This  arrangement  was,  however,  short-lived, 
for  in  1 66 1  the  agency  was  abolished  and  the  factors  were  replaced 
under  the  agent  at  Madras.  The  importance  of  Dacca,  both  as  the 
seat  of  government  and  as  a  centre  for  the  purchase  of  fine  cotton 
goods,  led  the  Company  in  1668  to  sanction  the  formation  of  a  factory 
in  that  city;  while  a  few  years  later  others  were  opened  at  RajmahaJ. 
and  at  Malda.  The  trade  of  the  English  in  these  parts  grew  steadily 
both  in  volume  and  in  value.  The  Company  looked  to  Bengal  for  its 
regular  supply  of  saltpetre,  for  which  there  was  an  ever-increasing 
demand  in  Europe ;  while  great  quantities  of  silk  and  silk  goods  were 
also  purchased,  artisans  being  brought  from  England  to  improve  the 
methods  of  manufacture.  Sugar  and  cotton  yarn  were  further  articles 
of  export,  and  by  1680  the  annual  investment  in  Bengal  had  risen  to 
£i  50,000. 2  In  hopes  of  further  development,  the  Company  in  1681 
determined  to  make  the  settlements  there  independent  of  Madras ; 
and  accordingly  in  the  following  year  William  Hedges,  one  of  the 
"committees",  was  sent  out  as  "Agent  and  Governor  of  all  affairs  and 
factories  in  the  Bay  of  Bengal".  The  experiment  did  not  prove  a 
success.  In  1684  Hedges  was  dismissed  and  the  Bengal  factories  were 
once  again  placed  under  Fort  St  George,  the  agent  at  which  was  given 
the  new  title  of  President  and  Governor  for  the  Coast  and  Bay. 

Now  came  a  time  of  serious  trouble.  For  many  years  there  had 
been  friction  with  the  local  officials  over  the  question  of  way-dues 
and  customs.  From  the  beginning  the  English  had  aimed  at  securing 
complete  exemption  from  such  imposts,  in  consideration  of  an  annual 
present  of  3000  rupees;  and  in  1656  they  had  obtained  from  Shah 
Shuja,  who  was  then  governing  the  province,  a  grant  freeing  them 
from  all  demands  on  this  score.3  Such  an  arrangement  was  much  to 
the  benefit  of  the  factors  themselves,  since  their  private  trade  passed 
free  as  well  as  the  Company's,  while  the  necessary  presents  went  down 
to  the  account  of  the  latter;  and  accordingly  they  made  strenuous 
efforts  to  secure  its  continuance.  On  the  other  hand  the  Moghul 
officials  saw  no  reason  why  the  fast-increasing  commerce  of  the  English 
should  escape  the  tolls  levied  upon  other  merchants,  nor  did  they 
teeegiiise  that  the  nishan  of  Shah  Shuja  was  binding  upon  his 
M* 

V  The  establishment  at  Hariharpur  (in  Orissa),  the  earliest  English  settlement  in  those 
parts,  had  been  withdrawn  in  1642. 
*  Bruce's  Annals,  n,  451. 
1  For  grants  relating  to  Bengal,  1633-60,  see  the  appendix  to  English  Factories,  1655-60. 


THE  WAR  IN  BENGAL  107 

successors.  The  factors  made  several  attempts  to  settle  the  matter  by 
obtaining  an  imperial  farman  in  their  favour,  but  without  success; 
and  although  Shaista  Khan,  then  governor,  gave  them  in  1678  a 
fresh  nishan,  with  the  approval  of  the  emperor,  freeing  them  from 
dues,  these  were  soon  again  demanded.  Two  years  later  a  farman  was 
at  last  obtained  from  Aurangzib,  which  seemed  to  settle  the  dispute 
in  favour  of  the  English;  but  the  wording  was  ambiguous,  and  the 
Indian  officials  declared  that  it  really  authorised  them  to  demand 
the  same  dues  as  were  paid  by  the  English  at  Surat.  The  factors  were 
powerless  to  resist  any  exactions  the  authorities  chose  to  make,  since 
it  was  easy  to  enforce  the  demand  by  stopping  the  saltpetre  boats  on 
their  way  down  the  Ganges  or  by  preventing  the  native  merchants 
from  dealing  with  the  English;  and  full  advantage  was  taken  of  both 
methods  to  extort  money  from  the  factors.  Gradually  the  latter  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  force  was  the  only  remedy  and  that  it  was 
essential  for  their  security  to  establish,  at  or  near  the  mouth  of  the 
Ganges,  a  fortified  settlement  similar  to  those  at  Madras  and  Bombay. 
This  they  might  make  the  centre  of  their  trade,  and  thither  they  might 
withdraw  when  threatened ;  while  from  such  a  base  they  could  at  any 
time  exert  pressure  upon  the  viceroy  by  stopping  the  sea-borne  trade 
of  the  province.  The  home  authorities,  who  (as  we  have  seen)  were 
already  persuaded  of  the  necessity  of  adopting  a  bold  policy,  readily 
fell  in  with  this  view,  and  in  1686  they  sent  out  orders  that  the  Bengal 
factories  should  be  withdrawn  and  an  attempt  made  to  seize  Chitta- 
gong,  for  which  purpose  they  dispatched  several  ships  and  a  small 
force  of  soldiers.  At  the  same  time  on  the  western  side  of  India  the 
Moghul  coast  was  to  be  blockaded  and  the  local  shipping  seized; 
while  the  Coast  settlements  were  to  assist  with  the  full  strength  of  their 
resources.  The  enterprise  was  a  rash  one,  though  all  might  have  been 
well  if  the  Company  had  left  the  control  of  affairs  entirely  in  the  hands 
of  Job  Charnock,  its  experienced  agent  in  Bengal;  not  that  fighting 
would  have  been  entirely  avoided,  but  an  accommodation  would  have 
been  reached  more  speedily  and  nothing  would  have  been  done  as 
regards  the  absurd  plan  of  attacking  so  distant  a  port  as  Chittagong. 
In  point  of  fact  a  rupture  was  forced  by  the  Moghul  governor  of 
Hugli,  who  in  October,  1686,  made  an  attack  upon  the  factory  there.1 
The  assault  was  repelled,  but  Charnock  deemed  it  wise  to  abandon 
the  place  and  drop  down  the  river  to  Sutanati  (on  the  site  of  the 
modern  Calcutta),  from  whence  he  carried  on  some  negotiations  with 
the  viceroy.  These  failing,  the  English  withdrew  further  down  the 
Hugli  river  and  fixed  their  headquarters  on  the  island  of  Hijili,  at  its 
mouth;  while,  in  reprisal  for  the  injuries  sustained,  their  shi,  *  f 
and  burnt  the  town  of  Balasore.  In  their  new  static 
blockaded  by  the  Moghul  forces,  while  fever  made  j 

1  For  a  detailed  account  of  the  operations  see  the  introduction 
Annals  of  the  English  in  Bengal,  vol.  i. 


io8  THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

the  small  garrison;  but  timely  reinforcements  enabled  Charnock  to 
effect  an  agreement  under  which,  in  the  autumn  of  1687,  the  English 
returned  to  Sutanati,  where  they  remained  for  a  year  unmolested. 
The  home  authorities,  however,  were  obstinately  bent  upon  the  plan 
of  a  fortified  settlement  in  Bengal;  with  the  result  that  in  September, 
1688,  a  fresh  naval  force  arrived  under  Captain  William  Heath,  who 
had  plenary  powers  to  carry  out  the  projected  attack  upon  Chitta- 
gong.  Despite  the  opposition  of  Charnock  the  new  settlement  was 
abandoned,  and  in  January  the  fleet  arrived  at  Chittagong,  only  to 
find  it  much  too  strong  to  be  assailed  with  any  chance  of  success ; 
whereupon  Heath  decided  to  retreat  to  Madras.  However,  the  con- 
clusion of  peace  in  the  early  part  of  1690,  on  the  initiative  of  the 
Bombay  authorities,  paved  the  way  for  the  return  of  the  English  to 
Bengal ;  and  the  new  viceroy,  uneasy  at  the  loss  of  trade  resulting 
from  the  disturbances,  wrote  to  Charnock  at  Fort  St  George,  inviting 
him  back.  To  these  overtures  the  agent  would  not  listen  until  a 
specific  promise  was  added  that  the  grievance  over  customs  should 
be  redressed — a  promise  that  was  redeemed  in  February,  1691,  by  an 
imperial  grant  of  freedom  from  all  dues,  on  condition  of  the  payment, 
as  before,  of  3000  rupees  per  annum  in  lieu  thereof.  It  was  in  August, 
1690,  that  the  English  once  more  settled  at  Sutanati  and  erected  a  few 
huts  that  were  destined  to  grow  into  the  capital  of  their  Indian  em- 
pire. The  site  had  disadvantages,  for  it  was  girdled  on  the  land  side 
by  swamps  which  rendered  it  unhealthy ;  but  its  position  on  the  eastern 
bank  of  the  river  gave  it  security,  while  it  was  accessible  from  the  sea 
and  had  good  anchorage  close  inshore.  In  1696  a  local  rebellion 
provided  an  excuse  for  fortifying  the  factory;  and  two  years  later 
permission  was  obtained  to  rent  the  three  villages  of  Sutanati, 
Calcutta,  and  Govindpur  for  1 200  rupees  a  year.  The  fortified  factory, 
which  was  named  Fort  William  in  honour  of  King  William  III,  was 
made  in  1 700  the  seat  of  a  presidency,  Sir  Charles  Eyre  becoming 
the  first  president  and  governor  of  Fort  William  in  Bengal. 

The  domestic  history  of  the  East  India  Company  from  the  time  of 
the  union  in  1 709  to  the  middle  of  the  century  was  one  of  quiet 
prosperity.  The  value  of  its  imports  rose  from  nearly  £500,000  in 
1708  to  about  £1,100,000  in  1748;  while  its  exports  increased  from 
£576,000  (of  which  £375,000  was  in  bullion)  in  1710  to  £1,121,000 
(including  £8 1 6,000  in  bullion)  forty  years  later.  An  act  of  parliament 
obtained  in  1711  extended  the  period  of  exclusive  trade  until  1733. 
As  the  latter  date  approached,  a  body  of  merchants  made  a  fresh 
attempt  to  oust  the  Company  from  the  trade  by  offering  to  find  the 
necessary  money  to  enable  the  government  to  pay  off  the  existing 
debt,  the  new  loan  to  bear  only  2  per  cent,  interest;  it  was  proposed 
then  to  organise  a  new  company  on  a  "regulated"  basis,  open  to  all 
merchants  but  subject  to  the  payment  of  a  percentage  on  imports.1 

1  Historical  MSS.  Commission's  Reports:  Diary  of  Lord  Per  rival,  p.  65. 


THE  COMPANY'S  TRADE,  1700-1750  109 

The  proposal  found  many  supporters,  and  the  East  India  Company 
in  alarm  offered  to  pay  £200,000  to  the  treasury  and  to  reduce  its 
rate  of  interest  on  the  government  debt  to  4  per  cent.  These  terms 
were  accepted,  with  the  result  that  in  1730  an  act  was  passed  pro- 
longing the  Company's  privileges  to  1 769.  A  further  extension  until 
1783  was  granted  in  1744,  at  the  cost  of  the  loan  of  a  further  sum  of 
one  million  to  the  government  at  3  per  cent.  An  act  of  1 750  reduced 
the  interest  on  the  earlier  loan  of  £3,200,000  to  3!  per  cent,  up  to 
Christmas,  1757,  and  3  per  cent,  thereafter.  Thus  the  interest  paid 
by  the  government  on  its  total  indebtedness  to  the  Company  was 
placed  on  a  general  level  of  3  per  cent.  The  £1,000,000  lent  in 
1744  was  not  added  to  the  Company's  capital,  which  remained  at 
£3,200,000  down  to  1786,  when  another  £800,000  was  raised  at  a 
considerable  premium.  The  capital  was  further  increased  in  1789  and 
1793  by  two  sums  of  £1,000,000  each,  likewise  raised  at  a  high  pre- 
mium; thus  making  a  total  of  £6,000,000,  a  figure  that  was  not  varied 
down  to  1858. 

During  the  period  under  consideration  the  dividend  paid  by  the 
Company  rose  rapidly  from  5  per  cent,  in  1708-9  to  10  per  cent,  in 
1711-12.  After  continuing  at  that  rate  till  1722,  it  dropped  to  8  per 
cent.,  and  in  1732  to  7  per  cent.  In  1743  it  rose  again  to  8  per  cent., 
and  remained  at  that  figure  till  1755. 

The  parliamentary  sanction  under  which  the  Company's  monopoly 
was  exercised  effectually  debarred  other  British  subjects  from  any 
open  competition;  but  there  were  not  wanting  enterprising  spirits 
who  sought  to  make  profit  by  taking  service  with  its  foreign  rivals, 
particularly  the  Ostend  East  India  Company.  To  check  this  practice 
the  English  Company  in  1718  obtained  an  act  authorising  the  seizure 
of  any  British  subject  found  trading  under  such  auspices;  and  further 
enactments  for  the  same  purpose  were  passed  in  1 72 1  and  1 723.  Owing, 
however,  to  the  pressure  brought  to  bear  by  the  several  governments 
concerned,  this  danger  was  soon  after  removed  (as  related  elsewhere) 
by  the  suspension  of  the  charter  of  the  Ostend  Company. 

The  steady  development  of  the  East  India  Company's  trade  is 
shown  by  the  fact  that,  whereas  for  the  five  years  1708-9  to  1712-13 
on  an  average  eleven  ships  were  dispatched  annually  to  the  East,  for 
the  similar  period  between  1743-4  and  1747-8  the  number  was 
twenty  per  annum,  of  much  larger  tonnage.  It  may  be  mentioned 
that  at  this  time,  whatever  the  size  of  the  vessel,  the  tonnage  chartered 
by  the  Company  was  never  more  than  499  tons.  The  reason  is  a  curious 
one.  By  a  clause  in  the  1698  charter  the  Company  was  bound  to 
provide  a  chaplain  for  every  ship  of  500  tons  or  over;  and  it  would 
seem  that,  rather  than  incur  this  expense,  the  directors  chose  to  engage 
a  larger  number  of  vessels,  though  in  effect  the  cost  must  have 
been  greater.  The  obnoxious  clause  was  not  repeated  in  the  act  of 
1773;  whereupon  the  Company  began  to  charter  ships  at  their  full 


no  THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

measurements,  and  later  on  considerably  increased  its  requirements 
in  regard  to  the  size  of  vessels. 

One  feature  of  importance  in  the  Company's  history  during 
the  closing  years  of  the  seventeenth  and  the  first  quarter  of  the 
eighteenth  century  was  the  agitation  excited  amongst  English  manu- 
facturers by  the  competition  of  the  cotton  and  silk  fabrics  imported 
from  India.  During  the  early  years  of  the  trade  the  piece-goods 
brought  into  the  country  competed,  as  we  have  seen,  mostly  with 
linens  from  the  continent,  and  the  greater  cheapness  of  the  former 
ensured  them  a  general  welcome,  whether  they  were  plain  or  printed. 
About  1 676,  however,  calico-printing  works  were  started  near  London, 
and  the  industry  quickly  became  one  of  importance,  with  the  result 
that  soon  protests  began  to  be  heard  against  the  importation  by  the 
Company  of  printed  Indian  calicoes  which  undersold  those  produced 
in  England  itself.  Similar  objections  were  raised  by  the  silk  weavers 
against  India-wrought  silks,  as  being  detrimental  to  another  rising 
industry;  while  behind  both  parties  stood  the  woollen  manufacturers, 
who  alleged  that  the  growing  use  of  these  foreign  silks  and  cottons 
was  ruining  the  staple  manufacture  of  the  country.  In  the  spring  of 
1696  a  bill  was  introduced  to  restrain  the  wearing  of  Indian  silks, 
printed  calicoes,  etc. ;  but  the  opposition  of  the  East  India  Company 
resulted  in  such  vital  amendments  that  the  bill  was  allowed  to  drop. 
A  fresh  measure  was  then  brought  in,  only  to  be  abandoned  owing 
to  a  disagreement  between  the  two  Houses;  and  as  a  consequence 
serious  riots  on  the  part  of  the  artisans  affected  occurred  in  November, 
1696,  and  the  following  spring.  The  agitation  was  continued  until 
an  act  was  passed  (i  700)  forbidding  the  use  of  Asiatic  silks  and  printed 
and  dyed  calicoes,  though  these  goods  might  still  be  brought  in  for  re- 
exportation. This  legislation  has  been  represented  as  a  wrong  done 
to  India;  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  latter  was  then  in  no 
closer  relation  to  England  than  any  other  country,  while  the  en- 
couragement of  home  industries  was  looked  upon  as  a  primary  duty. 
Moreover,  the  effect  upon  the  trade  of  the  two  countries  was  not  so 
detrimental  as  had  been  feared,  for  the  demand  for  raw  silk,  plain 
calicoes,  and  cotton  yarn  was  considerably  increased.  In  1 720  came 
a  fresh  turn;  violent  protests  from  the  woollen  and  silk  manufacturers 
induced  Parliament  to  forbid  the  use  (with  certain  exceptions)  of 
calicoes  dyed  or  printed  in  England.  This  prohibition,  though  modi- 
fied in  1736  by  permission  to  print  on  cotton  stuffs  having  a  linen 
warp,  was  maintained  until  1774,  when  the  British  calico  printers 
were  once  more  allowed  to  dye  and  print  stuffs  wholly  made  of  cotton, 
provided  these  were  manufactured  in  Great  Britain.  The  rapid  rise 
of  the  English  cotton  industry,  based  upon  Arkwright's  inventions, 
soon  removed  all  fear  of  Indian  competition,  though  as  a  matter  of 
fact  the  prohibitory  enactments  lingered  on  the  statute  book  until  the 
nineteenth  century. 


SURMAN'S  EMBASSY  in 

One  special  feature  of  the  Company's  operations  during  the  period 
under  survey  was  the  development  of  the  trade  in  tea  from  China  and 
coffee  from  the  Red  Sea  ports.  Both  articles  came  into  use  in  England 
about  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  by  1686  the  con- 
sumption of  tea  had  increased  to  such  an  extent  that  the  Company 
decided  to  remove  it  from  the  list  of  articles  open  to  private  trade  and 
to  reserve  the  commerce  to  itself.  Supplies  were  at  first  procured  from 
Bantam;  and  after  the  withdrawal  of  the  English  factors  from  that 
port  in  1682,  Surat  and  Madras  became  the  intermediaries.  From 
the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  attempts  were  made  to  estab- 
lish a  regular  trade  with  China  to  meet  the  increasing  demand  for 
tea,  and  by  1715  these  efforts  had  proved  successful.  Some  idea  of 
the  growth  of  the  trade,  and  of  the  gradual  reduction  in  the  price  of 
the  commodity,  is  afforded  by  the  fact  that,  whereas  in  1 706  the  sales 
amounted  to  54,600  lb.,  fetching  £45,000,  the  amount  sold  in  1750 
was  2,325,000  lb.,  which  realised  about  £544,000.  Coffee  made  its 
first  appearance  in  the  Company's  sale  lists  at  the  beginning  of  1660. 
This  commodity  was  easily  procurable  at  Surat,  whence  there  was 
a  constant  trade  with  the  Red  Sea  ports ;  but  later  it  was  found  worth 
while  to  reopen  for  the  purpose  the  factory  originally  started  at  Mokha 
early  in  the  seventeenth  century.  In  1 752,  however,  this  arrangement 
was  abandoned  and  the  trade  was  left  to  be  managed  by  the  super- 
cargoes of  the  ships  employed  in  the  traffic. 

As  in  the  preceding  section,  the  history  of  the  period  1700-50 
may  best  be  treated  by  examining  in  succession  the  records  of  the 
groups  forming  the  respective  presidencies  of  Bengal,  Madras,  and 
Bombay.  Each  of  these  had  its  peculiar  difficulties,  but  surmounted 
them  with  more  or  less  success;  and  each  went  on  its  way  without 
heeding  overmuch  what  was  happening  elsewhere.  The  one  exception 
occurred  early  in  the  century,  when  all  three  presidencies  were  con- 
cerned in  an  embassy  sent  to  Delhi  to  obtain  a  comprehensive  grant 
from  the  Moghul  emperor.  The  idea  originated  with  Governor  Pitt 
of  Madras  in  1708,  when  the  emperor  Shah  'Alam  I  was  in  Southern 
India;  but  before  the  matter  could  be  put  in  train  the  court  had 
returned  to  Delhi.  Further  delay  was  caused  by  the  death  of  that 
monarch  and  the  subsequent  contest  for  the  crown.  When,  however, 
the  struggle  ended  in  the  accession  of  Farrukhsiyar,  who  had  shown 
himself  well  disposed  towards  the  English,  it  was  resolved  to  go  forward 
with  the  project;  and  the  mission,  which  was  under  the  charge  of 
John  Surman,  reached  Delhi  in  the  summer  of  1714.  The  negotiations 
were  so  protracted  that  it  was  the  middle  of  July,  1717,  before  Surman 
was  able  to  quit  the  capital,  carrying  with  him  the  farmans  he  had 
obtained.  His  efforts  had  been  largely  aided  by  the  services  rendered 
by  William  Hamilton,  the  doctor  attached  to  the  mission,  in  curing 
the  emperor  of  a  painful  disease;  but  the  story  that  the  concessions 
were  granted  as  a  reward  for  Hamilton's  assistance  is  one  that  will 


ii2  THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

not  stand  examination.  The  three  farmans  brought  back  by  Surman 
were  addressed  to  the  officials  of  the  three  provinces — Hyderabad, 
Gujarat,  and  Bengal  (including  Bihar  and  Orissa) — in  which  the 
English  were  settled.  The  right  of  the  latter  to  trade  in  Bengal  free 
of  all  dues,  subject  to  the  customary  payment  of  3000  rupees  per 
annum,  was  confirmed :  they  were  to  be  allowed  to  rent  additional 
territory  round  Calcutta  and  to  settle  where  else  they  might  choose: 
their  long-standing  privilege  of  freedom  from  dues  throughout  the 
province  of  Hyderabad  was  continued,  the  only  payment  required 
being  the  existing  rent  paid  for  Madras:  certain  neighbouring  villages, 
which  had  long  been  in  dispute,  were  added  to  that  city:  a  rearrange- 
ment of  the  Company's  land  round  Vizagapatam  was  sanctioned : 
a  yearly  sum  of  10,000  rupees  was  accepted  in  satisfaction  of  all 
customs  and  dues  at  Surat :  and  the  rupees  coined  by  the  Company 
at  Bombay  were  allowed  to  pass  current  throughout  the  imperial 
dominions.  Though  Surman  had  not  obtained  all  for  which  he  had 
asked,  he  had  secured  a  great  deal,  and  his  embassy  stands  out  as  a 
landmark  in  the  history  of  the  Company's  settlements.1 

The  Bengal  factors  soon  discovered  that  it  was  easier  to  obtain  an 
imperial  farman  than  to  induce  the  local  officials  to  obey  it,  in  the 
disorganised  state  of  the  kingdom.  Ja'farKhan,  the  governor  of  Bengal, 
openly  declared  that  the  English  should  never  enjoy  the  additional 
villages  round  Calcutta  specified  in  the  grant;  and  although  possession 
was  obtained  of  some  of  them  in  an  indirect  manner,  it  was  not  until 
Clive's  treaty  with  Siraj-ud-daula  in  1757  that  the  territory  was 
entirely  brought  under  British  control.  Nevertheless  Calcutta  con- 
tinued to  grow  in  importance  and  wealth,  and  by  the  middle  of  the 
century  its  population  was  estimated  at  over  100,000  as  compared 
with  the  15,000  of  1704.  This,  it  is  true,  was  partly  owing  to  a  great 
influx  about  1742,  caused  by  the  invasion  of  the  province  by  the 
Marathas.  The  approach  of  these  raiders  created  great  consternation, 
for  Fort  William  (finished  in  1 7 1 6)  was  of  little  real  strength,  and  more- 
over its  defensive  capabilities  had  just  been  seriously  reduced  by  the 
erection  of  warehouses  against  its  southern  face.  However,  the  in- 
habitants dug  a  broad  ditch  round  a  great  part  of  the  town,  while 
batteries  placed  at  various  points  assisted  to  secure  it  from  sudden 
attack.  Fortunately  these  defences  were  not  tested,  for  the  Nawab 
'Ali  Wardi  Khan  managed,  with  the  aid  of  a  rival  body  of  Marathas, 
to  clear  his  province  of  the  invaders;  and  although  the  latter  returned 
in  1 744,  they  were  then  defeated  and  driven  back  to  their  own  terri- 
tories. The  general  insecurity  led  to  the  consideration  of  many  plans 
for  the  improvement  of  Fort  William,  but  the  expense,  and  the  natural 
unwillingness  of  the  owners  to  consent  to  the  clearing  away  of  the 
houses  that  crowded  around  it,  prevented  action  being  taken  until 

1  The  full  story  will  be  found  in  C.  R.  Wilson's  Early  Annals,  voL  n,  pt  11.     - 


PROGRESS  IN  INDIA,  1700-1740  113 

it  was  too  late.  Had  greater  prevision  been  exercised,  the  story  of  the 
Black  Hole  might  never  have  been  written. 

The  domestic  history  of  Calcutta  for  this  period  includes  also  the 
erection  of  a  church  (St  Anne's,  consecrated  in  1709):  the  building 
of  a  fine  house  for  the  governor  in  the  fort:  and  the  organisation  of 
a  judicial  system  under  a  charter  granted  by  George  I  in  September, 
1 726,  which  also  provided  for  the  appointment  of  a  mayor,  sheriff,  and 
aldermen.  The  courts  thus  established  were  similar  to  those  erected 
at  Madras  under  the  same  charter,  as  described  later,  but  they  did 
not  come  into  full  operation. 

Concerning  the  subordinate  settlements  in  Bengal  there  is  little  to 
record,  save  constant  quarrels  with  the  local  functionaries,  who,  being 
now  practically  uncontrolled  from  Delhi,  made  the  most  of  their 
opportunities  to  extort  money.  The  trade  of  the  English  was  very 
prosperous,  alike  as  regards  the  regular  operations  of  the  Company 
and  the  private  trade  of  its  servants  (which  was  sheltered  under  its 
privileges) ;  and  naturally  the  officials  did  their  best  to  take  toll  of  it 
for  their  own  advantage.  It  was  equally  to  be  expected  that  such 
exactions  should  be  resisted  as  far  as  possible;  and  hence  a  lengthy 
story  of  disputes  and  reconciliations. 

During  this  half-century  the  English  settlement  at  Madras  likewise 
grew  and  prospered,  though  its  history  affords  few  events  that  call  for 
notice  in  the  present  rapid  survey.  The  absorption  in  1717  of  five 
additional  villages  (originally  granted  in  1708)  has  been  mentioned 
already.  Twenty-five  years  later  a  grant  was  obtained  of  Vepery  and 
four  other  hamlets.  The  territory  occupied  by  the  British  was  still, 
however,  quite  small,  comprising  a  space  of  about  five  miles  by  three; 
while  their  only  other  footholds  on  the  Coromandel  Coast  were  Fort 
St  David  at  Cuddalore  and  factories  at  Vizagapatam  and  Masuli- 
patam.  In  1 727  a  new  charter  (this  time  from  the  crown,  not  from  the 
Company)  remodelled  the  Madras  corporation,  reducing  the  number 
of  aldermen  and  appointing  a  sheriff,  to  be  chosen  annually  by  the 
governor  and  council.  The  mayor  and  aldermen  were  authorised  to 
tryall  civil  cases,  with  an  appeal  to  the  governor  and  council,  whose 
decision  was  to  be  final  up  to  1000  pagodas;  when  that  amount  was 
exceeded,  an  appeal  might  be  made  to  the  King  in  Council.  The 
governor  and  the  five  senior  members  of  his  council  were  to  be  justices 
of  the  peace  for  the  town  and  were  to  hold  quarter  sessions  for  the 
trial  of  criminal  cases. 

On  the  western  side  of  India  the  commerce  of  Bombay  steadily 
increased,  in  spite  of  the  disturbances  caused  by  disputes  with  the 
Portuguese  and  the  Marathas,  and  hostilities  with  the  Malabar 
pirates,  notably  the  Angrias,  who  dominated  the  coast-line  between 
Bombay  and  Goa  and  attacked  all  vessels  that  offered  a  reasonable 
chance  of  capture.  Boone,  who  was  president  and  governor  from 
1715  to  1722,  not  only  built  a  wall  round  Bombay,  to  guard  against 
CHI  v  8 


ii4          THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

sudden  raids,  but  also  constructed  a  number  of  fighting  ships  for  the 
protection  of  commerce.  During  the  next  forty  years  several  expeditions 
were  fitted  out  against  the  pirates;  but  it  was  not  until  the  capture  of 
Suvarndrug  in  1 755  by  Commodore  James  and  the  destruction  of 
Gheria1  in  the  following  year  by  Clive  and  Admiral  Watson  that  the 
power  of  the  Angrias  was  broken.  In  these  operations  the  English 
were  much  aided  by  the  cordial  relations  that  had  been  established 
with  the  Peshwa,  whose  troops  co-operated  on  both  occasions.  A  much 
less  welcome  outcome  of  Maratha  prowess  was  their  capture  of  Bassein 
from  the  Portuguese  in  1 739,  which  brought  them  unpleasantly  near 
to  Bombay  itself. 

Of  the  internal  organisation  of  that  town  the  most  noteworthy 
developments  were  the  establishment  of  a  bank  in  1720:  the  erection 
of  a  mayor's  court  (similar  to  that  at  Madras,  and  created  under  the 
same  charter)  in  1728:  and  the  formation  of  a  large  dockyard  a  few 
years  later,  under  a  Parsi  shipbuilder  from  Surat.  By  1 744  the  popu- 
lation had  risen  to  70,000,  while  the  revenues  amounted  to  about 
sixteen  lakhs  of  rupees.  Grose,  who  arrived  on  the  island  in  1 750, 
records  that  the  draining  of  the  marshes  had  materially  improved  the 
healthiness  of  Bombay,  while  "the  mildness  of  the  government  and 
the  toleration  of  all  religions"  had  drawn  thither  large  numbers  of 
artificers  and  merchants  from  Surat  and  other  places  on  the  mainland. 

Concurrently  with  the  growth  and  consolidation  of  the  English 
settlements  came  increased  competition  from  other  European  powers. 
Of  the  rivalry  of  the  French,  Dutch,  and  Portuguese  nothing  need 
here  be  said,  as  the  subject  is  dealt  with  elsewhere  in  the  volume;  but 
some  account  must  be  given  of  the  efforts  made  by  other  nations  of 
the  West  to  establish  themselves  in  India  and  secure  a  share  of  the 
profitable  trade  resulting.  The  Danish  East  India  Company  was 
established  in  1616,  and  four  years  later  a  settlement  was  made  at 
Tranquebar,  on  the  south-eastern  coast.  From  thence  commerce  was 
soon  extended  to  Masulipatam,  and  later  to  Bengal;  but  adequate 
support  from  home  was  wanting,  and  for  a  long  time  the  exiguous 
trade  of  the  Danes  consisted  chiefly  in  carrying  goods  from  India  to 
Macassar  and  other  parts  of  the  Malayan  Archipelago.  In  fact  more 
than  once  they,  were  on  the  point  of  yielding  Tranquebar  to  either 
the  English  or  the  Dutch  and  relinquishing  the  trade.  A  fresh  com- 
pany, however,  was  started^in  1670,  and  to  this  body  a  new  charter 
was  granted  about  thirty  years  later;  but  its  operations  met  with  so 
little  success  that  in  1714  the  factories  in  Bengal  were  withdrawn. 
On  the  suspension  of  the  Ostend  Company  (mentioned  later),  an 
endeavour  was  made  to  attract  its  shareholders  into  the  Danish  body, 
though  without  success,  owing  to  representations  made  by  the  English, 

1  Better  known  as  Vijayadrug.  Upon  its  capture  it  was  handed  over  to  the  Marathas 
in  exchange  for  Bankot  (renamed  Fort  Victoria),  which  thus  became  the  earliest  British 
possession  on  the  mainland  of  Western  India. 


EUROPEAN  RIVAfs  115 

Dutch,  and  French  governments.  A  new  company  was  started  in 
1729,  which  in  1732  obtained  a  charter  confirming  its  privileges  for 
forty  years — a  term  afterwards  extended  to  1792.  In  1755  a  fr^h 
settlement  was  made  in  Bengal,  this  time  at  Serampur  (on  the  Hugli), 
besides  others  in  the  Nicobar  Islands  and  on  the  Malabar  Coast.  The 
principal  trade  of  the  Danes  was,  however,  with  China  for  tea,  which 
was  largely  smuggled  from  Denmark  into  Great  Britain,  until  a 
reduction  in  the  duty  on  that  commodity  made  this  illicit  commerce 
unprofitable.  On  the  outbreak  of  hostilities  between  the  two  countries 
in  1 80 1  Serampur  and  Tranquebar  were  captured  by  the  English, 
but  they  were  immediately  restored  under  the  treaty  of  Amiens.  Six 
years  later,  on  the  renewal  of  the  war,  both  places  were  again  taken 
possession  of,  and  they  were  retained  until  the  general  peace  restored 
them  to  their  former  owners.  Finally,  in  1 845,  all  the  territory  in  India 
belonging  to  the  Danes,  viz.  Tranquebar,  Serampur,  and  a  piece  of 
ground  at  Balasore,  was  sold  to  the  English  East  India  Company  for 
twelve  and  a  half  lakhs  of  rupees. 

The  treaty  of  Utrecht  (1713),  which  transferred  the  Spanish 
Netherlands  to  the  House  of  Austria,  was  indirectly  the  means  of 
adding  another  competitor  for  the  trade  between  Europe  and  Asia. 
The  merchants  of  Flanders  were  not  slow  to  seize  the  opportunity 
thus  presented,  and  after  several  private  ventures  the  emperor,  in 
spite  of  remonstrances  from  England  and  Holland,  granted  (1723) 
a  charter  to  an  association  generally  known  as  the  Ostend  Company. 
This  quickly  established  a  prosperous  commerce  with  Bengal  and 
China,  its  success  being  largely  due  to  the  extensive  smuggling  into 
England  that  ensued  from  the  proximity  of  Ostend  to  our  south- 
eastern ports.  The  London  Company  was  much  exercised  at  this 
illicit  competition;  while  the  other  European  nations  concerned  in 
the  Eastern  trade  also  felt  themselves  aggrieved.  As  a  result  the 
matter  was  pushed  to  the  forefront  of  politics,  and  when  in  1727  a 
treaty  was  negotiated  for  securing  to  Maria  Theresa  the  inheritance 
of  her  father's  dominions,  the  emperor  was  obliged  to  agree  to  suspend 
for  seven  years  the  privileges  of  the  Ostend  Company;  while  the 
treaty  of  1731,  by  which  Great  Britain  guaranteed  the  succession  of 
Maria  Theresa,  contained  a  clause  which  stipulated  for  the  definite 
suppression  of  that  body.  Its  chief  settlement  in  India,  Bankibazar 
(on  the  Hugli,  three  miles  north  of  Barrackpore),  hoisted  the  flag  of 
the  Austrian  emperor,  and  trade  was  continued  under  its  protection; 
but  in  1744  the  place  was  besieged  by  the  faujdar  of  Hugli  (at  the 
instigation,  it  was  alleged,  of  the  Dutch  and  the  English),  and  the 
garrison,  finding  the  position  hopeless,  embarked  in  their  trading 
ships  and  departed.  Many  of  them  were  killed  in  Pegu,  whither  the 
chief,  Schonamille,  led  them;  the  remainder  took  to  piracy  until  they 
fell  in  with  an  English  man-of-war,  when  they  preferred  joining  that 
ship  to  standing  their  trial  as  pirates, 

8-a 


n6  THE  EAST^INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 

The  gap  caused  by  the  disappearance  of  the  Ostend  association 
was  filled  to  some  extent  by  a  Swedish  East  India  Company,  chartered 
in  1731  and  trading  almost  exclusively  with  China.  Its  privileges 
were  renewed  from  time  to  time,  but  it  slowly  perished  when  the 
reduction  of  the  English  duties  on  tea  extinguished  the  profits  made 
by  smuggling  that  commodity  into  Great  Britain.  The  project  of  an 
Austrian  East  India  Company  was  revived  in  1775,  when,  at  the 
instigation  of  William  Bolts,  a  discharged  servant  of  the  English 
Company,  a  charter  was  granted  by  the  empress  Maria  Theresa  to 
"The  Imperial  Company  of  Trieste".  However,  after  experiencing 
many  vicissitudes  during  the  ensuing  ten  years,  this  association  be- 
came bankrupt.  With  the  mention  of  two  Prussian  ventures — the 
China  Company,  founded  in  1750,  and  the  Bengal  Company,  started 
three  years  later — neither  of  which  proved  a  success,  we  may  bring 
to  a  conclusion  the  story  of  the  attempts  made  by  the  mid-European 
powers  to  share  in  the  trade  with  the  East. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  WAR  OF  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION 

A  HE  War  of  the  Austrian  Succession,  though  in  appearance  it 
achieved  nothing  and  left  the  political  boundaries  of  India  unaltered, 
yet  marks  an  epoch  in  Indian  history.  It  demonstrated  the  over- 
whelming influence  of  sea-power  when  intelligently  directed;  it  dis- 
played the  superiority  of  European  methods  of  war  over  those  followed 
by  Indian  armies;  it  revealed  the  political  decay  that  had  eaten  into 
the  heart  of  the  Indian  state  system;  and  its  conclusion  illustrated  the 
resultant  tendency  of  European  treaties  to  intrude  into  a  world  that 
had  previously  altogether  ignored  them.  In  short,  it  set  the  stage  for 
the  experiments  of  Dupleix  and  the  accomplishments  of  Clive. 

The  only  part  of  India  affected  by  the  war  was  the  Carnatic.  On 
the  coast  lay  three  important  European  cities — Negapatam  under  the 
Dutch;  Pondichery  under  the  French ;  and  Madras  under  the  English. 
Each  was  a  place  of  large  trade;  each  was  inhabited  by  some  20,000 
or  30,000  Indians  who  had  gathered  themselves  round  the  small 
group  of  Europeans,  400  or  500  in  number,  who  formed  the  dominant 
element;  each  was  a  place  of  reputed  strength.  They  had  sprung  into 
existence  for  purposes  of  trade;  and  had  attracted  their  Indian  popu- 
lation, in  part  by  the  opportunities  of  wealth,  in  part  by  the  certainty 
of  protection  offered  by  their  walls  and  ships.  Behind  them  the 
country  was  divided  out  between  Hindu  and  Muslim.  At  Arcot, 
dependent  on  the  subahdar  of  the  Deccan,  was  the  nawab  of  the 
Carnatic.  He  was  busy  trying  to  convert  what  had  in  origin  been  a 
mere  official  appointment  into  an  hereditary  rule,  for  his  superior, 
Nizam-ul-mulk,  was  old,  and  constantly  occupied  with  his  aggressive 
Maratha  neighbours  or  with  the  troubled  affairs  of  Northern  India. 
The  nawab's  territories  formed  a  narrow  strip  along  the  coast 
stretching  from  Ongole  on  the  north  to  Jinji  on  the  south,  and  bounded 
westwards  by  the  fills  that  buttress 'the  Deccan.  Up  these  he  never 
attempted  to  spread  his  dominions;  but  southward  lay  a  number  of 
small,  feeble  states  that  invited  his  attack.  The  first  of  these  was 
TrichLnopoly,  which,  in  1736,  was  ruled  by  a  Hindu  princess,  widow 
of  the  last  nayak,  whose  family  had  established  itself  there  on  the 
break-up  of  the  Vijayanagar  Empire  at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  This  had  been  conquered  by  Nawab  Dost  'All's  son,  Safdar 
'Ali,  and  his  son-in-law,  Chanda  Sahib,  in  1736  or  1737,  and  this 
success  was  followed  by  the  occupation  of  Madura  by  Chanda  Sahib's 
brother.1  Tanjore,  however,  which  had  been  established  as  a  result 

1  Gf.  Ormc  MSS,  Various,  xv,  10-15. 


n8      THE  WAR  OF  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION 

of  the  Maratha  invasion  of  the  Carnatic  in  the  previous  century,  did 
not  fall  so  readily.  It  was  small,  but  it  was  rich  and  fertile;  and 
although  on  several  occasions  Chanda  Sahib  and  his  brother-in-law, 
Safdar  'Ali,  besieged  the  capital  and  plundered  the  country  round, 
they  never  succeeded  in  mastering  it.1  Their  attempts  led  to  the 
expulsion  of  their  own  family  from  Arcot. 

Although  the  Maratha  armies  had  not  set  foot  in  the  Carnatic  for 
over  a  generation,  the  Peshwa  had  a  standing  pretext  for  intervention 
whenever  it  suited  Maratha  policy.  This  was  the  claim  to  a  quarter 
of  the  revenues  known  as  chauth.  In  1740  Fateh  Singh  and  Raghuji 
Bhonsle,  two  of  the  principal  Maratha  generals,  were  sent  with  a  large 
army  of  horse  to  levy  the  largest  contribution  that  circumstances 
would  permit.  Their  expedition  was  probably  suggested  by  the  com- 
plaints of  their  fellow-Maratha,  the  raja  of  Tanjore;  but  the  common 
rumour  was  that  they  had  been  invited  by  Safdar  'Ali  in  jealousy  of 
Chanda  Sahib's  designs,2  or  that  they  had  been  abetted  by  Nasir 
Jang,  son  of  Nizam-ul-mulk,  in  order  to  get  them  out  of  his  father's 
territories.  In  any  case  their  sudden  movement  southwards  from  the 
neighbourhood  of  Cuddapah  took  Dost  'Ali  by  surprise.  He  marched 
with  what  troops  he  had  at  hand  lo  meet  them  at  the  Damalcheri 
Pass,  a  valley  about  800  yards  wide,  defended  by  a  wall  running 
across  it.  But  the  Marathas  did  not  attempt  to  storm  this  obstacle. 
Guided  by  a  local  Hindu  chief,  Chikka  Rayalu,  they  moved  by  another 
route  eastwards  of  the  nawab's  position,  and  then  fell  upon  him  from 
the  rear.  His  army  was  destroyed,  and  he  himself  with  his  chief 
people  killed.  Moving  at  once  upon  Arcot,  where  was  Safdar  'Ali, 
the  Marathas  obliged  him  to  come  to  terms.  He  is  said  to  have  agreed 
to  pay  a  crore  of  rupees  and  to  restore  to  the  Hindus  their  old  pos- 
sessions.8 After  this  the  Marathas  moved  westward  towards  Bangalore 
as  if  to  return  to  Poona,  where  Balaji  Rao  was  finding  obstacles  in 
securing  the  succession  to  his  father  Baji  Rao.  But  early  in  the  next 
year,  1741,  they  reappeared  and  attacked  Chanda  Sahib  in  Trichino- 
poly.  After  a  short  siege  the  place  capitulated,  and  Chanda  Sahib, 
being  unable  or  unwilling  to  pay  the  ransom  that  was  demanded  of 
him,  was  carried  off  prisoner  to  Satara. 

These  events*  shook  the  rule  of  Dost  'Ali's  family  at  Arcot  to  its 
foundations.  Maratha  plunder  hindered  the  collection  of  the  revenue 
and  thus  prevented  Safdar  'Ali  from  replenishing  his  treasury.  More- 
over, he  did  not  receive  the  formal  investiture  from  his  superior 
Nizam-ul-mulk,  so  that  the  bazaars  were  full  of  rumours  of  his 
impending  removal.4  In  the  autumn  of  1742  he  was  at  Vellore, 

1  Orme  MSS,  Various,  xv,  89-90. 
*  Madras  Country  Correspondence,  1740,  p.  12. 
1  Lettres  tdifiantes  ct  curieuses  (ed.  Martin),  n,  701. 

4  Madras  to  the  Company  [  ],  February,  1 742 ;  Pondichcry  to  the  French  Company, 
I  October,  1741. 


CONFUSION  IN  THE  CARNATIC  119 

demanding  a  contribution  from  his  cousin  Murtaza  'Ali,  who  was 
the  commandant  of  the  place.  Murtaza  'Ali  thought  the  time  ripe 
for  the  transfer  of  power  into  his  own  more  crafty  hands.  He  first 
attempted  to  poison  his  cousin;  that  failing,  he  put  him  to  death  by 
violence,  and  attempted  to  seize  the  government  of  Arcot.  But  he  lacked 
the  nerve  to  carry  through  what  he  had  begun.  Alarmed  by  the  attitude 
of  the  people  and  troops,  he  suddenly  abandoned  the  capital  and 
disguised  as  a  woman  made  his  way  hurriedly  back  to  Vellore  with 
its  crocodile-defended  moat.  For  the  moment  Safdar's  young  son,  who 
had  been  left  for  safety's  sake  by  his  father  at  Madras  with  the  English, 
was  recognised  as  nawab,  and  the  administration  was  carried  on  by 
his  father's  ministers.  But  these  disorders  had  attracted  the  attention 
of  Nizam-ul-mulk.  He  appointed  a  nawab,  and  early  in  1743 
entered  the  Carnatic  in  person  to  restore  order.  He  expelled  the 
garrison  which  the  Marathas  had  left  in  Trichinopoly;  and  finally, 
his  first  nominee  having  died,  he  appointed  an  old  servant  of  his, 
Anwar-ud-din  Khan,  to  the  government  of  Arcot.  But  the  task  of 
restoring  order  was  beyond  any  but  the  most  vigorous.  Relatives  of 
the  old  family  still  held  most  of  the  chief  fortresses  and  enjoyed  large 
jagirs;  and  although  Safdar  'All's  son  was  opportunely  murdered  at 
Arcot,1  Anwar-ud-din's  position  seemed  hardly  more  secure  than 
Safdar  'Ali's  had  been.  The  whole  country  was  in  a  state  of  un- 
certainty, expecting  some  great  event,  though  none  knew  what. 

Following  on  these  ominous  events  came  the  news  of  the  declaration 
of  war  between  France  and  England.  Four  years  earlier  it  would 
have  opened  very  much  to  the  advantage  of  the  French  in  the  eastern 
seas.  At  that  time,  when  war  seemed  close  at  hand,  La  Bourdonnais, 
the  governor  of  Mauritius,  had  been  sent  out  with  a  squadron  in- 
tended to  operate  against  the  English  trade;  but  when  the  crisis 
passed,  the  squadron  was  recalled;  and  so  it  happened  that,  when 
war  really  broke  out,  the  French  had  no  ships  of  force  in  Indian 
waters,  and  the  small  squadron  equipped  by  the  English  immediately 
after  the  declaration  of  war2  found  nothing  on  its  arrival  at  the  close 
of  the  year  capable  of  resisting  it.  Dupleix,  who  had  become  governor 
of  Pondichery  in  1742,  had  hoped  to  be  able  to  arrange  one  of  those 
irregular  understandings  such  as  had  been  reached  between  Madras 
and  Pondichery  in  the  previous  war,  for  a  neutrality  in  India.  He 
addressed  the  three  English  presidencies  in  this  sense  before  any  news 
of  the  English  squadron  had  been  received.  In  this  he  was  following 
the  policy  of  his  masters,  the  French  directors,  who  had  announced 
their  willingness  to  enter  into  an  understanding  with  the  English 
Company.  But  a  proposal  so  calculated  to  favour  the  interests  of  the 
weaker  naval  power  had  been  rejected;  and  the  English  in  India, 
while  willing  enough  to  disclaim  hostile  designs,  which  indeed  they 

1  Madras  Consultations,  26  June,  1744.  Of.  Orme  MSS,  Various,  xv,  74. 
1  Minute  of  22  March,  1743/4  (Brit.  Mus.  Add.  MSS,  33004,  f.  78). 


120      THE  \YAR  OF  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION 

had  not  the  power  to  execute,  warned  Dupleix  that  they  would  have 
no  control  over  any  king's  ships  that  might  arrive.  His  sanguine  mind 
interpreted  this  answer  as  an  acceptance  of  his  proposals;  and  when 
the  news,  came  that  English  ships  under  Barnett  had  not  only  captured 
the  Company's  China  fleet  but  also  some  richly  laden  country  vessels 
in  which  he  was  largely  interested,  he  felt  very  unreasonably  that  he 
had  been  tricked  by  the  English.1 

But  if  the  French  had  thus  lost  the  first  hand  in  the  game,  they  still 
had  something  in  reserve.  It  might  be  impossible  to  fit  and  equip 
ships  on  the  harbourless  coast  of  Coromandel;  but  at  Mauritius  they 
had  an  excellent  harbour,  and  a  governor  of  genius.  Dupleix  had  at 
first  desired  a  policy  of  neutrality  because  it  was  well  adapted  to  the 
interests  of  himself  and  of  his  settlement.  But  since  neutrality  could 
not  be  had,  the  next  best  thing  was  to  call  on  La  Bourdonnais  to  come 
to  the  rescue.  There  were  a  number  of  French  Company's  ships  at 
Port  Louis ;  and  these,  though  not  swift  sailers,  were  stout  vessels  quite 
capable  of  taking  their  place  in  a  line  of  battle.  The  deficiency  of  men 
was  made  good  by  sending  a  number  of  coffrees  from  Madagascar  on 
board;  and  with  one  or  two  country  ships  to  act  as  frigates,  La  Bour- 
donnais, after  some  delay  and  one  or  two  mishaps,  succeeded  in 
reaching  the  coast  with  his  improvised  squadron.  He  found  the 
English  ships  weakened  by  their  long  absence  from  the  dockyard, 
with  their  crews  depleted  by  the  climate,  and  above  all  with  their 
original  leader  dead  and  succeeded  by  his  senior  captain,  Peyton,  the 
most  unenterprising  of  seamen.  Moreover,  one  of  his  four  ships  of  the 
line,  the  Medwqy,  which  had  been  leaky  even  before  she  left  England,2 
had  to  keep  her  pumps  perpetually  going.  Against  them  La  Bour- 
donnais could  place  eight  ships  in  the  line.  But  the  odds  were  not 
nearly  so  heavy  as  that.  The  English  ships  were  the  better  sailers  and 
more  heavily  armed.  The  French  thus  might  have  been  out-sailed 
and  out-ranged.  But  Peyton  failed  to  use  his  advantages.  After  an 
indecisive  action  on  25  June,  1 746,  he  made  off  for  Ceylon,  partly  in 
the  hopes  of  refitting,  partly  in  the  hopes  of  meeting  with  reinforce- 
ments and  perhaps  a  senior  captain  to  take  the  responsibility.  In 
August  he  returned  to  the  coast,  and  again  sighted  La  Bourdonnais's 
squadron.  The  latter  had  taken  advantage  of  the  interval  to  increase 
his  armament  from  the  stores  of  Pondichery;  and  this  so  alarmed  the 
English  commodore  that  after  a  hasty  visit  to  Pulicat,  which  he  made 
in  error  for  Madras,  he  left  the  coast  and  sailed  for  safety  to  the  Hugli, 
where  he  lay  until  the  arrival  of  reinforcements  took  the  command  out 
of  his  hands. 

His  departure  delivered  Madras  into  the  hands  of  the  French. 
A  besieging  force  could  only  be  collected  by  taking  a  large  number 
of  men  out  of  the  ships;  so  that  had  Peyton  even  resolved  to  remain 


1  Dodwell,  Dupleix  and  Olive,  pp.  5  sqq. 

1  Orders  to  Sir  Charles  Hardy,  19  March,  1743/4 


(P.R.O.  Adm.  2-6 1,  £  103). 


CAPTURE  OF  MADRAS       .  121 

upon  the  coast  without  coming  to  action,  his  presence  would  have 
prevented  the  French  from  making  any  considerable  attempt*  But 
his  absence  freed  them  from  all  apprehensions*  La  Bourdonnais 
appeared  with  his  ships  and  a  part  of  the  Pondichery  garrison  before 
Madras  on  4/15  September;  it  surrendered  to  him,  after  two  English- 
men and  four  others  had  been  killed  by  the  fire  of  the  besiegers,1  on 
the  10/21.  Thus  the  military  conduct  of  the  English  on  this  occasion 
was  about  on  a  level  with  their  conduct  at  sea.  But  it  should  be  added 
that  the  .defences  of  Madras  were  built  rather  to  protect  the  place 
from  incursions  of  horse  than  to  resist  a  siege  in  form;  and  the  garrison 
was  weak,  untrained,  and  commanded  by  officers  who  did  not  know 
their  business.2 

This  resounding  success  led  immediately  to  disputes  between  the 
two  French  governors,  Dupleix  and  La  Bourdonnais,  about  the  dis- 
posal of  the  place.  It  had  surrendered  under  an  informal  promise  of 
ransom;  and  in  the  discussions  about  the  sum  that  should  be  paid, 
mention  had  certainly  been  made  of  a  present  to  La  Bourdonnais ; 
but  if  that  scheme  were  carried  out,  Dupleix  and  his  friends  at  Pon- 
dichery would  reap  no  advantages  from  the  assistance  they  had  given 
to  the  expedition.  They  therefore  put  forward  a  proposal  that  the 
place  should  be  kept.  Although  the  matter  has  often  been  argued  as 
though  national  interests  had  been  at  stake,  the  question  was  really, 
Who  was  to  make  money  out  of  Madras?8  La  Bourdonnais  insisted 
on  carrying  out  his  original  plan,  and  concluded  a  ransom  treaty  with 
the  Madras  council.  Dupleix,  after  trying  to  seize  the  captured  city 
by  force,  appeared  to  give  way.  But  their  discussions  had  prolonged 
the  stay  of  the  French  vessels  at  Madras.  On  2/13  October,  a  hurri- 
cane broke  on  the  coast,  crippling  La  Bourdonnais's  squadron,  and 
obliging  him  to  leave  behind  him  a  considerable  number  of  men 
who  thus  passed  under  the  command  of  Dupleix.  On  his  departure 
Dupleix  denounced  the  treaty  which  had  been  made;  and  the  garrison 
and  company's  servants  of  Pondichery  secured  the  opportunity  for 
which  they  had  hoped  of  plundering  Madras  from  top  to  bottom.4 
Meanwhile,  on  his  arrival  in  France,  La  Bourdonnais  was  imprisoned 
on  the  charges  which  Dupleix  had  sent  home  against  him;  and  seems 
at  last  to  have  secured  his  release  by  the  influence  of  the  Pompadour.6 

The  nawab  Anwar-ud-din  had  not  regarded  these  events  with  un- 
concern. Indeed,  his  interference  had  been  asked  by  each  of  the  two 
nations  in  turn.  At  first  it  was  Dupleix  who  wanted  him  to  prevent  the 
English  from  seizing  French  ships  at  sea ;  and  in  order  if  possible  to  scare 
their  men-of-war  into  inaction,  he  procured  permission  for  a  country 
ship  in  which  he  was  interested  to  sail  under  the  nawab's  flag.  Barnett, 

1  Love,  Vestiges  of  Old  Madras,  n,  425. 

1  Barnett  to  Anson,  16  September,  1745  (Brit.  Mus.  Add.  MSS,  15955,  f.  us). 

1  Dodwcll,  op.  cit.  pp.  15  sag*  *  Idem,  pp. 

§  Comspondancc  de  Mm  d*  Pompadour,  p.  5. 


THE  WAR  OF  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION 

of  course,  treated  such  devices  as  they  deserved.  The  nawab  addressed 
letters  of  complaint  to  theMadras  council,  who  explained  thattheyhad 
no  power  to  control  the  conduct  of  the  commander  of  the  king's  ships. 
After  a  while  the  matter  was  dropped;  and,  as  Dupleix  had  no  more 
ships  to  send  to  sea,  it  could  not  recur.  Then,  when  the  French  had 
secured  control  of  the  sea,  and  were  preparing  to  attack  Madras,  it  was 
the  turn  of  the  English  to  invoke  the  help  of  Arcot.  It  has  been  said  that 
their  application  failed  because  they  neglected  to  send  a  proportion- 
able present  with  their  request;  but  I  have  elsewhere  shown  that  that 
account  is  not  warranted  by  the  facts.1  The  nawab  sent  a  warning 
to  Dupleix  which  he  ignored.  When  La  Bourdonnais  was  still  before 
Madras,  the  nawab  demanded  that  the  French  troops  should  be 
recalled ;  and  Dupleix  coolly  replied  that  he  was  only  conquering  the 
place  in  order  to  put  it  into  the  nawab's  hands.  When  La  Bourdon- 
nais had  just  entered  Fort  St  George,  the  nawab  again  demanded  his 
withdrawal,  and  finally  sent  troops  to  compel  obedience  to  his  com- 
mands. It  was  as  vigorous  and  prompt  action  as  could  have  been 
expected  by  the  most  sanguine ;  and  had  Madras  made  a  good  defence, 
the  French  would  still  have  been  lying  before  the  walls  when  the 
nawab's  troops  arrived.  As  it  was  they  found  the  French  flag  flying, 
and  all  they  could  do  was  to  attempt  to  starve  the  French  into 
evacuation.  But  as  soon  as  the  latter  found  themselves  inconvenienced 
by  the  blockade,  a  sally  was  made  under  La  Tour,  who  scattered  his 
assailants  and  made  them  retire  to  St  Thom6.  Similar  success  was 
obtained  by  Paradis,  who  was  marching  up  with  reinforcements.  The 
nawab's  troops,  still  in  St  Thome,  tried  to  bar  his  way  on  the  little 
Adyar  river;  but  were  hustled  out  of  the  way  as  unceremoniously  by 
Paradis  as  they  had  been  by  La  Tour.  By  this  time  musketry  and 
field  artillery  had  developed  so  far  that  cavalry  could  make  no  im- 
pression on  troops  that  kept  their  ranks  and  reserved  their  fire.  The 
terror  of  Asiatic  armies  had  disappeared. 

The  capture  of  Madras  marked  the  limit  of  French  achievements 
in  the  course  of  this  war.  For  eighteen  months  after  the  fall  of  Madras 
Dupleix  tried  in  vain  to  capture  Fort  St  David,  only  a  few  miles  south 
of  Pondichery,  and  certainly  no  more  capable  of  defence  than  Madras 
had  been.  But  *he  tried  in  vain.  On  one  occasion  even  the  French 
troops  broke  and  fled  on  the  apprehension  that  the  nawab's  horse, 
sent  to  assist  the  English,  were  moving  to  threaten  their  retreat. 
Dupleix  came  to  terms  with  the  nawab;  he  gave  him  considerable 
presents,  and  even  agreed  to  allow  the  nawab's  flag  to  fly  for  a  week 
over  Madras  in  token  of  his  submission.2  But  even  then  when  the 
nawab's  sons  had  retired  from  the  neighbourhood  of  Fort  St  David, 
Dupleix  still  could  not  take  the  place.  The  fact  was,  that  with  the 
departure  of  La  Bourdonnais  the  command  of  the  sea  had  returned 

1  Dpdwcll,  op.  cit.p.  13. 

2  Diary  of  Ananda  Ranga  Filial,  m,  394. 


SIEGE  OF  PONDICHERY  123 

to  the  English;  a  new  commander,  Griffin,  had  arrived;  and  as  soon 
as  Dupleix  approached  the  English  settlement,  his  topmasts  were  sure 
to  appear  above  the  horizon,  and  the  French  would  hurriedly  retreat 
lest  he  should  make  an  attempt  on  Pondichery  in  their  absence. 

But  for  such  fruitless  episodes  the  year  1747,  and  the  first  half  of 
1748,  passed  away  without  incident.  In  June,  however,  affairs  began 
to  move.  First  there  appeared  a  French  squadron,  under  Bouvet,  which 
lured  Griffin  from  before  Fort  St  David,  where  he  was  lying,  only  to 
disappear  altogether  from  the  coast  after  landing  treasure  for  the 
French  at  Madras,  while  the  English  ships  lay  before  Pondichery  to 
prevent  the  enemy  from  landing  there.  Then  early  in  August  came 
in  gradually  the  large  expedition  which  had  been  fitted  out  in  England 
in  order  to  avenge  the  capture  of  Madras.  It  was  commanded  by 
Rear-admiral  Boscawen,  and  consisted  of  not  only  six  ships  of  the  line 
and  as  many  smaller  vessels,  but  also  of  land  forces  some  1000  strong. 
Together  with  the  vessels  already  in  the  East  Indies  this  was  ample 
on  the  naval  side;  but  the  land  forces  were  of  inferior  metal.  They 
had  been  hastily  got  together  for  the  occasion;  the  companies  into 
which  they  were  divided  had  been  raised  in  part  by  drafts  from  regi- 
ments in  Ireland,  in  part  by  officers  specially  commissioned  on 
condition  of  raising  a  certain  number  of  men  in  Scotland.  These  had 
found  it  very  difficult  to  comply  with  their  promises;  and  in  the  long- 
run  their  companies  had  to  be  completed  by  deserters,  criminals,  or 
rebels  pardoned  on  condition  of  enlistment,  so  that,  although  by 
landing  his  marines  and  parties  of  his  sailors,  Boscawen  could  assemble 
a  large  force  of  men,  they  were  not  trained  military  material.1 

It  was  decided  to  begin  operations  by  besieging  Pondichery;  and 
had  the  siege  been  skilfully  conducted,  it  should  have  succeeded.  But 
it  was  managed  with  a  singular  want  of  skill.  Unluckily  the  only 
officers  of  experience  were  disabled  or  taken  prisoner  before  the  siege 
itself  was  formed ;  and  the  survey  made  by  the  engineers  was  conducted 
from  so  safe  a  distance  that  they  could  not  judge  the  strength  of  the 
works  or  the  nature  of  the  ground.  So  it  came  to  pass  that  the  be- 
siegers formed  their  camp  on  ground  westward  of  the  city,  whither 
all  the  stores  had  to  be  carried  with  great  labour,  instead  of  beginning 
their  approaches  on  the  shdre  where  they  would  have  been  covered 
by  the  guns  of  their  own  squadron.  Then  also  they  began  their  trenches 
at  so  great  a  distance  from  the  town  that  they  were  unable  to  batter 
the  walls,  and  on  ground  separated  from  it  by  a  swamp,  so  that  their 
works  could  not  be  advanced  near  enough  to  begin  to  batter  in  breach. 
The  attack  on  Pondichery  was  scarcely  managed  with  more  skill  than 
the  defence  of  Madras.  The  French  on  the  other  hand  defended 
themselves  with  vigour.  Their  sorties  harassed  the  besiegers.  Their 
fire  remained  stronger  everywhere  than  that  brought  to  bear  on  them. 

1  Fox  to  Pitt,  6  June,  1747  (P.R.O.,  W.O.  4-43);  same  to  Capt.  Forbes,  7  July,  1747 
(wfcm);  same  to  Gadcraft,  21  September,  1747  (idem). 


124      THE  WAR  OF  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION 

Finding  the  land  siege  progress  so  slowly,  Boscawen  resolved  to  try 
the  effect  of  bombarding  the  place  with  his  squadron.  But  his  fire 
was  ineffective;  the  weather  was  evidently  breaking  up  for  the  mon- 
soon; many  of  his  men  were  in  hospital;  and  at  last,  at  the  beginning 
of  October,  he  decided  to  raise  the  siege  and  return  to  Fort  St  David, 
where  his  men  could  be  placed  under  cover.  It  was  a  conspicuous 
success  for  Dupleix,  and  a  conspicuous  failure  for  the  English. 

While  Boscawen  was  lying  at  Fort  St  David  waiting  for  the  weather 
to  allow  his  recommencing  operations,  news  arrived  that  the  pre- 
liminaries of  peace  had  been  signed  in  Europe.  This  naturally  brought 
all  operations  to  an  end;  all  prisoners  were  released  on  their  parole; 
and  when  at  last  copies  of  the  Treaty  of  Aix-la-Chapelle  arrived 
with  the  necessary  papers  and  instructions,  Madras  was  solemnly 
handed  back  to  the  English,  and  Boscawen  sailed  back  to  Europe. 
But  in  spite  of  this  trivial  ending  affairs  were  in  a  very  different  state 
from  that  in  which  they  had  been  at  the  beginning  of  the  war.  The 
English,  for  instance,  held  Madras  under  the  terms  of  a  treaty,  a*id 
never  again  paid  for  it  the  stipulated  quit-rent  of  1200  pagodas  a  year, 
of  which  they  speedily  procured  a  discharge  from  the  claimant 
to  the  Carnatic  whose  cause  they  espoused.  The  French  had  secured 
a  high  and  deserved  reputation  for  their  military  conduct.  They  had 
defied  Anwar-ud-din,  and  he  had  been  unable  to  coerce  them  into 
doing  as  he  demanded.  So  that  while  the  events  which  had  just 
preceded  the  war  showed  how  uncertain  and  unsettled  the  Indian 
government  of  South  India  had  become,  the  events  of  the  war  itself 
showed  that  the  Europeans  were  quite  equal  to  taking  a  decisive  part 
in  Indian  affairs,  and  that  they  had  little  to  fear  from  any  armies  that 
Indian  princes  were  likely  at  that  time  to  bring  against  them.  The 
power  which  was  preponderant  at  sea  might  thus  become  prepon- 
derant on  land.  And  the  fertile  and  ingenious  mind  of  Dupleix  had 
for  the  first  time  been  set  to  the  serious  consideration  of  the  Indian 
political  problem.  Moreover,  the  storm  which  had  obliged  La 
Bourdonnais  to  leave  behind  him  a  considerable  body  of  his  men  had 
in  that  manner  augmented  the  forces  at  the  disposal  of  Dupleix.  So 
that  the  war  did  indeed  set  the  stage  for  the  great  projects  which  he 
began  to  develop  in  the  very  year  in  which  he  gave  back  Madras  to 
the  English. 


CHAPTER   VI 

DUPLEIX  AND  BUSSY 

ALTHOUGH  by  the  terms  of  the  peace  Madras  had  been  handed 
back  to  the  English,  it  did  not  become  once  more  the  seat  of  their 
government  until  6/17  April,  1752.  Till  then  their  affairs  continued 
to  be  directed  from  Fort  St  David,  close  to  Pondichery.  One  would 
have  thought  that  so  exhausting  a  war  would  have  imposed  on  both 
the  neighbours  an  equal  need  of  living  well  together;  the  necessity  of 
reviving  trade  must  have  been  felt  as  much  by  the  English  governor 
Floyer  as  by  the  French  governor  Dupleix,  and  Floyer  was  not  the 
man  to  seek  quarrels  for  their  own  sake.  But  good  will  is  not  always 
enough  to  avoid  or  prevent  conflict.  Blind  forces,  which  we  sometimes 
call  chance  and  sometimes  destiny,  may  suddenly  produce  new  causes 
of  rivalry  that  seem  innocent  until  the  future  has  proved  their  venom. 
The  English  had  not  even  re-entered  Madras  before  both  governors 
had  each  on  his  own  account  engaged  in  relations  with  Indian  princes 
closely  similar  in  nature  but  quite  distinct,  and  which  were  with  little 
delay  to  bring  them  into  direct  collision. 

Quite  independently  Floyer  and  Dupleix  had  taken  sides  in  local 
quarrels  at  almost  the  same  moment  and  in  common  defiance  of  the 
policy  laid  down  with  similar  emphasis  alike  at  Paris  and  at  London. 
Peace  had  left  both  with  unemployed  bodies  of  troops  who  were 
expensive  to  maintain  but  who  could  not  be  sent  back  to  Europe 
because  the  shipping  season  had  not  arrived.  Neither  governor  there- 
fore was  sorry  to  relieve  himself  of  heavy  charges  by  temporarily 
placing  these  troops  at  the  disposal  of  princes  who  would  contribute 
to  their  maintenance. 

It  was  Floyer  who  in  all  seeming  led  the  way.  Early  in  1 749  Shahji, 
a  dispossessed  claimant  of  the  throne  of  Tanjore,  offered  the  English 
Devikottai  on  condition  of  their  helping  him  to  recover  the  throne.1 
Devikottai  was  a  little  place  of  small  importance  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Coleroon.  The  English  fancied  that  its  possession  would  make  them 
masters  of  the  navigable  part  of  the  river  and  enable  them  to  control 
the  inland  trade.  A  first  expedition  sent  in  April  under  Captain  Cope 
failed;  the  troops  of  the  legitimate  sovereign,  Pratab  Singh,  offered 
an  unexpected  resistance.  But  a  second,  better  prepared  and  led  by 
Major  Lawrence  in  person,  succeeded;  after  a  few  days  of  s^ege 
Devikottai  surrendered  (23  June) .  The  English  kept  it  with  the  country 
belonging  to  it;  and  as  for  Shahji  no  one  thought  of  restoring  him  to 
his  throne.  This  occupation  of  Devikottai  was  nothing  more  than  a 

1  Fort  St  David  Consultation*,  10  April,  1749. 


126  DUPLEIX  AND  BUSSY 

belated  and  rather  futile  reply  to  the  occupation  of  Karikal  by 
Governor  Dumas  some  ten  years  earlier.  It  restored  in  that  part  of 
the  Carnatic  the  balance  which  had  inclined  in  the  favour  of  the 
French. 

Quite  other  was  the  importance  of  the  expedition  that  Dupleix  was 
contemplating  and  preparing  to  execute  at  the  same  time.  In  the 
month  of  March  he  had  learnt  that  Chanda  Sahib,  who  had  been  a 
prisoner  with  the  Marathas  for  the  last  seven  years,  had  just  been  set 
free  and  was  preparing  to  recover  the  possessions  of  his  family  in 
concert  with  Muzaffar  Jang  (grandson  of  Nizam-ul-mulk  who  had 
died  in  1748)  who  laid  claim  to  the  succession  of  his  grandfather.  The 
two  princes  were  making  common  cause,  and  Chanda  Sahib  had  sent 
his  son,  Raza  Sahib,  to  Pondichery  to  obtain  from  Dupleix  the  assist- 
ance of  troops  whom  the  confederates  agreed  to  pay.  Dupleix  had 
a  grievance  against  the  actual  nawab,  Anwar-ud-din  Khan,  who  had 
assisted  his  enemies  during  the  siege  of  Pondichery.  He  therefore 
accepted  with  the  utmost  secrecy  the  offers  made  to  him  on  condition 
of  not  taking  the  field  until  the  two  princes  were  themselves  prepared 
to  begin  hostilities.  At  last,  on  13  July,  matters  reached  the  point  at 
which  a  public  agreement  could  be  made,  and  three  days  later  the 
troops  under  d'Auteuil  began  their  march  on  Vellore,  where  the  allies 
were  to  concentrate.  Dupleix  hoped  to  conclude  matters  quickly 
enough  to  be  able  to  confront  the  Company  with  fortunately  accom- 
plished facts,  so  that  there  would  be  room  for  nothing  but  praise 
of  his  initiative. 

All  at  first  went  well.  The  French  having  joined  their  allies  defeated 
and  slew  Anwar-ud-din  Khan  at  the  battle  of  Ambur,  south-east  of 
Vellore,  on  3  August.  After  this  victory  Muzaffar  Jang  and  Chanda 
Sahib,  grateful  for  the  help  accorded  them,  came  to  offer  their  thanks 
to  Dupleix  at  Pondichery,  and  granted  him  in  full  right  the  territories 
of  Villiyanallur  and  Bahur,  which  more  than  doubled  the  French 
Company's  possessions  round  Pondichery,  and  they  added  to  this  on 
the  Orissa  Coast  the  province  of  Masulipatam  and  the  island  of  Divy. 

In  indirect  answer  to  these  grants  Admiral  Boscawen  took  possession 
of  St  Thome,  where  he  suspected  Dupleix  also  meant  to  establish  his 
authority.  St  Thom6  is  not  four  miles  from  Madras,  so  that  its 
possession  was  a*vital  matter  for  the  English.  Already  men  were  not 
paying  too  much  attention  to  the  question,  who  was  the  rightful 
owner  of  desirable  territory?  Dupleix  held  that  St  Thom£  belonged 
to  Chanda  Sahib;  Boscawen  to  Muhammad  JAli,  son  and  heir  of 
Anwar-ud-din  Khan,  though  he  had  inherited  little  power  enough. 
After  the  battle  of  Ambur,  he  had  taken  refuge  at  Trichinopoly,  where 
he  was  preparing  to  oppose  Chanda  Sahib  and  his  allies.  The  English, 
feeling  that  it  was  in  their  interest  to  support  him,  from  October 
onwards  sent  him  help.  Dupleix  too  understood  that  he  would  never 
be  the  real  master  of  the  Carnatic  under  Chanda  Sahib's  name  until 


NASIR  JANG  127 

he  had  got  rid  of  Muhammad  'AIL  In  November,  therefore,  he  sent 
troops  against  Trichinopoly  under  the  command  of  his  brother-in-law 
d'Auteuil;  but  instead  of  finishing  the  war  by  reducing  that  town  as 
quickly  as  possible,  the  French,  at  the  suggestion  of  their  allies,  turned 
off  against  Tanjore,  whence  they  hoped  to  draw  a  large  tribute  for 
the  maintenance  of  their  forces — a  consideration  not  lacking  import- 
ance. That  town,  the  capital  of  the  kingdom  of  the  same  name, 
resisted  all  attacks,  and  kept  the  allies  before  it  for  three  months.  The 
English  openly  encouraged  the  king  in  his  resistance,  and  led  him  to 
expect  prompt  help  from  Nasir  Jang,  the  rival  subahdar  of  the 
Deccan. 

Nasir  Jang  was  Nizam-ul-mulk's  son  and  so  Muzaffar  Jang's  uncle. 
As  at  the  time  of  his  father's  death  he  had  been  able  to  seize  the 
treasury,  he  had  also  been  able  to  secure  his  accession,  and  was  pre- 
paring to  dispute  his  nephew's  claims,  both  of  them  resting  their  rights 
on  a  real  or  alleged  investiture  by  the  Moghul.  Nasir  Jang  had  not 
at  first  understood  all  the  importance  of  the  battle  of  Ambur,  and,  in 
spite  of  the  English  invitations,  had  hesitated  to  take  part  in  a  war 
which  after  all  was  not  being  fought  in  the  Deccan.  He  only  made 
up  his  mind  when  the  danger  seemed  to  threaten  himself,  and  at  the 
beginning  of  1 750  he  appeared  on  the  borders  of  the  Carnatic.  His 
approach  compelled  the  French  and  Chanda  Sahib  to  raise  the  siege 
of  Tanjore  and  to  retire  on  Pondichery;  while  the  English  took 
advantage  of  this  retreat  to  occupy  Tiruvendipuram,  which  adjoins 
Cuddalore. 

The  opposing  armies  found  themselves  face  to  face  at  the  end  of 
March,  on  the  banks  of  the  Jinji  river,  near  Valudavur.  Nasir  Jang 
had  been  joined  by  a  few  English  under  Captain  Cope,  and  a  battle 
seemed  inevitable,  when  thirteen  French  officers,  struck  with  panic, 
fled  to  Pondichery  on  the  night  of  4  April,  and  Muzaffar  Jang  cast 
himself  on  the  generosity  of  his  uncle,  who  made  him  prisoner.  The 
French  army  was  also  obliged  to  withdraw,  but  nevertheless  Dupleix 
was  able  to  offer  his  enemy  an  unbroken  front  at  the  bounds  of  Pon- 
dichery. After  some  short  and  fruitless  "negotiations,  Dupleix  suddenly 
decided  on  a  night  attack  on  Nasir  Jang's  camp,  which  was  thrown 
into  panic.  That  prince,  having  secured  his  nephew,  thought  nothing 
more  was  to  be  gained  by  fighting  with  the  French,  and  so  quietly 
retired  to  Arcot,  where  for  the  next  six  months  he  lay  inactive.  In 
vain  did  the  English  and  Muhammad  'Ali  implore  him  again  to  take 
the  field.  He  only  decided  to  do  so  when  he  learnt  that  Dupleix  had 
occupied  Tiruviti,  Villupuram,  and  Jinji,  and  was  moving  towards 
Arcot  The  capture  of  Jinji,  thought  impregnable  but  which  Bussy 
took  by  a  brilliant  feat  of  arms,  12  September,  1750,  profoundly 
disquieted  him.  The  English,  as  they  had  already  done  at  St  Thom£ 
and  Tiruvendipuram,  replied  to  the  occupation  of  these  places  by 
procuring  for  themselves  a  more  or  less  regular  cession  of  Poonamallee 


DUPLEIX  AND  BUSSY 

near  Madras.  As  for  Nasir  Jang,  after  having  painfully  set  out,  he 
was  surprised  on  the  night  of  16  December  by  the  French  army  under 
La  Touche.  To  this  had  contributed  the  treachery  of  the  nawabs  of 
Karnul,  Savanur,  and  Cuddapah,  and  certain  other  nobles.  Aban- 
doned by  some  of  his  troops,  Nasir  Jang  was  slain  on  the  field  of  battle, 
and  Muzaffar  Jang,  who  had  been  brought  prisoner  with  him,  was 
at  once  recognised  as  subahdar.  Legitimacy  had  once  more  changed 
sides. 

Muzaffar  Jang  returned  to  Pondichery  as  if  to  receive  a  sort  of 
investiture  from  Dupleix,  whose  power  increased  daily.  To  the  grants 
already  made  was  added  the  province  of  Nizampatam  on  the  Orissa 
Coast;  Dupleix  was  recognised  as  governor  of  all  India  south  of  the 
Krishna;  and,  certain  of  not  being  allowed  to  reign  over  his  own 
states  in  peace,  Muzaffar  Jang  demanded  a  few  Europeans  to  accom- 
pany him  to  his  capital  and  aid  him  to  consolidate  his  power.  Dupleix 
reckoned  that  his  triumphs  permitted  him  now  to  ignore  Muhammad 
'Ali,  whom  he  could  settle  with  either  by  treaty  or  by  force,  and  so 
consented.  On  15  January,  1751,  Bussy,  his  best  officer,  set  out  for 
the  Deccan,  with  orders  to  support  at  any  cost  the  prince  to  whom 
the  French  owed  the  titles  on  which  they  relied  for  the  legitimate 
possession  of  the  country.  Dupleix  thought,  with  a  certain  nawett, 
that  the  English  and  Muhammad  'Ali  would  bow  before  his  claims 
and  allow  him  to  regulate  the  affairs  of  the  Carnatic  at  his  pleasure. 
Unluckily  for  him  Floyer  was  no  longer  governor  of  Fort  St  David.  He 
had  been  replaced  (28  September,  1750)  by  Saunders,  formerly  chief 
of  Vizagapatam.  Saunders  was  a  man  cold,  silent,  and  reserved,  a 
man  of  action  rather  than  of  speech.  Like  his  predecessors  he  had 
orders  to  keep  aloof  from  political  affairs;  but  he  felt  that,  if  he  left 
Dupleix  free  to  act,  it  would  be  all  over  with  British  trade.  Having 
adopted  a  formal  resolution  in  council,  he  encouraged  Muhammad 
'Ali  not  to  accept  the  proposals  then  being  made  to  him  from  Pon- 
dichery, and  on  his  advice  that  prince  conducted  himself  with  such 
seeming  frankness  that  he  deceived  Dupleix  himself  while  the  English 
were  making  ready  their  men  and  munitions.1 

At  last  in  May,  1751,  before  the  French  had  made  any  movement, 
Captain  Gingens  set  out  with  800  or  900  Europeans  to  support 
Muhammad  'Ali.  Dupleix,  understanding  that  he  had  been  tricked, 
as  indeed  he  had  half  suspected,  dispatched  in  his  turn  a  little  army 
with  orders  to  capture  Trichinopoly.  Then  began  a  long,  fatiguing, 
and  commonly  monotonous  war  for  the  possession  of  that  town,  before 
which  the  French  wasted  their  strength.  The  two  European  armies 
of  course  did  not  appear  as  principals,  but  only  as  auxiliaries,  the  one 
of  Chanda  Sahib,  the  other  of  Muhammad  'Ali;  but  that  concession 
to  appearances  did  not  prevent  them  from  killing  one  another  or 
taking  one  another  prisoners.  At  first  neither  side  displayed  great 

1  Madras  County  Correspondence,  1751,  p.  4. 


LAW  AT  TRICHINOPOLY  129 

qualities.  D'Auteuil,  the  French  leader,  had  gout  and  could  not 
maintain  discipline;  the  English  troops  were  still  more  unruly,  and 
Gingens  himself  was  not  worth  much.  The  march  towards  Trichi- 
nopoly  was  extremely  slow.  The  English,  having  been  beaten  at 
Valikondapuram,  crossed  the  Kavari  on  28  July,  and  it  was  only 
on  25  September  that  the  French,  having  in  turn  crossed  the  river, 
found  themselves  before  the  city. 

The  English  and  Muhammad  'Ali  once  more  sought  to  amuse  their 
opponents  with  negotiations,  in  the  sincerity  of  which  Dupleix  once 
more  seems  to  have  believed.  But  the  fact  was  that  Muhammad  'Ali 
wanted  to  gain  time.  In  the  course  of  these  discussions  the  English 
claimed  that  their  ally  had  mortgaged  Trichinopoly  to  them  in  July, 
1 750,  careless  of  the  fact  that,  were  the  act  authentic,  it  could  have 
had  no  value,  as  he  was  not  the  subahdar  of  the  Deccan.  At  last  the 
siege  began.  The  French  were  no  longer  commanded  by  d'Auteuil, 
whose  health  compelled  his  resignation,  but  by  a  young  captain, 
great  in  name  if  not  in  action,  Jacques  Law,  nephew  of  the  famous 
financier  of  the  Regency.  But  he  did  not  justify  his  selection.  If  the 
town  did  not  yield  to  his  summons,  he  had  only  two  courses  open — 
to  take  it  by  assault  or  to  subject  it  to  a  strict  blockade.  Neither  was 
easy  to  execute,  for  the  town  was  large  and  the  French  troops,  even 
with  their  allies,  few  in  number.  Law  never  attempted  more  than  to 
prevent  provisions  from  being  brought  into  the  town  by  cutting  off 
convoys.  He  never  completely  succeeded;  light  parties  were  always 
bringing  in  victuals  by  some  unexpected  route;  and  nothing  more 
serious  took  place  than  actions  of  scouts  and  outposts.  Then  allies  who 
had  been  secured  by  clever  negotiations  came  to  strengthen  the 
English  position.  At  the  end  of  the  year  Muhammad  'Ali  secured  the 
help  of  the  raja  of  Mysore  by  promising  the  cession  of  Trichinopoly, 
and  of  the  famous  Maratha  chief  Morari  Rao  by  taking  him  into  pay; 
and  soon  afterwards  the  king  of  Tanjore  joined  the  coalition.  More- 
over, the  English  had  struck  a  serious  blow  at  French  prestige  by 
Clive's  bold  seizure  of  Arcot,  the  capital  of  the  Carnatic,  the  defence 
of  which  (September-October)  first  brought  him  into  prominence. 
All  the  efforts  of  Dupleix  to  recover  the  place  had  been  checked  by 
a  carefully  organised  resistance,  and  in  the  four  or  five  following 
months  his  troops,  without  encountering  an  actual  disaster,  failed  to 
obtain  any  appreciable  success.  In  that  area  fortune  was  evidently 
turning  against  him. 

This  change  of  situation,  though  not  as  yet  alarming,  nevertheless 
made  an  impression  on  Law,  and  struck  him  with  a  sort  of  paralysis. 
He  dared  not  make  the  smallest  movement.  Profiting  by  this  timid 
inaction,  the  English  in  April  brought  into  Trichinopoly  a  large 
convoy  which  secured  that  place  for  several  months,  and  then,  as  Law 
had  crossed  the  Coleroon  and  taken  refuge  in  the  island  of  Srirangam, 
they  set  to  work  to  block  him  up  there.  This  plan  was  proposed  by 
emv  o 


130  DUPLEIX  AND  BUSSY 

Clive,  who  had  returned  from  the  northward,  and  warmly  approved 
by  Lawrence.  Dupleix,  seeing  the  danger  of  leaving  his  army  besieged 
in^Srirangam,  sent  reinforcements,  but  d'Auteuil  who  led  them  was 
forced  to  surrender  (9  June)  at  Valikondapuram,  and  three  days  later 
Law,  demoralised  and  helpless,  became  a  prisoner  with  all  his  troops, 
600  according  to  Lawrence,  780  according  to  Orme.  At  the  same 
time  Chanda  Sahib,  trusting  to  the  generosity  of  his  enemies,  gave 
himself  up,  but  was  beheaded  by  the  Tanjorean  general,  Lawrence 
not  caring  to  interfere.  This  disaster,  news  of  which  reached  Europe 
early  in  the  following  January,  largely  contributed  to  determine  the 
French  court  to  recall  Dupleix  and  reverse  his  Indian  policy.  But  in 
India  nothing  could  shake  Dupleix's  energy  and  confidence,  or  change 
his  resolute  attitude.  He  was  indeed  at  his  best  amid  calamities;  he 
never  admitted  defeat,  and  found  within  himself  unexpected  resources 
for  the  continuance  of  his  struggle  with  misfortune. 

On  the  morrow  of  Srirangam,  when  by  a  sudden  return  to  the 
coast  the  English  and  their  allies  could  have  threatened  the  French 
settlements,  the  Mysoreans  and  Morari  Rao,  already  sounded  by 
Dupleix,  withdrew  from  the  coalition,  and  Tanjore  returned  to 
neutrality.  Meanwhile  the  English,  after  hesitating  a  month  about 
their  future  course,  returned  to  the  coast,  leaving  only  a  small  detach- 
ment as  a  precaution  against  the  defection  of  the  Mysoreans  whom 
they  already  suspected.  They  easily  took  Tiruviti  and  Villupuram, 
but  failed  before  Jinji  (6  August),  and  Major  Kineer,  who  was  com- 
manding while  Lawrence  was  disabled  by  sickness,  was  beaten  at 
Vikravandi  by  Kerjean,  Dupleix's  nephew.  But  this  led  to  nothing. 
Lawrence  recovered,  reassumed  the  command,  and  pursued  the 
enemy  as  far  as  the  Great  Tank,  some  eight  miles  west  of  Pondichery, 
in  French  territory.  There  an  indecisive  action  was  fought;  but  five 
days  later  (5  September)  the  over-confident  Kerjean  was  surprised 
and  completely  defeated  beyond  Aryankuppam,  losing  some  hundred 
European  prisoners  and  himself  being  severely  wounded.  But  for  the 
state  of  peace  between  the  two  nations,  the  English  might  then  have 
attacked  Pondichery;  but,  being  restrained  by  the  national  treaties 
and  not  daring  to  confide  the  task  to  Muhammad  ' Ali,  they  went  into 
winter  quarters,  the  rainy  season  having  arrived,  at  Tiruviti  and  Fort 
St  David. 

Elsewhere,  too,  the  French  had  encountered  checks  which,  though 
less  striking,  had  greatly  contributed  to  weaken  their  authority  and 
prestige.  After  the  affair  of  Arcot,  and  when  Dupleix  perceived  that 
he  could  not  recover  the  place,  he  attempted  a  diversion  against 
Madras,  and  in  January,  1 752,  Brenier  in  command  of  a  French  force 
camped  at  Vandalur ;  but  he  only  succeeded  in  plundering  the  country 
round  St  Thomas  Mount  and  Poonamallee;  some  trifling  engage* 
ments  took  place  near  Conjeeveram;  but  at  last,  12  March,  the  French 
force  underwent  complete  defeat  at  Kavaripak;  and  all  hope  of 


SIEGE  OF  TRICHINOPOLY  131 

seriously  threatening  Madras  had  to  be  given  up.  Law's  surrender 
further  weakened  the  French  forces;  and  while  Lawrence  took  ad- 
vantage of  his  success  to  threaten  Pondichery,  Clive  cleared  the  country 
round  Madras  by  seizing  Covelong  and  Chingleput,  which  the  French 
had  occupied  as  advance  posts  beyond  the  Palliar.  Clive,  fortunate 
as  ever,  took  these  places  on  2 1  September  and  i  October,  and  then 
the  French  held  in  the  Carnatic  only  Pondichery  and  Jinji  with  their 
limited  territories. 

In  these  grave  but  not  desperate  circumstances,  Dupleix  still  found 
means  of  counteracting  the  English  success.  After  five  or  six  months 
of  laborious  discussions,  Morari  Rao  passed  over  to  the  French  service, 
and  less  than  two  months  later  Mysore  agreed  to  join  the  French,  pay 
their  troops  until  Trichinopoly  had  been  taken,  and  then  pay  Dupleix 
thirty  lakhs  of  rupees  in  return  for  the  possession  of  the  town.  Dupleix 
re-opened  operations,  31  December,  1752.  Butdu  Saussay,  who  was 
placed  at  the  head  of  the  troops,  was  not  the  right  man  for  the  conduct 
of  war,  and  at  the  end  of  a  month  Dupleix  replaced  him  by  Maissin, 
on  whom  he  placed  the  greatest  reliance.  The  new  chief  besieged 
Tiruviti,  but  could  not  carry  the  place  until  7  May.  Meanwhile  the 
Mysoreans  had  tried  to  invest  Trichinopoly.  In  mid-April  Lawrence 
suddenly  learnt  that  the  town  was  threatened  by  lack  of  provisions. 
Abandoning  Tiruviti,  he  marched  at  once.  A  party  of  French  troops 
followed  him  and  on  8  May  appeared  before  the  place  under  Captain 
Astruc.  Financial  difficulties  hindered  close  co-operation  between 
him  and  the  Mysorean  commandant,  Nandi  Raja;  while  Morari  Rao, 
making  war  in  his  own  fashion,  was  rather  plundering  on  his  own 
account  than  helping  the  French;  and  the  new  siege  of  Trichinopoly 
dragged  on  as  in  the  time  of  Law,  with  futile  attack  and  counter- 
attack. In  July,  Dupleix  replaced  Astruc  first  by  Brenier,  a  con- 
scientious leader  but  self-distrustful  and  unenterprising,  who  was 
beaten  on  9  August,  and  then  by  Maissin,  already  discouraged  by  his 
campaign  round  Tiruviti  and  by  the  failure  of  his  two  predecessors. 
He  soon  fell  sick,  and  Astruc,  who  succeeded  to  the  command  during 
his  illness,  was  in  turn  beaten  on  2 1  September,  being  himself  made 
prisoner  with  in  Europeans.  But  these  were  fruitless  victories  for 
the  English.  The  French  did  not  repeat  the  mistake  of  shutting  them- 
selves up  in  Srirangam  and  continued  to  face  their  enemies.  At  last 
on  14  October  a  new  leader  arrived.  This  was  Mainville,  lately 
returned  from  the  Deccan. 

Mainville  was  a  man  of  resolution.  He  believed  in  Dupleix's  plans 
and  was  prepared  to  execute  them.  After  restoring  discipline  he 
prepared  to  carry  Trichinopoly  by  surprise.  The  attack  was  prepared 
with  the  greatest  secrecy  for  a  month,  and  took  place  on  the  night  of 
the  27-28  November.  The  French  easily  secured  the  outer  wall;  but 
aroused  the  English  by  an  act  of  imprudence  and  were  driven  back 
as  they  attempted  to  climb  the  inner  rampart.  A  large  part  of  them 

9-3 


132  DUPLEIX  AND  BUSSY 

became  prisoners.  But  instead  of  being  discouraged  by  this  series  of 
misfortunes,  luckily  discounted  by  the  steady  success  of  Bussy  in  the 
Deccan,  Dupleix  resolved  to  sacrifice  something  to  ill-luck  and  agreed 
to  discuss  with  Saunders  terms  of  peace.  Indeed,  the  authorities  at 
home  were  weary  of  this  unceasing  war,  and  every  packet  contained 
advice  and  even  orders  to  bring  these  troubles  to  an  end.  A  conference 
was  therefore  held  at  Sadras  21-25  January,  1754.  As  a  preliminary 
the  English  commissaries,  Palk  and  Vansittart,  demanded  that  their 
French  colleagues,  Lavaur,  Delarche,  and  du  Bausset,  should  re- 
cognise Muhammad  'Ali  as  nawab  of  the  Carnatic.  The  French  did 
not  choose  thus  to  derogate  from  the  authority  of  the  subahdar  of  the 
Deccan;  and  after  three  meetings  full  of  chicane  over  the  validity  of 
the  titles  of  Muhammad  'Ali  and  those  of  Dupleix,  the  negotiations 
were  broken  off  and  war  was  renewed.  It  had,  indeed,  never  been 
actually  suspended,  but  had  slackened  down  as  if  peace  were  near. 
Under  Mainville  the  French  troops  experienced  no  further  checks. 
On  15  February  they  even  secured  a  conspicuous  success  over  the 
English,  taking  134  European  prisoners.  But  like  the  English  victories, 
this,  too,  led  to  nothing.  The  French  still  found  themselves  before 
Trichinopoly,  with  too  small  an  army  to  invest  or  storm  it,  and  with 
auxiliaries  too  unskilled  or  timid  to  afford  material  help.  All  they 
could  attempt  was  to  cut  off  the  town  from  the  neighbouring  country 
which  supplied  it  with  victuals.  Mainville  therefore  carried  the  war 
into  Tanjore  and  the  Pudukottai  country;  but  achieved  no  more  than 
fruitless  raids,  as  the  enemy  declined  action.  Moreover,  the  conduct 
of  Mysore  gave  rise  to  grave  anxiety.  By  failing  to  pay  the  promised 
sums,  Nandi  Raja  was  exposing  the  French  commander  to  the  danger 
of  finding  himself  one  pay-day  deserted  by  his  troops.  Mainville  was 
thus  busier  soothing  the  discontent  of  his  own  men  than  attacking  the 
enemy.  He  could  never  rely  on  the  morrow.  The  coalition  was  evidently 
breaking  up.  Nandi  Raja  talked  of  returning  to  Mysore;  and  in  June 
Morari  Rao  quitted  the  French  camp  though  he  did  not  positively 
break  with  them.  Mainville  met  all  these  difficulties  with  great 
firmness,  and,  like  Dupleix,  never  despaired  of  taking  Trichinopoly, 
when  news  came  that  Godeheu  had  landed  at  Pondichery  on  i  August. 
That  meant  the  recall  of  Dupleix  and  the  reversal  of  his  policy. 
Godeheu  replaced  Mainville,  whom  he  thought  over-anxious  to 
continue  the  war,  by  Maissin,  less  self-willed  and  more  pacific.  Soon 
after  he  concluded  a  truce,  followed  by  a  provisional  peace,  which 
ruined  all  French  hopes  in  the  Carnatic.  But  the  whole  of  Dupleix's 
policy  was  not  condemned.  As  we  shall  see,  in  spite  of  their  desire 
for  peace,  neither  the  Company  nor  the  ministry  at  Paris  was  willing 
to  sacrifice  the  decisive  advantages  that  had  been  obtained  in  the 
Deccan.  But  before  turning  to  that  region,  in  which  the  French 
fortunes  had  shone  with  their  greatest  lustre,  we  will  attempt  to 
disengage  in  a  few  lines  the  causes  of  Dupleix's  failure  in  the  Carnatic. 


CAUSES  OF  DUPLEIX'S  FAILURE  133 

It  has  been  seen  that  Dupleix  espoused  the  cause  of  Chanda  Sahib 
and  Muzaffar  Jang  without  consulting  the  Company,  convinced 
doubtless  that  it  would  not  authorise  him  any  more  than  his  prede- 
cessors to  engage  in  the  politics  of  the  country.  Swift  success  would 
have  relieved  him  from  the  necessity  of  embarrassing  explanations. 
And  when  he  saw  that  event  deferred,  he  concealed  the  facts  by  saying 
that  the  war  cost  nothing  and  would  leave  plenty  of  money  free  for 
the  purposes  of  trade.  The  French  Company,  though  with  some 
scepticism,  accepted  these  roseate  prophecies,  and  sent  no  money, 
since  Dupleix  asked  for  none.  But  finance  was  his  stumbling-block 
from  first  to  last.  His  reverses,  which  began  in  September,  1751, 
prevented  the  collection  of  the  revenues  he  had  reckoned  on;  and  he 
was  hard  put  to  it  to  maintain  his  army.  Each  month  he  could  only 
just  secure  enough  to  prevent  his  troops  from  disbanding.  To  meet 
these  urgent  needs  he  used  over  £350,000  of  his  own  money  and  that 
of  his  friends.  It  was  not,  however,  lack  of  money  alone  that  hindered 
his  success;  in  this  respect  the  English  were  not  much  better  off  than 
he.  What  ruined  him  was  his  excessive  belief  in  the  justice  of  his 
cause.  Full  of  the  belief  that,  as  Muhammad  'Ali  was  a  rebel,  the 
English  government  could  not  support  him,  he  really  thought  that 
the  English  Company  would  disavow  Saunders  and  leave  him  free 
to  carry  out  his  policy.  All  his  letters  show  a  confidence  that  is  almost 
disconcerting.1  He  should  have  remembered  that  men  do  not  sacrifice 
too  much  to  theory  and  ideals,  and  that,  in  view  of  their  threatened 
trade,  the  English  were  justified  in  resisting  his  plans.  Trusting  too 
much  to  legal  formulas,  he  did  not  accommodate  himself  to  the  facts; 
and,  while  he  displayed  marvellous  skill  in  negotiating  with  Indian 
princes,  in  his  relations  with  the  English  he  showed  an  unaccommo- 
dating spirit  which  did  much  to  provoke  opposition  in  Europe  quite 
as  much  as  in  India. 

Whether  the  Company  ought  to  have  supported  him  is  quite 
another  matter.  In  truth  it  could  not  do  so  without  understanding 
his  plans;  but  Dupleix,  who  at  first  had  perhaps  been  uncertain  of 
being  able  to  carry  them  through,  began  by  half-concealing  them, 
and  did  not  until  16  October,  1753,  formally  expound  the  advantages 
of  possessing  extensive  territories  in  India,  yielding  a  fixed,  constant 
and  abundant  revenue  that  would  relieve  the  Company  from  sending 
funds.  But  when  he  was  developing  this  doctrine,  which  till  then  he 
had  only  sketched,  Godeheu  already  was  about  to  embark  for  India. 
No  doubt  if  the  Company  had  entered  into  the  ideas  of  Dupleix,  it 
could  have  established  at  the  necessary  cost  in  men  and  money  the 
empire  which  he  hoped  to  found;  but  besides  the  hesitation  always 
felt  before  novel  and  daring  ideas — ignoti  nulla  cupido — the  Company, 
or  rather  the  king,  had  other  motives  for  caution.  Disputes  were 
already  arising  between  French  and  English  on  the  Ohio  and  Missis- 

1  Dupleix  to  Saunders,  16  February,  1752  (French  Correspondence,  1752,  pp.  1-41). 


134  DUPLEIX  AND  BUSSY 

sippi;  the  preservation  of  that  region  seemed  more  important  than 
hypothetical  conquests  in  India,  and  this  constituted  another  motive 
for  not  endangering  the  peace  for  the  sake  of  Asiatic  domains  which 
after  four  years  of  war  Dupleix  had  not  succeeded  in  subduing.  And 
if  a  more  distant  future  is  taken  into  consideration,  perhaps  the  king 
and  Company  were  right. 

But  in  the  Deccan  affairs  wore  a  different  appearance.  Peace  is 
usually  discussed  on  the  basis  of  accomplished  facts,  not  of  those  hopes 
which  the  war  has  either  destroyed  or  realised.  The  French  position 
at  Hyderabad  was  too  strong  in  1 754  for  the  English  to  insist  on  the 
ruin  of  Bussy's  work,  however  much  they  might  desire  it.  I  have 
already  mentioned  the  terms  on  which  Dupleix  had  lent  his  help  to 
Muzaffar  Jang ;  by  protecting  the  legitimate  ruler  of  South  India,  he 
hoped  above  all  to  secure  the  rights  he  had  acquired  in  the  Carnatic. 
Bussy's  activities  did  not  lead  to  direct  competition  with  the  English; 
but  his  achievements  are  too  important  to  be  neglected.  When  shortly 
after  setting  out  a  conspiracy  of  dissatisfied  nawabs  cost  Muzaffar 
Jang  his  life  (14  February,  1751),  Bussy's  prompt  action  avoided  any 
break  in  the  succession  and  danger  to  public  order;  Salabat  Jang, 
uncle  of  the  dead  prince  and  brother  of  Nasir  Jang,  was  recognised  as 
subahdar;  but  he  needed  even  more  than  his  predecessor  the  support 
of  French  troops  to  establish  his  power,  thus  born  of  disorder,  and 
Bussy,  who  was  to  have  gone  only  to  Hyderabad,  in  the  centre  of  the 
Deccan,  accompanied  him  to  Aurangabad  at  its  extremity.  There  he 
was  more  than  900  miles  from  Pondichery.  It  was  a  magnificent  raid, 
accomplished  with  hardly  a  shot.  From  the  first  Bussy  had  under- 
stood how  to  manage  Indian  princes,  showing  due  deference  and 
doing  nothing  without  permission.  His  manners  gave  no  hint  of  his 
power;  he  never  seemed  to  despise  the  weak  or  the  vanquished.  In 
his  hand  was  armed  force;  but  he  always  thought  that  gentleness  was 
better  than  severity,  negotiation  than  battle,  human  life  than  the 
laurel  of  victory.  As  he  himself  said,  he  was  more  of  a  statesman  than 
a  soldier;  he  was  a  born  diplomatist.  But  his  resolutions  were  firm, 
his  action  bold.  When  a  decision  had  to  be  taken,  Bussy  saw  straight 
to  the  heart  of  things,  and  carried  his  purpose  into  effect  though 
without  brutality  or  offence.  More  than  anything  else  these  rare  and 
happy  talents  established  French  supremacy  at  Hyderabad,  which 
reacted  on  the  work  of  Dupleix  by  setting  up  a  counterpoise  to  those 
sometimes  unlucky  but  always  indecisive  events  of  the  Carnatic. 
Dupleix  could  not  sufficiently  express  his  gratitude  to  his  lieutenant. 
Most  of  his  letters  to  Bussy  are  full  of  thanks  and  admiration.  In  order 
to  cement  the  friendship  and  confidence  betweeft  them,  Dupleix  had 
hoped  to  marry  Bussy  to  one  of  his  wife's  daughters  familiarly  known 
as  Chonchon\  they  were  actually  betrothed;  but  Bussy's  remoteness  and 
Dupleix's  sudden  departure  prevented  the  completion  of  the  marriage. 
Thus  the  administration  of  affairs  in  the  Deccan  was  peculiar,  being 


AFFAIRS  IN  THE  DECGAN         .  135 

treated  on  both  sides  as  a  family  business  quite  as  much  as  an  affair 
of  state.  Bussy,  however,  was  independent  enough  not  to  approve 
blindly  all  the  projects  of  Dupleix,  and  he  could  oppose  them  when 
they  sacrificed  too  much  to  ideals  or  conflicted  too  sharply  with  facts. 
After  the  French  reached  Aurangabad  (18  June),  Dupleix  dreamt 
for  a  moment  of  pushing  his  successes  in  the  north,  and  planned  by 
Bussy's  means  to  place  Salabat  Jang  at  the  head  of  the  subah  of 
Bengal.1  He  would  thus  have  dominated  the  greater  part  of  India. 
But,  just  when  this  bold  plan  was  to  have  been  put  into  action,  the 
Marathas  attacked  the  Deccan,  and  Bussy  had  to  march  against  them. 
In  less  than  a  month  he  had  driven  them  back;  a  night  attack  on 
4  December,  which  threw  the  enemy  into  confusion,  has  become 
famous.  Balaji  Rao,  the  Peshwa,  at  once  entered  into  negotiations, 
and  peace  was  made  at  Ahmadnagar,  17  January,  1752.  Dupleix  then 
thought  of  bringing  a  part  of  the  subahdar's  troops  against  Trichi- 
nopoly,  and  Bussy  was  to  co-operate  by  attacking  Mysore  in  the  rear. 
But  the  diwan  Ramdas  Pandit,  who  was  murdered  at  that  time 
(4  May),  proved  to  have  been  in  communication  with  Muhammad 
' Ali  and  the  English ;  and  it  was  believed  that  the  nobles,  no  longer 
fearing  the  Marathas,  were  seeking  the  expulsion  of  the  French.  The 
subahdar,  whose  influence  was  small,  alone  was  interested  in  keeping 
them.  Bussy  was  inclined  to  recognise  this  state  of  things  by  aban- 
doning the  Deccan.  What  use  could  be  made  of  people  so  ungrateful 
and  a  prince  so  powerless?  Dupleix  thought  otherwise.  To  him  the 
Deccan  meant  the  protection  of  his  rights  and  authority;  and  he  im- 
plored Bussy  not  to  forsake  the  work  which  he  had  begun.  At  this 
moment  news  arrived  that  Ghazi-ud-din,  the  eldest  son  of  Nizam- 
ul-mulk  and  holding  high  office  at  Delhi,  was  claiming  his  father's 
territories  and  marching  thither  with  a  large  army  and  the  expectation 
of  support  from  Balaji  Rao.  Bussy  remained  to  encounter  this  in- 
vasion; but  had  no  need  of  fighting.  Ghazi-ud-din  was  poisoned  by 
one  of  his  father's  wives,  and  Salabat  Jang's  throne  was  thus  secured. 
But  that  prince  was  always  exposed  to  underhand  attacks  from  his 
nobles,  who  disliked  his  dependence  on  the  French.  The  new  diwan, 
Saiyid  Lashkar  Khan,  constantly  intrigued  against  Bussy's  influence, 
and  had  agreed  with  Balaji  Rao  in  some  mysterious  plan  in  which 
the  interests  of  his  master  can  have  had  little  part.  Bussy,  who  followed 
closely  all  these  Indian  intrigues,  succeeded  in  avoiding  a  new  war 
which  in  November  was  on  the  point  of  breaking  out  with  the 
Marathas,  and  having,  under  the  guise  of  mediator,  come  to  terms 
on  his  own  account  with  Balaji  Rao,  he  prepared  to  enter  Mysore  in 
order  to  assist  in  Dupleix's  plans  against  Trichinopoly;  but  now  he 
was  checked  by  the  refusal  of  the  subahdar's  troops  to  move;  they 
were  tired  of  fighting  without  pay;  no  advance  was  possible  and  the 
army  fell  back  on  Aurangabad.  Bussy  then  renewed  his  proposals  to 

1  Dupleix  to  Bussy,  4  August,  1751  (Archives  de  Versailles,  E  3748). 


136  DUPLEIX  AND  BUSSY 

quit  the  Deccan  and  offered  his  resignation.  Ghazi-ud-din  was  dead, 
the  disputes  with  the  Marathas  settled,  and  the  French  could  withdraw 
with  honour.1  Dupleix  did  not  have  time  to  answer  these  proposals. 
Bussy  had  scarcely  written  before  he  fell  seriously  ill;  and  decided  to 
retire  to  Masulipatam  to  recover  his  health  (February,  1753).  He 
had  not  intended  to  return;  but  Dupleix's  appeals  to  his  affections 
and  his  patriotism  decided  him  to  continue  their  common  work,  and 
he  came  back  in  the  following  May. 

During  his  absence  affairs  had  gone  grievously  wrong.  Goupil, 
who  had  succeeded  to  the  command,  had  been  overpersuaded  by 
Saiyid  Lashkar  Khan  to  divide  his  troops,  the  smaller  part  remaining 
with  the  subahdar  at  Aurangabad,  and  the  rest  being  scattered  over 
the  country,  after  the  Muslim  fashion,  to  collect  the  revenues.  The 
object  was  to  make  them  hated;  and  then  they  were  to  be  ordered 
to  leave  the  country.  In  this  passive  opposition  the  saiyid  was  en- 
couraged by  Saunders,  who  was  prevented  by  the  state  of  the  Carnatic 
from  playing  a  more  active  part.  On  his  arrival  at  Hyderabad  Bussy 
restored  order,  and,  as  the  need  of  money  was  almost  as  great  as  in  the 
Carnatic,  he  skilfully  arranged  that  each  governor  was  to  pay  his 
share  towards  the  maintenance  of  the  troops.  He  then  secured  201 
invitation  from  the  subahdanphimself  to  proceed  to  Aurangabad, 
where  he  arrived  at  the  end  of  November.  There  he  laid  down  his 
terms,  and  obtained  a  personal  grant  of  four  sarkars — Mustafanagar, 
Ellore,  Rajahmundry,  and  Chicacole — for  the  payment  of  his  troops, 
so  that  he  should  have  to  make  no  more  demands  on  the  subahdar 
or  his  officials.  The  revenues  of  these  districts  were  reckoned  at  thirty- 
one  lakhs  of  rupees;  whereas  the  cost  of  the  army  was  twenty-five  and 
a  half  lakhs  a  year.  This  was  a  masterly  stroke.  Bussy  ceased  to  be  at 
the  mercy  of  the  subahdar  and  his  ministers  and,  having  secured  the 
grant  in  his  own  name  for  a  specific  purpose,  he  was  able  to  tell  the 
Dutch  and  English  that  nothing  had  been  changed  in  that  part  of 
India  and  that  the  French  had  no  more  than  they  had  had  before, 
although  through  his  control  the  sarkars  had  really  passed  into  the 
hands  of  the  French  Company.  The  English  at  Ingeram  and  Viza- 
gapatam  did  their  best  to  annul  the  effects  of  these  grants,  by  making 
friends  with  discontented  renters  and  governors,  especially  with  Ja'far 
'Ali,  governor  of  Rajahmundry;  but  they  lacked  the  means  of  offering 
a  serious  opposition. 

Bussy  consolidated  his  advantages  by  reforming  the  ministry. 
Saiyid  Lashkar  Khan  was  replaced  by  Shah  Nawaz  Khan,  and  the 
principal  posts  were  filled  by  nobles  friendly  to  the  French.  Trouble 
with  Raghuji  Bhonsle  in  Berar  (March- April,  1754)  was  quickly 
settled,  and  then,  feeling  himself  secure,  he  set  out  for  the  new  pro- 
vinces, of  whose  revenues  he  had  never  had  greater  need.  He  had  to 
maintain  goo  Europeans  and  4000  sepoys. 

1  Refutation  desfaits  imputis  au  situr  Godeheu,  pp.  41-9. 


BUSSY'S  SUCCESSES  137 

Arriving  at  Bezwada,  5  July,  Bussy  was  about  to  start  for  Chicacole 
when  he  learnt  of  the  arrival  of  Godeheu  at  Pondichery.  He  had 
been  expecting  this  for  six  weeks,  and,  although  he  felt  a  certain 
anxiety,  he  was  not  unduly  alarmed.  Dupleix  and  Godeheu  had  been 
very  friendly  of  old,  when  in  1 738  the  latter  had  visited  Chanderna- 
gore. 

Let  us  pause  to  consider  the  affairs  of  the  Deccan  which  till  then 
had  developed  in  accordance  with  French  interests,  because  Dupleix 
had  entrusted  them  to  a  man  of  consummate  capacity  and  wisdom. 
He  himself  declared  that  had  he  had  another  Bussy  in  the  Carnatic, 
affairs  there  would  have  gone  quite  differently.  It  was  not,  perhaps, 
extraordinary  that  the  little  French  army  should  have  reached 
Aurangabad  without  difficulty;  but  it  was  extraordinary  that  it  should 
have  been  able  to  maintain  itself  there.  When  the  new  rfgime^ 
resulting  from  the  unexpected  accession  of  Salabat  Jang,  had  con- 
solidated itself,  a  real  national  sentiment  arose  among  the  nobles  of 
the  subah,  aiming  at  the  expulsion  of  the  French.  That  called  into 
play  all  Bussy's  skill.  Not  strong  enough  to  impose  his  authority,  he 
maintained  it  nevertheless  by  his  remarkable  tact  and  his  personal 
prestige.  Without  seeming  to  notice  the  intrigues  by  which  he  was 
surrounded,  he  contrived  to  turn  them  all  to  advantage.  The  greatest 
source  of  anxiety  was  the  weakness  of  Salabat  Jang.  How  could  he 
trust  a  prince  whose  mind  was  like  a  child's?  But  for  Dupleix*  s 
gratitude  for  the  grant  of  the  Carnatic,  and  his  need  of  a  subahdar 
to  legitimate  his  rights,  Salabat  Jang  would,  perhaps,  have  been 
replaced  by  one  of  his  brothers,  or  even  by  Balaji  Rao.  Both  solutions 
were  considered,  and  the  second  was  not  entirely  laid  aside.  Without 
previous  concert,  both  Dupleix  and  Bussy  independently  recognised 
that  the  French  would  be  strengthened  in  their  struggle  with  the 
English  by  an  alliance  with  a  nation  remote  from  their  frontiers  and 
of  proved  power  and  solidity.  Bussy  was  even  instructed  to  lay  the 
foundation  of  an  agreement  which  in  the  first  case  would  be  aimed 
only  at  Trichinopoly  but  which  might  be  extended  to  the  Deccan. 
It  is  impossible  to  estimate  the  consequences  had  Dupleix  sacrificed 
the  point  of  honour  and  thrown  over  Salabat  Jang. 

However  that  may  be,  at  the  moment  of  his  recall  the  position  of 
the  French  appeared  impregnable;  and  it  would  have  been  so  but 
for  the  division  of  their  forces,  which  had  already  hindered  the  capture 
of  Trichinopoly,  and  which  might  lose  them  the  Deccan  if  some 
necessity  obliged  them  to  recall  their  troops.  Indeed,  this  division 
of  his  forces  was  the  weak  point  of  Dupleix's  policy;  and  although  in 
the  Deccan  he  secured  unrivalled  glory  and  almost  incredible  terri- 
torial possessions,  he  was  disabled  from  securing  the  Carnatic,  and 
thus  afforded  the  English  both  time  and  opportunity  of  making  that 
breach  by  which  they  were  to  overthrow  the  whole  structure.  It  is, 
indeed,  unwise  to  pursue  two  objects  at  once  and  to  attempt  more 


138  DUPLEIX  AND  BUSSY 

than  one  has  the  means  of  accomplishing.  The  French  Company 
shared  this  intoxication  of  success,  for  it  did  not  condemn  the  policy 
followed  in  the  Deccan  as  it  did  that  followed  in  the  Carnatic.  Instead 
of  repudiating  the  conquests  of  Dupleix  and  Bussy,  it  accepted  them, 
Godeheu  himself  did  not  wish  to  leave  Salabat  Jang  without  support, 
for  fear  that  the  English  would  establish  their  influence  with  him, 
and  abandoned  only  conditionally  part  of  the  French  possessions  on 
the  Orissa  Coast.  The  war  which  broke  out  two  years  later  between 
the  French  and  the  English  prevented  his  agreement  being  carried 
out,  and  at  the  end  of  1756  the  position  of  the  French  and  English 
in  India  was  much  the  same  as  three  years  earlier.  The  French  were 
again  threatening  Trichinopoly,  and  the  English  were  devising  means 
of  driving  Bussy  out  of  the  Deccan. 

The  latter,  after  some  months'  stay  on  the  coast,  where  he  reached 
an  agreement  with  Moracin,  chief  of  Masulipatam,  about  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  regular  administration,  returned  to  Hyderabad  in 
January,  1755.  He  found  that  feelings  had  changed  since  his  de- 
parture. The  recall  of  Dupleix  had  revealed  the  weakness  of  French 
policy;  and  the  subahdar  talked  of  nothing  but  asking  the  English  for 
that  military  help  which  he  could  not  do  without.  Bussy  had  great 
difficulty  in  re-establishing  his  waning  confidence  without  condemning 
the  policy  of  his  country.  An  invasion  of  Mysore,  under  the  plea  of 
arrears  of  tribute,  at  once  raised  French  prestige  and  filled  the  treasury. 
Bussy  succeeded  in  obtaining  a  voluntary  payment  of  fifty-two  lakhs 
of  rupees  on  condition  of  preventing  an  invasions  \m  lit  Marathas, 
which  would  have  completed  the  ruin  of  the  ere  reckonthus,  in  the 
phrase  of  Duval  de  Leyrit,  the  heir  of  both  Dy  was  twent .Godeheu, 
the  position  of  Bussy  was  as  brilliant  as  ever.  I  Bussy  ceasecrrespond- 
ence  with  the  wazir,  and  received  flattering  letd,  having  secMoghul. 
But  the  national  sentiment  was  by  no  means  ne  was  abl&e  Ramdas 
Pandit  and  Saiyid  Lashkar  Khan,  Shah  Nawaz  Khkir  irom  the  end 
of  1755  desired  above  all  else  to  get  rid  of  Bussy  and  the  French.  An 
expedition  against  Savanur  and  Morari  Rao  gave  occasion  for  the 
rupture.  Morari  Rao  had  acquired  extensive  territory  round  Gooty, 
whence  he  defied  both  Salabat  Jang  and  Balaji  Rao.  The  two  there- 
fore united  to  suppress  him.  Bussy  brought  the  expedition  to  a 
successful  end,  but  by  reason  of  the  services  Morari  Rao  had 
formerly  rendered  to  Dupleix  was  unwilling  entirely  to  crush  him. 
But  when  he  gave  him  easy  terms,  Shah  Nawaz  Khan  cried  treason 
and  dismissed  Bussy. 

His  position  was  critical.  Though  Bussy  had  few  troops,  he  disliked 
retreating;  and  instead,  therefore,  of  marching  to  the  coast  as  had 
been  expected,  he  calmly  made  his  way  to  Hyderabad,  where  he 
entrenched  himself  in  the  Chahar  Mahal,  a  garden  on  the  outskirts  of 
the  town  belonging  to  the  subahdar.  There  he  awaited  reinforce- 
ments. Luckily  Law,  who  was  sent  with  160  Europeans  and  700 


HUSSY'S  POLICY  139 

sepoys,  besides  five  guns,  showed  more  decision  than  before  Trichi- 
nopoly.  He  overthrew  the  enemy  barring  his  way,  and  about 
15  August,  1756,  joined  Bussy.  Thus  Shah  Nawaz  Khan's  plans  were 
upset.  But  it  was  not  altogether  his  fault.  Bussy's  dismissal  had  been 
concerted  with  the  English,  who  were  to  have  sent  a  detachment  to 
take  the  place  of  the  French,  but  who  were  prevented  from  doing  so 
by  news  that  on  June  21,  Calcutta  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  Siraj- 
ud-daula.  The  victorious  Bussy  thus  quietly  resumed  his  place  in  the 
subahdar's  councils  as  if  nothing  had  happened.  He  did  not  even 
take  the  trouble  to  dismiss  Shah  Nawaz  Khan;  though  he  was  hostile, 
would  another  be  more  sincere  and  friendly?  He  therefore  did  no 
more  than  keep  an  eye  upon  him.  It  was,  indeed,  a  fixed  principle 
with  him  to  avoid  as  much  as  possible  all  appearance  of  interfering 
with  internal  matters  and  to  leave  to  the  subahdar  all  the  forms  of 
independence.  Not  to  labour  the  point,  his  ideas  are  summarised  in 
the  following  passage  of  a  letter  to  Dupleix  of  26  February,  1754: 

What  I  can,  and  think  I  should,  assure  you,  is  that  it  is  of  the  greatest  importance 
to  manage  these  provinces  [the  sarkars]  at  first  according  to  the  Asiatic  manner 
and  only  to  substitute  a  French  government  for  that  of  the  Moghuls  gradually  and 
by  degrees.  We  certainly  must  not  begin  on  the  first  day  of  our  rule.  Experience 
and  practical  acquaintance  with  the  country,  and  with  the  nature  and  manners  of 
its  inhabitants,  show  that  we  should  not  hasten  the  assertion  of  absolute  authority, 
but  establish  it  gradually,  instead  of  exposing  it  to  certain  failure  by  claiming  it 
at  our  first  appearance.  I  attribute  the  successes  I  have  gained  hitherto  principally 
to  my  care  on  certain  occasions  to  observe  Asiatic  customs.1 

The  remainder  of  1 756  passed  without  incident.  It  was  at  this  time 
that  news  arrived  of  the  declaration  of  war  with  England;  but  the 
war  had  begun  six  months  or  more  earlier,  if  we  take  into  account  the 
events  that  had  occurred  in  America.  Bussy  returned  to  the  coast,  less 
to  look  after  the  administration  than  to  watch  the  English,  who  had 
important  factories  at  Ingeram,  Madapollam,  Bandarmalanka,  and 
Vizagapatam.  These  he  took  one  after  the  other.  For  a  moment  he 
thought  of  sending  Law  up  to  Bengal  to  the  assistance  of  Chanderna- 
gore,  attacked  by  Clive  and  Watson;  but  the  fall  of  the  place  (March, 
1757)  made  such  a  plan  useless. 

All  that  year  Bussy  remained  on  the  coast.  He  desired  to  accustom 
the  Deccan  to  his  absence,  in  order  one  day  to  abandon  it.  It  no 
longer  mattered,  as  in  the  time  of  Dupleix,  that  the  subahdar  was  the 
legitimate  ruler  of  Southern  India;  circumstances  had  judged  that 
fiction  of  legality.  But  the  subahdar  could  not  yet  be  abandoned. 
If  he  and  his  court  were  not  secured,  there  was  a  danger  of  seeing 
them  fall  into  the  arms  of  the  English,  and  the  war  in  progress  between 
the  two  powers  would  now  enjoin  the  use  of  every  weapon.  Bussy 
knew  that  the  danger  had  grown  during  his  absence.  Shah  Nawaz 
Khan,  who  had  never  renounced  his  design  of  expelling  the  French, 
had  by  degrees  transferred  the  powers  of  government  from  Salabat 

1  Bib.  Nat.,  Nouvelles  Acquisitions,  9158,  f.  157. 


140  DUPLEIX  AND  BUSSY 

Jang  to  his  brothers,  Nizam  'All  and  Basalat  Jang,  and  had  secured 
for  himself  a  place  of  refuge  in  Daulatabad,  while  he  was  negotiating 
with  the  Marathas  for  external  help.  The  English,  in  accordance  with 
their  interests,  gave  him  good  advice  until  such  time  as  they  should 
be  able  to  do  more.  All  this  disappeared  with  Bussy's  return.  Without 
employing  force,  he  found  once  more  within  himself  the  patient 
powers  of  persuasion  which  enabled  him  to  restore  order.  He  secured 
Daulatabad  by  surprise;  and  re-established  Salabat  Jang  in  all  his 
rights.  But  he  needed  more  vigilance  than  of  old.  The  English 
successes  in  Bengal  had  their  reaction  in  the  Deccan.  One  day  his 
diwan,  Haidar  Jang,  was  murdered;  and  Shah  Nawaz  Khan  was 
killed  in  the  tumult  which  followed.  These  were  not  propitious  omens ; 
no  one  doubted  that  a  crisis  was  at  hand. 

On  the  declaration  of  war,  the  king  of  France  had  sent  Lally  to 
India  to  drive  the  English  out.  After  taking  Fort  St  David,  Lally 
prepared  to  attack  Madras;  for  the  success  of  this  enterprise  he  con- 
sidered he  had  need  of  all  the  national  forces,  even  of  those  in  the 
Deccan,  By  a  letter  of  15  June,  1758,  he  recalled  Bussy  with  his 
detachment.  Salabat  Jang  felt  that  this  meant  his  own  destruction, 
as  was  indeed  the  case;  but  Lally's  orders  were  formal;  Bussy  obeyed, 
like  a  disciplined  soldier,  and  set  out  at  once  to  join  him.  This  did  not 
necessarily  signify  the  ruin  of  French  hopes,  even  in  the  Deccan,  if 
Lally  triumphed  in  the  Carnatic.  In  1758  the  position  of  the  French 
on  the  coast  was  as  strong  as  in  the  best  days  of  Dupleix,  and  the 
Carnatic  itself  with  Trichinopoly  might  have  been  secured,  had 
fortune  favoured  the  new  general.  But  the  check  before  Madras,  then 
the  battle  of  Wandiwash  where  Bussy  was  taken  prisoner,  destroyed 
the  work  of  the  previous  nine  years,  and  left  of  the  work  of  Dupleix 
and  Bussy  only  memories  on  the  one  side,  and  hopes  on  the  other. 
It  was  by  learning  from  these  two  great  Frenchmen  that  Clive  was 
enabled  to  lay  the  British  Empire  in  India  on  secure  foundations. 
Their  success  showed  him  the  weakness  of  the  Indian  princes;  that 
the  walls  of  their  power  would  fall  at  the  first  push.  Frenchmen  will 
ever  regret  that  Dupleix  did  not  confine  his  efforts  to  the  Carnatic; 
with  united  forces  he  might  have  triumphed  over  Trichinopoly  before 
the  patience  of  the  Company  was  tired  out,  and  then,  if  it  was  resolved 
to  go  farther,  the  way  was  open.  He  lost  everything  by  wishing  to 
hasten  the  work  of  time,  and  by  forgetting  the  certainty  of  English 
resistance  in  India  and  of  public  disapproval  in  France,  where  men 
did  not  know  his  plans  and  were  alarmed  at  the  endless  wars  into 
which  he  was  leading  them. 


CHAPTER  VII 

CLIVE  IN  BENGAL,   1756-60 

9  April,  1756,  died  'All  Wardi  Khan,  subahdar  of  Bengal  and 
Bihar.  He  had  established  himself  by  force  of  arms  as  ruler  of  those 
provinces  after  a  severe  struggle  with  the  Marathas;  and  when  his 
position  was  no  longer  assailable,  the  Moghul  emperor  had  recognised 
him  as  his  lieutenant  on  condition  of  his  paying  fifty-two  lakhs  of 
rupees  a  year.  Apparently  this  condition  was  never  fulfilled ;  but  he 
went  on  ruling  none  the  less,  and  in  1752  designated  as  his  successor 
his  great-nephew,  Siraj-ud-daula,  then  a  young  man  of  twenty- three. 
Of  the  latter  neither  his  English  nor  his  Indian  contemporaries  have 
the  least  good  to  say;  and  his  conduct  confirms  their  words.  Having 
been  proclaimed  as  nawab  at  the  capital,  Murshidabad,  he  marched 
almost  at  once  against  his  cousin,  Shaukat  Jang,  the  governor  of 
Purnia,  whom  he  suspected  rightly  of  intriguing  against  him.  On 
20  May,  when  he  had  reached  Rajmahal  on  his  march  against 
Purnia,  he  suddenly  changed  his  mind,  ordered  an  immediate  return 
to  Murshidabad,  and  directed  the  English  factory  at  Kasimbazar  to 
be  seized.  This  was  carried  out  on  4  June,  three  days  after  the  nawab's 
return  to  Murshidabad;  and  on  the  5th  his  army  began  its  march 
against  Calcutta.  On  the  2Oth  he  captured  the  place. 

This  extraordinary  series  of  events  took  everyone  by  surprise;  and 
when  they  came  to  offer  explanations  to  their  friends  and  superiors, 
personal  feeling  ran  so  high,  and  each  member  of  the  Calcutta  Council 
was  so  visibly  anxious  to  throw  the  blame  elsewhere  than  on  himself 
and  his  friends,  that  little  weight  can  be  attached  to  their  evidence. 
Some  declared  that  Omichand  had  instigated  this  attack  in  revenge 
for  having  been  excluded  from  his  former  share  in  the  Company's 
business;  others  attributed  it  to  the  reception  of  a  fugitive  who  was 
alleged  to  have  eloped  with  large  sums  of  money,  and  to  the  expulsion 
of  the  messenger  whom  the  nawab  had  sent  to  demand  him.  Others 
again  asserted  that  on  his  deathbed  'Ali  Wardi  Khan  had  solemnly 
warned  Siraj-ud-daula  against  the  dangers  of  European  aggression. 
All  these  are  vigorously  asserted  and  as  vigorously  denied  in  the  letters 
describing  that  eventful  twelvemonth  which  elapsed  between  the 
capture  of  Calcutta  and  the  battle  of  Plassey1.  But  there  is  reason  to 
think  that  fear  of  European  aggression  was  the  main  predisposing 
cause  of  the  attack.  Holwell,  to  whom  we  owe  a  detailed  account 
of  'Ali  Wardi's  deathbed  warning,  may  have  been  drawing  on  his 
imagination  or  may  have  been  indebted  to  mere  rumour;  but  it  is 
certain  that  those  who  like  Watts,  the  head  of  the  Kasimbazar  factory, 

1  Holwell  to  Company,  30  November,  1756;  Watts  to  the  same,  30  January,  1757. 


142  CLIVE  IN  BENGAL,  1756-60 

dismissed  the  story  on  the  ground  that  orientals  were  too  incurious 
and  indolent  to  trouble  about  what  happened  in  distant  provinces, 
had  chosen  to  forget  at  least  two  incidents  which  should  have  taught 
them  better.  We  know  that  when  the  news  of  Nasir  Jang's  death 
reached  Bengal,  'Ali  Wardi  Khan  had  threatened  to  seize  the  goods 
belonging  to  the  French.1  We  know,  too,  that  a  short  time  before  'Ali 
Wardi's  death  Siraj-ud-daula  had  accused  the  English  of  preparing 
to  resist  the  government;  the  English  had  been  repeatedly  questioned, 
and  though  they  had  convinced  'Ali  Wardi  of  their  innocence  they 
had  not  succeeded  in  convincing  Siraj-ud-daula;  he  had  ordered  his 
spies  to  keep  a  close  watch  on  their  doings,  and  it  was  common  talk 
at  Murshidabad  that  the  vast  wealth  of  the  English  might  easily  be 
captured.2  The  day  on  which  Siraj-ud-daula  turned  back  from  his 
march  against  Purnia  he  had  received  a  letter  from  Drake,  the  English 
governor,  explaining  recent  additions  to  the  defences  of  Calcutta  as 
intended  to  protect  the  place  against  a  French  attack.  That  letter 
has  not  been  preserved  in  any  form,  and  we  cannot  tell  whether  in 
any  other  way  it  was  calculated  to  irritate  the  nawab;  but  there  was 
certainly  an  uneasy  feeling  in  his  mind  that  unless  he  took  precautions 
the  Europeans,  would  turn  Bengal  upside  down  as  they  had  done  the 
Carnatic  and  the  Deccan.  It  is  very  possible  that  this  feeling  was 
accentuated  by  other  imprudences  on  the  part  of  Drake,  who  was  at 
best  but  a  short-sighted  mortal.  But  the  main  reason  for  the  nawab's 
attack  was  the  idea  that  the  English  had  taken  advantage  of  'Ali 
Wardi's  illness  to  strengthen  their  military  position,  and  that  he  had 
better  check  them  before  they  became  dangerous. 

This  idea,  as  the  event  was  to  prove,  was  ludicrously  false.  Drake 
had  indeed  mounted  some  guns  along  the  river  front,  in  case  French 
vessels  should  sail  up  the  river  and  attempt  a  landing  when  war  broke 
out  again ;  but  that  was  no  protection  against  any  attack  which  the 
nawab  might  deliver,  for  that  would  come  from  the  land,  not  from 
the  water.  Nor,  indeed,  was  any  attack  anticipated.  The  common 
view  held  by  Europeans  in  Bengal  was  that  expressed  in  a  letter  of 
4  June,  1 743,  written  by  Dupleix  and  his  council  at  Rondichery  to 
his  successor  at  Chandernagore.  The  latter,  alarmed  by  the  expulsion 
of  Schonamille  and  his  Ostenders,  had  planned  a  large  and  powerful 
fortress.  Duple*ix  rejoined:  "So  long  as  Europeans  trade  in  Bengali 
we  do  not  believe  that  the  Moors  will  directly  attack  them;  they  have 
surer  means  of  making  them  pay  the  unjust  contributions  which  they 
exact".8  Their  river-borne  commerce  could  be  stopped  at  any  point; 
and  no  fortifications  would  enable  them  to  carry  on  trade  against  the 
will  of  the  nawab.  That  was  also  the  view  of  the  English.  At  the 
beginning  of  the  century  they  had  built  Fort  William;  but  they  had 

1  Law,  MAnoire,  p.  52;  Gultru,  Dupleix,  p.  353. 

1  Forth  to  Drake,  ID  December,  1756. 

8  Corrcspondanct . .  .dc  PondiMry  d  Bengale,  n,  288. 


LOSS  OF  CALCUTTA  143 

been  at  no  pains  to  make  it  defensible  from  the  land,  or  to  maintain 
its  original  strength.  So  early  as  1725  the  timbers  of  the  bastions  had 
become  so  rotten  that  they  had  had  to  be  shored  up.  In  1729  the 
south  curtain  was  rendered  defenceless  by  the  building  of  outhouses 
which  masked  the  flanking  fire  of  the  bastions.  They  had  built  a 
church  close  at  hand  which  commanded  the  gorges  of  all  four  bastions. 
Private  persons  had  been  allowed  to  build  solid  brick  houses  almost 
adjoining.  Then  the  fort  had  been  found  stuffy,  and  so  great  windows 
had  been  cut  in  its  walls.  No  soldier  or  engineer  who  saw  it  but  fore- 
told that  it  could  never  be  defended  against  attack.  A  captain  of 
artillery  in  1 755  reported  that  there  was  not  an  embrasure  fit  to  hold 
a  gun  or  a  carriage  fit  to  mount  one ;  on  which  the  council  reprimanded 
him  for  not  sending  his  letter  through  the  commandant.1  Nor  even 
was  the  garrison  at  its  full  strength.  During  those  alarming  years 
when  Madras  and  Pondichery  were  at  unauthorised  war,  many 
recruits  intended  for  Bengal  had  been  detained  at  Madras;  and  this 
deficiency  had  not  been  made  good.2  Finally  the  officers  who  com- 
manded the  garrison  were  of  the  same  poor  quality,  with  no  more 
experience  of  war,  and  hardly  more  military  spirit,  than  had  been 
displayed  by  their  brothers-in-arms  at  Madras  in  1 746.  So  far  from 
being  prepared  to  disturb  the  peace  of  Bengal,  the  place  was  not  even 
capable  of  defence.  Few  events  have  had  a  more  ironical  conclusion 
than  Siraj-ud-daula's  attack  upon  Calcutta. 

The  short  interval  between  the  first  warning  and  the  appearance 
of  Siraj-ud-daula's  troops  served  no  better  purpose  than  to  display 
the  lack  of  military  talent  in  the  settlement.  All  the  available  Euro- 
peans, Eurasians,  and  Armenians  were  embodied  in  the  militia;  a 
body  of  Indian  matchlockmen  was  taken  into  pay;  and  plans  were 
made  for  the  defence  of  the  town.  But  there  was  no  leadership.  The 
projected  line  of  defence  was  larger  than  could  be  held  by  the  numbers 
present;  and  nothing  was  done  to  render  the  fort  itself  defensible. 
On  1 6  June,  the  nawab's  troops  appeared  before  the  place,  and  were 
repulsed  in  an  attack  they  made  on  the  northern  side  of  the  town; 
but  on  the  ijth  they  entered  the  town  limits  from  the  east;  on  the 
1 8th  they  drove  the  defenders  from  their  outposts;  and  on  the  igth 
the  fort  was  deserted  by  the  governor,  the  commandant,  and  several 
of  the  members  of  council,  who  took  refuge  with  a  number  of  women 
on  board  the  ships  in  the  riven  When  their  desertion  was  known,  the 
remainder  placed  the  command  in  the  hands  of  Holwell,  the  junior 
member  of  council;  and  the  defence  was  prolonged  for  one  more 
day.  But  the  soldiers,  exhausted  with  their  efforts,  got  out  of  hand, 
and  broke  open  the  liquor  godowns,  as  had  happened  at  Madras;  the_ 
enemy's  fire  from  the  church  and  neighbouring  houses  rende 
bastions  untenable ;  and  in  the  afternoon  the  place  surrend 

1  Wilson,  Old  Fort  William,  n,  25. 

1  Bengal  to  Madras,  25  May,  1756  (Madras  Letters  received, 


144  CLIVE  IN  BENGAL,  1756-60 

anxious  enquiries  about  the  treasure  which  the  fort  was  thought  to 
contain,  the  prisoners  were  shut  up  for  the  night  in  the  military  prison 
generally  known  as  the  Black  Hole.  This  was  a  room  18  feet  long 
by  14  feet  10  inches  wide,  from  which  only  twenty-three  survivors 
emerged  next  morning.1 

The  news  of  this  disaster  arrived  piece-meal  at  Madras.  First,  on 
14  July,  came  news  of  the  seizure  of  Kasimbazar.  It  was  decided  to 
send  reinforcements  at  once;  and  on  the  aoth  Killpatrick  sailed  with 
230  men.  He  arrived  on  2  August,  and  found  a  number  of  refugees 
at  Fulta,  where  he  was  obliged  to  encamp  amidst  the  swamps  of  that 
unhealthy  place.  Not  till  16  August  did  news  come  of  the  fate  of 
Calcutta.  At  the  moment  the  council  was  actively  preparing  an 
expedition  which  was  to  have  joined  Salabat  Jang  in  the  Deccan  and 
replaced  French  influence  there  by  English.  Luckily  it  had  not 
marched.  Admiral  Watson,  who  had  come  out  two  years  earlier  with 
a  squadron  and  a  King's  regiment  in  case  the  French  could  not  be 
brought  to  terms,  was  called  into  council,  and  Clive  was  summoned 
up  from  Fort  St  David  where  he  was  now  deputy  governor.  There 
was  a  strong  and  natural  feeling  in  the  council  against  the  dispatch 
of  a  large  force  to  Bengal,  based  partly  on  the  local  advantage  of 
expelling  the  French  from  the  Deccan,  partly  on  the  evident  approach 
of  war  with  France  with  its  consequent  dangers  to  Madras.  This  was 
overcome,  mainly  owing  to  the  firm  and  prudent  arguments  of  Robert 
Orme,  supported  by  the  governor  Pigot  and  by  Clive.2  But  there 
still  remained  the  problems  of  who  was  to  command  the  expedition 
and  what  were  to  be  his  powers.  The  command  was  claimed  by 
Colonel  Adlercron,  the  commander  of  the  royal  regiment  that  had 
come  out  with  Watson.  But  he  refused  to  agree  to  the  division  of  the 
prospective  plunder  in  the  shares  laid  down  in  the  Company's  in- 
structions, or  to  promise  to  return  on  a  summons  from  the  Madras 
Council;3  and  so  the  command  was  finally  entrusted  to  Clive.  As 
regards  his  powers,  there  were  obvious  objections  to  entrusting  the 
direction  of  the  Madras  forces  to  persons  who  had  proved  themselves 
so  wanting  in  conduct  and  resolution  as  the  council  of  Fort  William. 
At  the  same  time  it  was  contrary  to  the  Company's  practice  to  entrust 
uncontrolled  power  to  a  military  officer.  It  was,  therefore,  first  decided 
to  send  two  deputies  with  Clive,  who  were  with  him  to  constitute  a 
council  with  power  to  determine  the  political  management  of  the 
expedition.  But  then  arrived  a  member  of  the  Calcutta  Council  who 
protested  so  loudly  against  this  supersession  of  the  Calcutta  authorities 
that  that  plan  was  laid  aside  and  Clive  was  invested  with  complete 
military  independence,  while  the  funds — four  lakhs  of  rupees — sent 

-  *  See  note  at  the  end  of  the  chapter. 

2  Orme  to  Payne,  3  November,  1756  (Orme  MSS,  Various,  28,  p.  58). 

8  Madras  Public  Consultations,  21  September,  1756;  Adlercron  to  Fox,  21  November, 
1756  (India  Office,  Home  Misc.  94,  p.  210). 


RECOVERY  OF  CALCUTTA         145 

with  the  expedition  were  consigned  to  him  personally.  In  fine  the 
Madras  council  came  to  the  best  conclusion  possible.  In  part  this 
was  due  to  luck.  It  was  a  miracle  of  fortune  that  Colonel  Adlercron 
was  so  unaccommodating.  But  the  decision  to  dispatch  a  large  ex- 
pedition instead  of  a  small  one  showed  high  qualities  of  courage  and 
insight. 

These  discussions  took  up  a  long  time.  The  expedition  did  not 
actually  sail  till  16  October,  after  the  north-east  monsoon  had  set 
in.  Their  passage  was  therefore  long  and  stormy.  One  of  the  vessels 
was  driven  into  Vizagapatam,  whence  she  put  back  to  Madras;  so 
that  when  Clive  reached  the  Hugli  a  few  days  before  Christmas  and 
was  joined  by  Killpatrick  and  the  remains  of  his  detachment,  he  had 
only  about  the  same  number  of  troops  as  he  had  set  out  with — 800 
Europeans  and  1000  sepoys.  He  marched  up  the  eastern  bank  of  the 
river,  occupied  Baj-baj,  recovered  Calcutta  (2  January,  1757),  and 
plundered  Hugli.  This  brought  Siraj-ud-daula  once  more  upon 
Calcutta.  He  refused  to  listen  to  the  embassy  which  Clive  sent  to 
him;  but  a  night  attack,  though  far  from  a  complete  success,  so 
disquieted  him  that  he  retired  and  sent  offers  of  terms.  Within  a 
week  the  treaty  had  been  completed  and  signed.  It  confirmed  the 
English  privileges,  promised  the  restoration  of  the  Calcutta  plunder 
in  the  nawab's  hands,  and  granted  the  power  of  fortifying  Calcutta 
and  coining  rupees.1 

This  treaty  came  at  a  timely  moment.  News  of  the  outbreak  of  the 
Seven  Years'  War  had  arrived  at  almost  the  same  time  as  Clive  had 
reached  Calcutta,  and  the  English  were  not  strong  enough  to  fight 
the  nawab  and  the  French  together.  Indeed  had  the  French  followed 
the  English  example,  and  thrown  every  available  man  into  Bengal, 
the  immediate  course  of  events  must  have  been  very  different.  But 
they  were  entangled  in  the  Deccan.  They  had  already  sent  all  the 
forces  they  could  spare  to  assist  Bussy  in  his  crisis  at  the  Chahar 
Mahal;  and  now  had  no  one  to  send  for  the  crisis  in  Bengal.  Just 
as  in  1751  the  dispatch  of  Bussy  to  the  Deccan  had  disabled  Dupleix 
from  completing  his  designs  in  the  Carnatic,  so  now  in  1757  the  need 
of  maintaining  Bussy's  position  prevented  them  from  interfering  with 
effect  in  Bengal.  Law,  the  French  chief  at  Kasimbazar,  and  the 
author  of  an  illuminating  memoir  on  the  events  of  1756-7,  had  urged 
the  directeur,  Renault  de  St  Germain,  either  to  agree  with  the  English 
for  a  neutrality  or  at  once  to  join  Siraj-ud-daula.  "  If  he  makes  peace 
without  having  received  any  help  from  you,  you  cannot  expect  help 
from  him  should  you  be  attacked/'2  Renault  tried  to  adopt  the  first 
alternative.  On  Watson's  arrival  he  had  sent  deputies  to  propose  a 
neutrality;  but  Watson  had  replied  that  he  would  accept  nothing 
short  of  an  alliance  against  the  nawab.  Then  when  the  nawab  was 

1  Treaty  of  February,  1757. 

1  Law,  Mtmoirc  (ed.  Martineau),  p.  93. 

era  v  10 


146  CLIVE  IN  BENGAL,  1756-60 

marching  on  Calcutta,  the  English  offered  to  relax  this  stipulation, 
and  Clive  fully  expected  them  to  accede  to  his  proposals,  unless 
indeed  they  "should  not  be  vested  with  powers  to  enter  into  en- 
gagements of  such  a  nature,  which  I  somewhat  suspect".1  But  no 
answer  was  returned  to  this  offer  until  2 1  February,  when  peace  had 
been  made  with  Siraj-ud-daula.  Then  they  sent  deputies  again,  and 
a  draft  treaty  was  drawn  up.  But  when  the  question  of  their  powers 
was  raised,  it  proved  that  they  could  bind  neither  the  Pondichery 
council  nor  any  royal  officers  who  might  come  out  to  India.  Thus 
negotiations  were  broken  off  on  4  March. 

Meanwhile  Watts,  that  "helpless,  poor,  and  innocent  man"  as 
Siraj-ud-daula  had  called  him,2  had  been  sent  up  to  Murshidabad 
to  act  as  English  resident  there  and  watch  over  the  execution  of  the 
treaty.  There  ensued  a  duel  between  him  and  Law,  in  which  the  latter 
had  the  advantage  of  the  nawab's  sympathy.  He  was  by  no  means 
disposed  to  acquiesce  in  his  defeat,  and  could  not  speak  of  the  English 
without  blazing  eyes.  But  the  durbar  was  on  the  whole  inclined  to  the 
English  and  against  the  French.  Then  too  came  news  that  the  Durani 
Afghans,  who  had  invaded  Northern  India,  were  likely  to  advance 
on  Bengal.  Under  the  alarm  caused  by  this,  Siraj-ud-daula  wrote  to 
offer  the  English  a  lakh  a  month  if  they  would  aid  him  against  the 
Afghans.  This  was  on  4  March,  the  day  on  which  the  Anglo-French 
negotiations  were  broken  off  and  on  which  also  Watson  had  written 
to  the  nawab  a  very  angry  letter,  demanding  the  complete  execution 
of  the  treaty  within  ten  days,  or  else  "I  will  kindle  such  a  flame  in 
your  country  as  all  the  water  in  the  Ganges  shall  not  be  able  to  ex- 
tinguish".3 In  these  circumstances,  on  the  loth,  a  letter  was  written 
by  the  nawab's  secretary,  bearing  the  nawab's  seal,  permitting  the 
attack  on  Chandernagore.  Law  asserts  that  this  letter  was  not  written 
by  the  order  of  the  nawab.4  However,  it  was  enough  to  authorise 
Watson  to  move.  On  the  i4th  Chandernagore  was  attacked,  though 
not  closely,  from  the  land ;  on  the  23rd  the  ships  appeared  off  the 
place  and  after  a  day's  severe  fighting  it  surrendered. 

This  deprived  the  nawab  of  his  natural  allies  against  the  English ; 
and  nothing  can  extenuate  his  folly  in  allowing  their  destruction. 
Indeed,  after  his  reluctant  consent  had  been  given,  he  seems  to  have 
changed  his  mind,  and  ordered  Rai  Durlabh  to  march  with  a  con- 
siderable force  to  relieve  the  town.  But  then,  on  hearing  from 
Nandakumar,  the  faujdar  of  Hugli,  that  the  French  would  not  be 
able  to  resist  the  English,  the  nawab  changed  his  mind  again,  and  in 
the  end  did  nothing.  No  conduct  could  have  been  feebler  or  more 
unwise.  He  gave  open  display  to  his  hostile  feelings  against  the 


4  Law,  op.  cit.  pp.  1 2 1-2. 


DISCONTENT  IN  BENGAL  147 

English  while  allowing  them  unmolested  to  destroy  the  French.  And 
then  as  if  to  emphasise  his  errors  he  proceeded  to  protect  Law  at 
Murshidabad  together  with  the  fugitives  who  joined  him  from 
Chandernagore,  and  to  write  to  Bussy  to  come  to  his  help  from  the 
Deccan.  These  facts  are  established  by  the  evidence  of  Law1  as  well 
as  by  the  assertions  of  the  English. 

Although  then  the  English  had  recovered  Calcutta,  although  they 
had  secured  from  the  nawab  promises  of  privileges  which  they  had 
long  desired,  and  although  they  had  succeeded  in  depriving  the  French 
of  their  principal  stronghold  in  Bengal,  they  were  still  far  from  a 
position  of  safety.  At  any  time  might  come  news  that  the  French  had 
arrived  in  strength  upon  the  coast,  and  then  Clive  would  be  obliged 
to  abandon  either  Madras  to  the  French  or  Calcutta  to  the  nawab. 
It  was  also  becoming  apparent  that  many  persons  besides  the  English 
had  cause  to  fear  Siraj-ud-daula,  and  desired  a  revolution  in  the 
government.  The  chief  people  in  this  movement  were  Hindus.  'Ali 
Wardi  Khan  had  favoured  them,  and  had  promoted  many  of  them 
to  high  places  in  his  administration.  Siraj-ud-daula  did  not  share  his 
predecessor's  feelings,  and  he  succeeded  in  alienating  all  the  principal 
men  of  the  durbar.  The  great  Hindu  bankers,  the  Seths,  who  had 
contributed  largely  to  the  establishment  of  5Ali  Wardi  Khan,  had 
been  threatened  with  circumcision;  Rai  Durlabh,  who  had  held  the 
office  of  diwan,  had  been  placed  under  the  orders  of  a  favourite  called 
Mohan  La'l;  Mir  Ja'far,  who  had  held  the  office  of  bakshi,  had  been 
dismissed  with  insult,  and  cannon  had  been  planted  against  his 
palace.  The  first  hint  of  intrigues  against  the  nawab  had  come  to  the 
English  through  Omichand,  when  they  were  still  lying  at  Fulta 
waiting  the  arrival  of  help  from  Madras.  Warren  Hastings,  who  was 
employed  in  this  first  affair,  thought  poorly  of  it;  and  for  the  moment 
it  came  to  nothing,  partly,  it  seems,  because  the  English  lacked  forces 
and  a  leader,  partly  because  the  Hindus  had  no  suitable  candidate 
to  propose.  But  after  the  fall  of  Chandernagore  the  idea  was  again 
brought  forward.  The  nawab,  having  defeated  and  slain  his  only 
dynastic  rival,  Shaukat  Jang,  in  the  previous  October,  had  lost  at 
once  all  stimulus  to  self-restraint  in  his  government  and  the  pro- 
tection afforded  by  the  hope  that  he  would  be  overthrown  without 
the  trouble  and  danger  of  private  action.  The  Seths  were  at  once 
the  persons  specially  concerned  and  specially  active.  Law,  who  was 
well  placed  to  view  the  position  with  considerable  accuracy,  says 
that  without  them  the  revolution  of  1757  would  never  have  been 
accomplished.2  That  view  is  probably  correct.  The  English  policy 
had  never  been  adventurous.  They  had  rather  supported  existing 
princes  than  replaced  them  by  new.  In  Bengal  they  would  not  have 
attempted  a  revolution  without  the  certainty  of  a  large  Indian 

1  Law,  op,  cit.  pp.  112,  131. 

1  Idem,  pp.  1 08  sqq.;  Glcig,  Warren  Hastings,  i,  41 ;  Elliott  and  Dowson,  vni,  426. 

10-3 


148  CLIVE  IN  BENGAL,  1756-60 

backing;  and  the  Seths'  intrigues  created  the  situation,  bringing  the 
discontent  to  a  head  and  the  discontented  into  active  contact  with 
one  another,  without  which  the  English  would  never  have  stirred  at 
a  time  when  a  French  war  was  visibly  impending.  The  Select  Com- 
mittee declared  no  more  than  the  truth  when  it  recorded  among  its 
other  reasons  for  participating  in  the  plot  that 

The  Nabob  is  so  universally  hated  by  all  sorts  and  degrees  of  men;  the  affection 
of  the  army  is  so  much  alienated  from  him  by  his  ill-usage  of  the  officers;  and 
a  revolution  so  generally  wished  for,  that  it  is  probable  that  the  step  will  be 
attempted  (and  successfully  too)  whether  we  give  our  assistance  or  not.  In  this 
case  we  think  it  would  be  a  great  error  in  politics  to  remain  idle  and  unconcerned 
spectators  of  an  event,  wherein  by  engaging  as  allies  to  the  person  designed  to  be 
set  up  we  may  benefit  our  employers  and  the  community  very  considerably,  do 
a  general  good,  and  effectually  traverse  the  designs  of  the  French  and  possibly 
keep  them  entirely  out  of  these  dominions. .  ..x 

This  matter  first  came  to  a  definite  form  when  on  20  April  Scrafton 
wrote  to  Clive  that  the  Seths  through  Omichand  had  proposed  to  set 
up  Yar  Lutf  Khan  as  nawab.  This  man  was  a  proteg6  of  the  Seths 
who  had  employed  him  in  command  of  a  body  of  troops  to  protect 
them  against  attacks  from  the  nawab  or  anyone  else.  On  the  23rd 
Scrafton's  letter  was  read  in  committee  and  Clive  was  authorised  to 
sound  the  principal  people  in  Murshidabad  about  their  willingness 
to  co-operate.  On  the  26th  Watts  wrote  that  Mir  Ja'far  had  informed 
him  through  Khwaja  Petrus,  an  Armenian,  that  he  and  other  im- 
portant persons  were  willing  to  assist  the  English  in  overthrowing 
the  nawab.  This  proposal  was  obviously  much  more  attractive  than 
engaging  to  support  an  unknown  man  such  as  Yar  Lutf  Khan.  The 
question  was  considered  in  committee  on  i  May  and  at  once  accepted 
on  the  following  conditions:  an  alliance  offensive  and  defensive;  the 
surrender  of  all  French  fugitives  and  factories;  restitution  of  all 
English  losses,  public  and  private,  caused  by  the  capture  of  Calcutta; 
the  admission  of  all  farman  rights ;  liberty  to  fortify  Kasimbazar  and 
Dacca;  no  fortifications  to  be  erected  on  the  river  below  Hugli;  the 
recognition  of  English  sovereignty  within  the  bounds  of  Calcutta;  the 
grant  of  territories  for  the  maintenance  of  a  proper  military  force; 
extraordinary  expenses  while  the  troops  were  on  campaign  for  the 
nawab  to  be  paid  by  him;  and  the  residence  at  the  nawab's  durbar 
of  one  of  the  Company's  servants.  Four  days  later  to  these  terms  was 
added  the  additional  stipulation  that  "Omychund  in  consideration 
of  his  services  should  have  all  his  losses  made  good  by  an  express 
article  in  the  treaty  ".  But  by  the  time  that  these  proposals  had  reached 
Murshidabad,  Omichand  had  fallen  into  disfavour  with  the  other 
conspirators.  Watts  might  write  on  6  May,  "I  will  conclude  nothing 
without  consulting  Omichand",  but  on  the  I4th  he  had  learnt  that 
the  latter  had  procured  from  the  nawab  orders  for  the  restoration  of 
his  property,  and,  when  he  was  shown  the  proposed  articles,  he  not 
1  Bengal  Select  Committee,  i  May,  1757. 


THE  CONSPIRACY  149 

only  insisted  on  his  receiving  5  per  cent,  on  the  nawab's  treasure,  but 
also  demanded  many  other  alterations,  "in  which  his  own  ambition, 
cunning,  and  avaricious  views  were  the  chief  motives",1  In  conse- 
quence of  these  intrigues  both  the  English  and  Mir  Ja'far  resolved  to 
have  nothing  more  to  do  with  the  greedy  Sikh;  but  the  matter  was 
not  so  simple  as  that.  Omichand  had  unwisely  been  let  into  the  secret, 
and  the  immediate  problem  was  to  keep  his  mouth  shut  until  the 
preparations  were  more  complete.  For  this  purpose  the  Calcutta 
council  decided  on  the  expedient  of  a  double  treaty,  in  one  copy  of 
which  Omichand's  claims  were  to  be  inserted,  but  which  was  not 
to  be  regarded  as  the  valid  copy.  In  order  to  make  the  trick  pass, 
Watson's  signature  was  added  by  some  person,  probably  Lushington, 
to  the  false  copy. 

Meanwhile,  the  final  terms  had  been  concerted  with  Mir  Ja'far. 
They  were  rather  more  favourable  to  the  English  than  had  been  at 
first  put  forward;  and  on  5  June,  Watts  visited  Mir  Ja'far  in  secret 
and  obtained  his  oath  to  the  treaty.  But  already  doubts  had  arisen 
regarding  the  amount  of  assistance  that  might  be  expected  from  him 
and  his  friends.  In  words  which  proved  true  in  the  event,  Watts 
wrote: 

We  can  expect  no  more  assistance  than  that  they  will  stand  neuter  and  wait  the 
event  of  a  battle.  If  we  are  successful  they  will  reap  the  benefit,  if  otherwise  they 
will  continue  as  they  were  without  appearing  to  have  been  concerned  with  us.a 

Nevertheless,  the  march  of  events  was  not  suffered  to  pause.  On 
ii  June  the  treaty  was  delivered  to  the  Select  Committee;  on  the 
1 2th  Watts  and  his  companions  fled  from  Murshidabad;  and  the  day 
after  Clive  began  to  march  towards  the  nawab's  capital. 

The  matter  had  not  been  kept  so  secret  as  it  should  have  been. 
We  shall  never  know  whether  Omichand  revealed  the  plot  to  Siraj- 
ud-daula,  or  who  broke  silence  at  Calcutta;  but  it  was  openly  dis- 
cussed at  the  English  capital  on  5  June;  two  days  later  it  was  known 
at  Murshidabad;  and  on  the  8th  the  Frenchman,  Sinfray,  warned 
the  nawab  of  what  was  impending.  But  he  was  too  irresolute  by 
nature  to  take  advantage  of  his  knowledge.  He  seems  also  to  have 
so  distrusted  his  army  that  he  would  not  venture  on  the  decisive  step 
of  seizing  Mir  Ja'far.  Instead  of  that  he  visited  the  latter  in  person, 
and  accepted,  though  presumably  he  did  not  place  much  trust  in, 
the  conspirator's  protestations  of  fidelity.  Meanwhile  Clive  set  out 
with  3000  men.  Of  these  2200  were  sepoys  and  topasses ;  800  European 
infantry  and  artillerymen.  The  sepoys  were  men  whom  he  had  brought 
up  with  him  to  Bengal;  they  had  been  raised  and  trained  under 
Lawrence  in  the  south  and  had  served  well  against  the  French.  After 
a  momentary  hesitation  he  reached  Plassey  at  midnight  22-23  June, 

1  Watts  to  Clive,  14  May,  1757. 
1  Watts  to  Clive,  3  June,  1757. 


CLIVE  IN  BENGAL,  1 756-60 

and  found  himself  within  striking  distance  of  Siraj-ud-daula's  army, 
consisting  of  some  50,000  men. 

His  knowledge  of  the  situation  was  slight  and  disquieting.  He  had 
received  letters  from  Mir  Ja'far  promising  co-operation;  but  he  was 
by  no  means  certain  how  far  the  latter  would  keep  his  word.  In  the 
first  draft  of  Orme's  famous  history  we  find  a  passage  which  was 
afterwards  omitted,  probably  in  deference  to  the  susceptibilities  of 
his  hero: 

Colonel  Clive. .  .saw  the  morning  break  with  increasing  anxiety;  at  sunrise  he 
went  with  another  person  upon  the  terras  of  the  hunting-house,  from  whence 
having  contemplated  the  enemy's  array,  he  was  surprised  at  their  numerous, 
splendid  and  martial  appearance.  His  companion  asked  him  what  he  thought 
would  be  the  event;  to  which  he  replied,  "We  must  make  the  best  fight  we  can 
during  the  day,  and  at  night  sling  our  muskets  over  our  shoulders  and  march  back 
to  Calcutta".  Most  of  the  officers  were  as  doubtful  of  success  as  himself;  but  the 
common  soldiery,  being  mostly  tried  men,  who  had  served  under  Major  Lawrence 
on  the  plains  of  Trichinopoly,  maintained  the  blunt  spirit  of  genuine  Englishmen, 
and  saw  nothing  in  the  pomp  or  multitude  of  the  Nabob's  army  either  to  admire 
or  to  fear. .  ..x 

In  view  of  the  spirit  of  his  men  Clive  seems  to  have  resolved  to  remain 
on  the  defensive  during  the  day,  but  when  night  fell  to  try  the  effect 
of  a  surprise  attack  upon  the  nawab's  camp.  Accordingly,  till  2  o'clock 
in  the  afternoon  nothing  was  done  but  reply  to  the  cannonade  opened 
by  the  enemy.  But  when  the  latter  ceased  fire  and  began  to  fall  back 
on  their  own  camp,  Killpatrick  on  his  own  responsibility  ordered  an 
advance.  The  enemy  were  soon  driven  from  the  mound  near  the  British 
camp  which  they  had  occupied;  the  next  point  of  attack  was  another 
mound  close  to  the  nawab's  entrenchments.  Apparently  at  about  the 
time  when  Clive  ordered  his  men  to  advance  to  storm  this  post,  the 
nawab  sent  word  to  the  small  party  of  Frenchmen  with  him  that  he 
was  betrayed,  that  the  battle  was  lost,  and  that  they  should  save 
themselves ;  immediately  after  this  he  fled  on  a  swift  camel,  and  himself 
brought  to  Murshidabad  the  news  of  his  overthrow.  All  this  time 
Rai  Durlabh  and  Mir  Ja'far  had  been  as  inactive  as  the  Pathan 
nawabs  with  whom  Dupleix  had  concerted  the  destruction  of  Nasir 
Jang.  They  had  hung  on  the  right  flank  of  the  English  forces,  without 
attacking,  but.  also  without  giving  any  sign  of  their  holding  other 
intentions.  Not  till  the  next  morning  did  Mir  Ja'far  venture  into  the 
English  camp,  and  even  then  he  was  apparently  very  uncertain  of 
his  reception.  Scrafton  noted  that  he  started  when  the  guard  turned 
out  to  receive  him,  and  his  face  did  not  brighten  till  the  colonel  came 
out  and  embraced  him.2  That  day  the  new  nawab  hastened  to 
Murshidabad,  of  which  he  took  possession;  on  the  28th  Clive  entered 
and  conducted  him  to  the  masnad  on  which  he  had  not  yet  ventured 

1  Ormc  MSS,  Various,  164  A,  p.  115. 

2  Scrafton,  Reflections,  p.  90. 


MIR  JA'FAR  NAWAB  151 

to  seat  himself;  and  on  2  July  Siraj-ud-daula  was  brought  back  by 
Mir  Ja'far's  son  Miran,  and  put  to  death  that  same  night.  So  this 
revolution  was  completed.  Clive  wrote  of  it  to  Orme,  "  I  am  possessed 
of  volumes  of  materials  for  the  continuation  of  your  history,  in  which 
will  appear  fighting,  tricks,  chicanery,  intrigues,  politics,  and  the 
Lord  knows  what".1  It  offers  a  strange  mingling  of  the  admirable 
and  the  mean.  No  series  of  events  could  have  thrown  into  stronger 
relief  dive's  insight  and  the  way  in  which  he  saw  "things  and  their 
consequences  in  an  instant";  nothing  could  have  afforded  a  better 
illustration  of  his  resolute  conduct  as  soon  as  his  swift  mind  had  been 
made  up;  nothing  could  have  better  displayed  his  extraordinary  gift 
of  leadership.  If  once  or  twice  he  hesitated  in  the  course  of  affairs,  he 
was  after  all  but  man;  and  his  hesitation  took  place  when  there  was 
no  immediate  call  for  action.  In  attacking  Siraj-ud-daula  he  was 
amply  justified  not  only  by  the  standards  of  his  own  time  but  also  by 
those  of  our  own.  But  the  deception  of  Omichand  has  thrown  an 
ugly  air  over  the  business.  As  has  been  well  said,  had  Omichand 
sought  it  he  could  not  have  devised  a  more  bitter  revenge  than  the 
stain  which  he  brought  upon  the  name  of  Clive.2  And  the  large 
presents  with  which  Mir  Ja'far  rewarded  those  who  had  given  him 
Bengal  add  the  touch  of  sordidness.  It  is  true  that  in  this  Clive  and 
his  companions  were  only  following  the  example  of  Dupleix  and 
Bussy;  that  their  motives  were  not  corrupt;  that  they  might  have  had 
more  for  the  asking;  that  they  were  only  doing  what  any  of  their 
contemporaries  would  have  done  in  their  place.  Here  our  judgment 
must  fall  upon  the  age  rather  than  upon  the  individuals;  but  none 
the  less  the  acceptance  of  the  presents  was  of  evil  example;  and  could 
Clive  have  looked  on  to  1 765  perhaps  he  would  have  refrained  from 
laying  up  for  himself  untold  bitterness. 

Clive  now  found  himself  installed  in  the  same  position  and  exposed 
to  the  same  dangers  as  Bussy  in  the  Deccan.  In  character  Mir  Ja'far 
was  much  like  Salabat  Jang — weak  and  irresolute.  The  principal 
people  of  his  durbar  were  as  likely  to  be  jealous  of  the  English  as  the 
nobles  of  the  Deccan  had  proved  themselves  to  be  of  the  French. 
Intrigue  and  hostility  were  certain.  In  these  circumstances,  though 
without  any  formally  declared  intention,  we  find  Clive  adopting  as 
a  definite  policy  the  protection  of  those  prominent  Hindus  who  had 
assisted  in  bringing  about  the  revolution,  and  whom  Mir  Ja'far  wished 
to  despoil  as  soon  as  it  was  accomplished.  The  two  chief  persons 
concerned  were  Rai  Durlabh,  who  had  been  diwan  and  had  received 
repeated  promises  of  being  continued  in  that  office,  and  Ramnarayan, 
the  deputy  of  Bihar,  who  was  thought  unlikely  to  support  the  new 
regime.  Before  the  end  of  1757  the  nawab  was  already  accusing  Rai 
Durlabh  of  intending  to  set  up  a  new  nawab.  On  this  pretext  the 

1  Clive  to  Orme,  I  August,  1757. 

*  Hill,  Bengal  in  1 756-57, 1,  p.  clxxxix. 


152  CLIVE  IN  BENGAL,  1756-60 

unfortunate  brother  of  Siraj-ud-daula  was  put  to  death;  and  Rai 
Durlabh  was  on  the  verge  of  being  attacked.1  Watts,  who  was  still 
resident  at  the  durbar,  interfered  and  brought  about  a  reconciliation 
for  the  time  being,  which  was  the  more  necessary  because  Ramnarayan 
was  reported  to  be  allying  himself  with  the  wazir  of  Oudh  against 
Mir  Ja'far.  However,  when  the  nawab  took  the  field  to  march  against 
Bihar,  Rai  Durlabh  refused  to  march  with  him,  on  the  pretext  of  ill- 
health,  but  really  because  he  was  afraid  to  trust  himself  in  the  nawab's 
camp.  Clive,  who  had  decided  to  accompany  Mir  Ja'far  to  Patna, 
visited  the  diwan  at  Murshidabad  in  connection  with  the  Company's 
claims  for  payment  which  were  overdue.  At  first  he  secured  nothing 
but  promises.  But  when  the  diwan  was  warned  that  he  was  risking 
the  loss  of  English  protection,  an  agreement  was  reached  under 
which  the  Company  was  to  receive  orders  on  the  collectors  of 
the  various  districts  (30  December).2  Clive  and  Mir  Ja'far  now 
moved  towards  Patna.  At  first  Clive  had  been  decidedly  hostile 
towards  Ramnarayan.  Immediately  after  the  battle  of  Plassey  he 
had  sent  Coote  up  with  a  detachment  in  order  to  seize  Law  and 
any  other  Frenchmen  whom  he  could  find;  and  he  also  issued 
orders  to  dispossess  Ramnarayan  of  Bihar.3  These  orders  were  never 
carried  out,  because  Coote  was  dissuaded  by  Mir  Ja'far's  friends,  who 
probably  thought  that  the  plunder  of  the  deputy  had  better  be  left 
for  their  own  hands.  Six  months  later  Clive's  attitude  had  changed. 
In  December  he  had  received  protestations  of  the  deputy's  fidelity; 
and  on  i  January  he  had  with  the  approval  of  the  nawab  written 
giving  that  guarantee  of  personal  safety  without  which  Ramnarayan 
refused  to  trust  himself  within  the  nawab's  reach.  Relying  on  this, 
Ramnarayan  at  once  came  down  the  river  to  meet  the  nawab;  and 
then  ensued  a  pretty  trial  of  strength  between  the  nawab  and  Clive, 
the  first  bent  on  the  spoliation  of  the  deputy,  the  second  on  the  main- 
tenance of  his  promise.  Clive  won,  although  at  one  time  after  his 
arrival  at  Patna  he  had  certainly  speculated  on  the  possibility  of 
being  attacked  by  the  nawab's  forces,4  as  Bussy  had  been  at  the  Chahar 
Mahal.  Ramnarayan  received  investiture  of  his  office,  for  which  he 
paid  nine  lakhs  of  rupees;  and  he  received  a  definite  promise  that  so 
long  as  he  did  not  intrigue  with  foreign  powers  and  provided  his  due 
share  of  the  revenues,  he  should  not  be  dismissed.  The  net  result  was 
that  the  two  principal  servants  of  the  state  depended  for  their  personal 
security  not  upon  their  ostensible  master  but  upon  the  influence  of 
Clive. 

Down  to  this  time  Clive  had  no  definite  position  among  the  English 
at  Bengal,  and  still  remained  a  servant  of  the  governor  and  council 


MSS,  India,  vn,  pp.  1608-50,  and 
Ive  to  Select  Committee,  7  February,  1758. 


INVASION  OF  BIHAR  153 

of  Madras.  On  the  receipt  of  the  news  of  the  fall  of  Calcutta,  after 
some  deliberation  the  Company  had  resorted  to  that  absurd  plan, 
which  had  been  attempted  before  in  the  period  of  confusion  at  the 
beginning  of  the  century,  of  establishing  a  rotation  government.  On 
this  occasion  there  were  to  be  four  governors,  who  were  to  have  suc- 
ceeded to  the  chair  in  successive  periods  of  a  month.  But  the  Calcutta 
Council  refused  to  put  this  plan  into  operation ;  Clive  was  invited  to 
act  as  governor  till  orders  should  arrive  subsequent  to  the  news  of  the 
revolution.  This  sensible  decision  was  taken  in  June,  1758;  and  later 
in  the  year  a  dispatch  arrived  by  which  the  Company  appointed 
Clive  to  the  position  which  he  was  already  occupying. 

Meanwhile  the  policy  of  protecting  the  Hindu  servants  of  the  nawab 
was  further  developed  by  the  attack  made  by  Miran  upon  Rat 
Durlabh.  The  resident  had  once  more  to  intervene  in  order  to  prevent 
his  house  being  plundered ;  and  then  an  intrigue  was  started  with  a 
view  to  ruining  him  with  the  English  by  accusing  him  of  a  conspiracy 
against  the  nawab.  Clive  with  great  probability  on  his  side  refused 
to  credit  the  accusation,  and  the  minister  was  allowed  to  retire  to 
Calcutta.  The  support  of  persons  whom  he  wished  to  plunder  must 
have  done  much  to  alienate  the  nawab;  but  almost  immediately 
afterwards  came  a  reminder  that  he  depended  upon  the  English  for 
military  support.  In  1759  appeared  on  the  borders  of  Bihar  'Ali 
Gauhar,  better  known  under  his  later  title  of  Shah  'Alam  II,  who, 
flying  from  the  confusion  of  Delhi,  had  found  a  refuge  in  Oudh  and 
was  now  hoping  to  strengthen  his  position  by  the  occupation  of  Bihar 
and  Bengal.  He  laid  siege  to  Patna,  but  Ramnarayan  proved  staunch ; 
after  temporising  as  long  as  he  could,  he  defended  the  place  until 
succour  arrived,  on  which  the  wandering  prince  withdrew  into  Oudh. 
This  support  was  the  occasion  of  that  great  gift  of  the  jagir,  which 
involved  Clive  in  such  animated  disputes  with  the  Company  at  a  later 
time.  It  consisted  of  the  quit-rent  which  the  nawab  had  withheld 
when  he  granted  the  24-Parganas  to  the  Company,  and  which  was 
till  Clive's  death  and  later  paid  to  him  instead  of  to  the  nawab, 
though  he  had  much  ado  to  secure  his  rights  from  the  Company  when 
control  of  the  direction  passed  for  the  time  being  out  of  his  hands. 

The  last  striking  incident  of  his  first  government  in  Bengal  was  the 
attempt  of  the  Dutch  to  supplant  English  influence  with  the  nawab. 
Although  the  centre  of  Dutch  power  and  wealth  lay  not  in  India  but 
in  the  islands  to  the  eastward,  they  had  watched  with  growing  dis- 
favour first  the  French  and  then  the  English  establishing  themselves 
in  a  position  of  political  predominance.  When  MasuUpatam  had 
been  granted  to  the  French  in  1751,  the  Dutch,  who  had  long  had  a 
factory  there,  made  several  attempts  to  assert  their  independence.  On 
more  than  one  occasion  they  attempted  to  hoist  their  flag — a  thing 
which  the  French  would  in  no  wise  permit;  and  they  constantly 
scrupled  to  pay  the  duties  which  the  French  imposed  on  the  trade 


152  CLIVE  IN  BENGAL,  1756-60 

unfortunate  brother  of  Siraj-ud-daula  was  put  to  death;  and  Rai 
Durlabh  was  on  the  verge  of  being  attacked.1  Watts,  who  was  still 
resident  at  the  durbar,  interfered  and  brought  about  a  reconciliation 
for  the  time  being,  which  was  the  more  necessary  because  Ramnarayan 
was  reported  to  be  allying  himself  with  the  wazir  of  Oudh  against 
Mir  Ja'far.  However,  when  the  nawab  took  the  field  to  march  against 
Bihar,  Rai  Durlabh  refused  to  march  with  him,  on  the  pretext  of  ill- 
health,  but  really  because  he  was  afraid  to  trust  himself  in  the  nawab's 
camp.  Clive,  who  had  decided  to  accompany  Mir  Ja'far  to  Patna, 
visited  the  diwan  at  Murshidabad  in  connection  with  the  Company's 
claims  for  payment  which  were  overdue.  At  first  he  secured  nothing 
but  promises.  But  when  the  diwan  was  warned  that  he  was  risking 
the  loss  of  English  protection,  an  agreement  was  reached  under 
which  the  Company  was  to  receive  orders  on  the  collectors  of 
the  various  districts  (30  December).2  Clive  and  Mir  Ja'far  now 
moved  towards  Patna.  At  first  Clive  had  been  decidedly  hostile 
towards  Ramnarayan.  Immediately  after  the  battle  of  Plassey  he 
had  sent  Coote  up  with  a  detachment  in  order  to  seize  Law  and 
any  other  Frenchmen  whom  he  could  find;  and  he  also  issued 
orders  to  dispossess  Ramnarayan  of  Bihar.3  These  orders  were  never 
carried  out,  because  Coote  was  dissuaded  by  Mir  Ja'far's  friends,  who 
probably  thought  that  the  plunder  of  the  deputy  had  better  be  left 
for  their  own  hands.  Six  months  later  Clive's  attitude  had  changed. 
In  December  he  had  received  protestations  of  the  deputy's  fidelity; 
and  on  i  January  he  had  with  the  approval  of  the  nawab  written 
giving  that  guarantee  of  personal  safety  without  which  Ramnarayan 
refused  to  trust  himself  within  the  nawab's  reach.  Relying  on  this, 
Ramnarayan  at  once  came  down  the  river  to  meet  the  nawab;  and 
then  ensued  a  pretty  trial  of  strength  between  the  nawab  and  Clive, 
the  first  bent  on  the  spoliation  of  the  deputy,  the  second  on  the  main- 
tenance of  his  promise.  Clive  won,  although  at  one  time  after  his 
arrival  at  Patna  he  had  certainly  speculated  on  the  possibility  of 
being  attacked  by  the  nawab's  forces,4  as  Bussy  had  been  at  the  Chahar 
Mahal.  Ramnarayan  received  investiture  of  his  office,  for  which  he 
paid  nine  lakhs  of  rupees ;  and  he  received  a  definite  promise  that  so 
long  as  he  did  not  intrigue  with  foreign  powers  and  provided  his  due 
share  of  the  revenues,  he  should  not  be  dismissed.  The  net  result  was 
that  the  two  principal  servants  of  the  state  depended  for  their  personal 
security  not  upon  their  ostensible  master  but  upon  the  influence  of 
Clive. 

Down  to  this  time  Clive  had  no  definite  position  among  the  English 
at  Bengal,  and  still  remained  a  servant  of  the  governor  and  council 

1  Clive  to  Secret  Committee,  23  December,  1757. 

1  Clive  to  Secret  Committee,  18  February,  1758. 

8  See  Coote's  correspondence  and  journal  ap.  Orme  MSS,  India,  vn,  pp.  1608-50,  and 

ive  to  Select  Committee,  7  February,  1758. 


INVASION  OF  BIHAR  ,   153 

J* 

of  Madras.  On  the  receipt  of  the  news  of  the  fall  of  Calcutta,  ijfter 
some  deliberation  the  Company  had  resorted  to  that  absurd  plan, 
which  had  been  attempted  before  in  the  period  of  confusion  at  th«> 
beginning  of  the  century,  of  establishing  a  rotation  government.  On 
this  occasion  there  were  to  be  four  governors,  who  were  to  have  suc- 
ceeded to  the  chair  in  successive  periods  of  a  month.  But  the  Calcutta 
Council  refused  to  put  this  plan  into  operation ;  Clive  was  invited  to 
act  as  governor  till  orders  should  arrive  subsequent  to  the  news  of  the 
revolution.  This  sensible  decision  was  taken  in  June,  1758;  and  later 
in  the  year  a  dispatch  arrived  by  which  the  Company  appointed 
Clive  to  the  position  which  he  was  already  occupying. 

Meanwhile  the  policy  of  protecting  the  Hindu  servants  of  the  nawab 
was*  further  developed  by  the  attack  made  by  Miran  upon  Rai 
Durlabh.  The  resident  had  once  more  to  intervene  in  order  to  prevent 
his  house  being  plundered;  and  then  an  intrigue  was  started  with  a 
view  to  ruining  him  with  the  English  by  accusing  him  of  a  conspiracy 
against  the  nawab.  Clive  with  great  probability  on  his  side  refused 
to  credit  the  accusation,  and  the  minister  was  allowed  to  retire  to 
Calcutta.  The  support  of  persons  whom  he  wished  to  plunder  must 
have  done  much  to  alienate  the  nawab;  but  almost  immediately 
afterwards  came  a  reminder  that  he  depended  upon  the  English  for 
military  support.  In  1759  appeared  on  the  borders  of  Bihar  'Ali 
Gauhar,  better  known  under  his  later  title  of  Shah  'Alam  II,  who, 
flying  from  the  confusion  of  Delhi,  had  found  a  refuge  in  Oudh  and 
was  now  hoping  to  strengthen  his  position  by  the  occupation  of  Bihar 
and  Bengal.  He  laid  siege  to  Patna,  but  Ramnarayan  proved  staunch ; 
after  temporising  as  long  as  he  could,  he  defended  the  place  until 
succour  arrived,  on  which  the  wandering  prince  withdrew  into  Oudh. 
This  support  was  the  occasion  of  that  great  gift  of  the  jagir,  which 
involved  Clive  in  such  animated  disputes  with  the  Company  at  a  later 
time.  It  consisted  of  the  quit-rent  which  the  nawab  had  withheld 
when  he  granted  the  24-Parganas  to  the  Company,  and  which  was 
till  Clive's  death  and  later  paid  to  him  instead  of  to  the  nawab, 
though  he  had  much  ado  to  secure  his  rights  from  the  Company  when 
control  of  the  direction  passed  for  the  time  being  out  of  his  hands. 

The  last  striking  incident  of  his  first  government  in  Bengal  was  the 
attempt  of  the  Dutch  to  supplant  English  influence  with  the  nawab. 
Although  the  centre  of  Dutch  power  and  wealth  lay  not  in  India  but 
in  the  islands  to  the  eastward,  they  had  watched  with  growing  dis- 
favour first  the  French  and  then  the  English  establishing  themselves 
in  a  position  of  political  predominance.  When  Masulipatam  had 
been  granted  to  the  French  in  1751,  the  Dutch,  who  had  long  had  a 
factory  there,  made  several  attempts  to  assert  their  independence.  On 
more  than  one  occasion  they  attempted  to  hoist  their  flag — a  thing 
which  the  French  would  in  no  wise  permit;  and  they  constantly 
scrupled  to  pay  the  duties  which  the  French  imposed  on  the  trade 

/ 


154  CLIVE  IN  BENGAL,  1756-60 

within  their  grants.1  But  Dutch  interests  in  the  Northern  Sarkafi 
wofre  trivial  compared  with  their  interests  in  Bengal.  Not  only  were 
tjfte  piece-goods  of  Bengal  exported  in  great  quantities  to  Batavia  on 
'the  account  of  the  Dutch  Company,  but  the  Dutch  servants  enjoyed 
a  most  lucrative  though  secret  monopoly  of  the  export  of  opium  to 
Batavia;  and  though  this  never  appeared  in  the  forefront  of  their 
disputes  with  the  English,  we  may  be  sure  that  it  was  never  far  from 
their  minds.  On  the  establishment  of  Mir  Ja'far  they  had  attempted 
to  obtain  a  price  for  recognising  him  as  nawab ;  and  as  a  penalty  had 
seen  their  trade  stopped  and  their  agent  seized.2  Then  when  Pocock 
left  the  Hugli  for  the  Coromandel  Coast,  the  Dutch  had  been  invited 
to  concert  measures  to  prevent  French  vessels  from  entering  the  river; 
they  had  not  been  able  to  concur;  and  so  the  English  took  their  own 
measures,  which  consisted  in  subjecting  all  foreign  vessels  coming  up 
the  river  to  a  strict  search.8  Then  too,  Clive  had  obtained  for  the 
English  Company  a  monopoly  of  the  saltpetre  produced  in  Bengal, 
with  a  view  to  preventing  that  article  from  reaching  the  French,  and 
the  Dutch  protested  against  this  measure,  although  they  had  them- 
selves applied  for  a  similar  privilege  to  Siraj-ud-daula.  The  duties  on 
the  export  of  opium  were  also  raised  and  workmen  were  said  to  have 
been  prevented  from  working  for  the  Dutch  Company.  The  Dutch 
were  in  fact  in  the  same  position  as  the  English  would  have  occupied 
on  the  Coromandel  Coast  had  Saunders  done  nothing  to  counteract 
the  schemes  of  Dupleix.  Bisdom  and  Vernet,  the  Dutch  leaders,  have 
therefore  the  same  moral  justification  for  attempting  to  overthrow  the 
English  supremacy  as  Saunders  and  Clive  have  for  overthrowing  that 
of  the  French  in  the  south.  They  committed,  however,  so  many  errors 
of  conduct  as  entirely  to  destroy  any  chances  that  they  may  ever  have 
had  against  so  wary  and  resolute  a  leader  as  Clive. 

The  Dutch  authorities  at  Batavia  had  already  resolved  to  increase 
their  Indian  garrisons  by  some  2000  men,  but,  before  they  had  put 
this  design  into  execution,  they  received  news  from  Chinsura  that 
Vernet  had  entered  into  relations  with  Miran,  taking  advantage  of 
the  disputes  over  Rai  Durlabh,  with  a  view  to  the  introduction  of  a 
large  force  into  Bengal;  and  early  in  1 759  Vernet  had  interviews  with 
Mir  Ja'far,  in  which  he  expressed  hatred  of  the  English  and  a  desire 
to  be  done  with  them.  In  the  following  June  the  Dutch  governor- 
general  dispatched  a  small  fleet  of  seven  vessels  with  300  Europeans 
and  600  Malay  troops,  with  orders  to  proceed  to  Negapatam  and 
follow  such  orders  as  they  should  receive  there.  The  Dutch  evidently 
felt  that  they  could  not  take  decisive  action  from  so  remote  a  station 
as  Batavia;  but  it  was  the  first  of  many  gross  mistakes.  The  ships  lay 

1  Pondichcry  to  Negapatam,  5  August,  and  n  and  27  September,  1750,  Pondichery 
Records,  No.  15,  pp.  424, 442,  443. 
1  Klerk  de  Reuss,  De  cxpcditie  naar  Bengale,  p.  6. 
1  Bengal  Select  Committee,  2  March,  1 758. 


DEFEAT  OF  THE  DUTCH 

ai  Negapatam  for  a  month,  during  which  the  English  had  tirri?  to 
assemble  their  men  to  repulse  the  threatened  invasion.  Even  whfin 
at  the  beginning  of  October  the  Dutch  reached  the  entrance  to  the 
river,  they  still  had  not  made  up  their  minds  what  they  would  do. 
They  were  confronted  with  a  prohibition,  in  the  name  of  the  nawab, 
of  introducing  troops  into  Bengal.  They  were  simple  enough  to 
attempt  to  induce  the  nawab  to  withdraw  his  orders,  which  were, 
indeed,  the  orders  of  Clive.  They  evidently  did  not  understand  that, 
as  in  the  days  before  Plassey,  Mir  Ja'far  could  not  be  expected  to 
show  his  hand  till  he  saw  how  things  were  going.  More  than  a  month 
was  thus  wasted;  and  then  the  Dutch  resolved  to  force  their  way  in. 
They  seized  various  small  English  craft  near  the  mouth  of  the  river, 
thus  giving  their  enemies  a  better  casus  belli  than  they  could  have 
hoped  for;  and  finally  made  their  attempt,  landing  the  troops  on  the 
night  of  21-22  November.  But  they  met  with  complete  failure.  On 
the  24th  their  vessels  were  all  captured  by  three  Company's  ships  that 
Clive  had  equipped  for  the  purpose  of  defending  the  river.  On  the 
same  day  Forde,  who  had  returned  from  Masulipatam  in  the  nick  of 
time,  but  who,  had  the  Dutch  been  less  supine,  would  have  been  too 
late,  routed  a  party  of  400  men  marching  from  Chinsura  to  meet  the 
new  troops;  and  on  the  next  day  he  met  and  completely  overthrew 
the  latter  body.  It  is  curious  to  note  that  the  Malay  troops  were 
armed  with  the  old  plug-bayonets  which  had  been  disused  in  Europe 
for  some  sixty  years.1 

These  repeated  disasters  brought  the  Dutch  to  their  knees.  Indeed 
they  had  no  choice.  Their  garrison  had  been  destroyed,  and  now  that 
the  issue  had  been  decided  Miran  had  suddenly  appeared  before 
Chinsura  with  a  large  body  of  horse,  eager  to  punish  them  for  having 
lured  him  on  with  the  hope  of  changing  one  master  for  another.  The 
Dutch  acknowledged  that  they  had  begun  the  hostilities,  submitted 
to  a  demand  that  the  forces  they  maintained  in  Bengal  should  be 
limited,  and  promised  to  pay  ten  lakhs  damages.  Thus  Clive,  taking 
warning  by  the  events  of  the  Carnatic,  had  a  second  time,  by  his 
prompt  action,  crushed  the  danger  of  war  in  Bengal  with  another 
European  power.  The  province  was  not  to  be  fought  over,  and  its 
revenues  destroyed,  as  had  happened  in  the  Carnatic. 

He  had  thus  been  singularly  successful  in  establishing  the  English 
in  a  position  of  predominance  and  had  skilfully  avoided  for  three 
years  the  various  dangers  that  arose  to  threaten  their  position.  But 
he  had  only  done  so  by  virtue  of  his  astounding  mastery  over  weaker 
minds  and  his  promptitude  in  crushing  each  enemy  as  he  arose.  But 
the  general  position  was  still  uncertain.  The  English  had  no  moral 
position  in  the  province.  Their  power  was  a  matter  of  personal 
influence  and  military  force,  dive's  dexterity  might  maintain  the 

1  Klerk  de  Reuss,  op.  cit.;  Malcolm,  Clive,  u,  74-90;  Price  to  Pocock,  25  December,  1 759 
(P.R.O.  Adm.  1-161). 


156  CLIVE  IN  BENGAL,  1756-60 

¥ 
baJunce£hacUie~continued  governor  of  Fort  William,  he  might  have 

continued  to  maintain  it ;  but  it  was  unlikely  that  any  lesser  man  would 
Succeed  in  doing  so.  Leaving  matters  in  this  uncertain  position, 
'  though  no  external  danger  was  at  the  moment  to  be  feared,  Glive 
delivered  over  the  chair  to  Holwell,  and  embarked  for  England  on 
25  February,  1760. 

NOTE  ON  THE  BLACK  HOLE.  In  Bengal  Past  and  Present ,  July,  1915,  and  January, 
1916,  will  be  found  an  attempt  to  discredit  the  accepted  version  of  the  Black  Hole 
tragedy  by  Mr  J.  H.  Little.  His  principal  arguments  are  (i)  that  HolwelFs  nar- 
rative contains  numerous  demonstrable  errors;  (2)  that  it  lacks  contemporary 
corroboration.  He  concludes  that  Holwell,  Cooke,  and  the  other  persons  who 
vouch  for  the  event  concocted  the  story,  and  that  those  who  are  supposed  to  have 
perished  in  the  Black  Hole  really  were  killed  in  the  storm  of  the  place.  At  a  later 
stage  in  the  controversy  he  even  asserted  that  there  was  no  evidence  for  the  existence 
of  the  monument  in  memory  of  the  Black  Hole  which  Holwell  erected.  Everyone 
who  has  studied  the  records  of  the  time  must  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
Holwell  was  not  a  virtuous  man;  it  is  even  likely  that  he  touched  up  his  story  so 
as  to  make  the  part  he  played  as  conspicuous  as  possible.  But  even  when  we  have 
made  all  allowance  for  this  sort  of  thing,  the  main  outlines  of  the  story  still  remain. 
The  small  divergences  which  distinguish  the  story  of  Cooke  from  that  of  Holwell, 
for  instance,  are  such  as  constantly  occur  in  the  independent  accounts  of  contem- 
porary witnesses;  and,  so  far  from  throwing  suspicion  on  the  whole  story,  suggest 
that  Cooke  and  Holwell  did  not  combine  to  foist  a  false  version  of  events  on  the 
public.  Mr  Little  labours  to  prove  that  there  could  not  have  been  so  many  sur- 
vivors in  the  fort  as  Holwell  says  were  shut  up  in  the  Black  Hole ;  but  the  truth  is 
that  we  have  not  the  material  to  decide  what  may  have  been  the  exact  number 
of  persons  remaining  after  the  capitulation.  His  nrst  argument  thus  casts  doubt 
over  certain  details  only.  As  regards  the  silence  of  contemporaries,  he  is  in  more 
than  one  respect  entirely  mistaken.  It  was  natural  that  the  Calcutta  Council 
should  avoid  mention  of  the  Black  Hole  which  threw  such  a  lurid  light  over  the 
circumstances  of  their  desertion  of  the  place.  It  is  not  the  fact  that  neither  Clive, 
nor  Watson,  nor  Pigot,  refers  to  the  Black  Hole.  Clive  does  so  in  some  of  his  pub- 
lished correspondence;  Watson  does  in  his  declaration  of  war;  Pigot  does  so  in  a 
letter  dated  18  September  following.  But,  says  Mr  Little,  the  acceptance  of  the 
story  by  uncritical  contemporaries  proves  nothing.  However,  Holwell's  contem- 
poraries were  exceedingly  critical.  Watts,  for  instance,  who  disliked  Holwell  so 
much,  and  criticised  his  assertions  so  sharply,  makes  no  attack  upon  this.  Drake 
and  the  other  fugitive  councillors  could  have  cast  off  a  load  of  oblcxjuy  had  they 
proved  HolwelFs  story  of  the  Black  Hole  to  be  the  imposture  Mr  Little  supposes 
it  to  have  been.  Altogether  the  controversy  seems  to  have  arisen  from  the  per- 
plexities of  a  student  unaccustomed  to  the  conflicts  of  evidence  which  the  historian 
has  perpetually  to  encounter;  and  his  negative  arguments  do  not  seem  to  me 
capable  of  bearing  the  weight  he  would  lay  upon  them. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

THE  SEVEN  YEARS'  WAR 

LJ  URING  the  negotiations  in  Europe  which  finally  resulted  in  the 
conclusion  of  Godeheu's  provisional  treaty  with  Saunders,  Admiral 
Watson  had  been  sent  out  to  the  Coromandel  Coast  with  a  small 
squadron  and  Adlercron's  regiment  of  foot,  in  case  the  French  should 
refuse  to  come  to  terms;  and  in  the  next  year,  1755,  Clive  returned 
to  India,  after  a  two  years'  rest  at  home,  with  additional  troops  and 
rank  as  lieutenant-colonel  in  the  king's  service.  His  dispatch  was 
connected  with  a  project  that  had  been  formed  in  London  in  case, 
as  was  shrewdly  suspected,  the  French  refused  to  evacuate  the  Deccan, 
This  project  contemplated  an  alliance  with  Balaji  Rao  and  an  attack 
on  Bussy's  position  either  from  Bombay  or  from  some  point  on  the 
east  coast.1  But  this  scheme  fell  through,  partly  because  the  dispatches 
to  Madras  were  delayed  by  the  loss  of  the  Doddington  conveying  the 
originals,  partly  because  the  Bombay  Presidency  was  reluctant  to  co- 
operate.2 The  result  was  that  the  naval  and  military  forces  assembled 
at  Bombay  early  in  1756  were  employed  on  an  affair  of  mere 
local  interest — the  capture,  in  co-operation  with  the  forces  of  Balaji 
Rao,  of  the  pirate  stronghold  of  Gheriah,  after  which  the  English 
and  Marathas  fell  out  over  the  division  of  the  plunder.  Clive  pro- 
ceeded to  take  up  his  post  as  deputy-governor  of  Fort  St  David,  and 
then,  as  we  have  seen,  sailed  with  all  the  forces  that  could  be  spared 
at  Madras  for  the  recovery  of  Calcutta. 

The  new  war  that  was  opening  in  1756  differed  much  from  the 
preceding  struggle.  The  successes  of  Dupleix  and  Bussy  had  been 
obtained  during  an  interval  of  peace  between  France  and  Great 
Britain,  that  is  to  say  at  a  time  when  the  French  in  India  did  not  have 
to  trouble  about  their  sea-communications  with  Europe,  and  when 
there  was  no  possibility  of  hostile  interference  with  the  arrival  of 
munitions  and  reinforcements.  But  that  favourable  situation  had 
disappeared;  and  success  now  meant  the  control  of  two  elements 
instead  of  one.  Further  it  was  fought  out  almost  exclusively  in  the 
Carnatic.  First  Madras  was  besieged,  and  then  Pondichery.  The  only 
extension  of  the  war  into  Bengal  consisted  of  Clive's  seizure  of  Chan- 
dernagore  early  in  1 757.  So  that  all  the  advantages  which  the  English 
had  secured  by  Clive's  extraordinary  successes  remained  unimpaired. 
When  funds  ran  short  at  Madras,  Calcutta  could  supply  the  need. 
In  this  sense  the  Seven  Years'  War  may  be  considered  as  the  attack 


1  Military  dispatches  to  Madras  and  Bombay,  26  March,  1 755. 
1  Madras  Record  Office,  Military  Sundry,  No.  9. — Private  Cor 


•mmittees. 


158          THE  SEVEN  YEARS'  WAR 

and  defence  of  the  outworks  of  Bengal.1  Had  Lally  conquered  the 
Carnatic,  he  would  speedily  have  appeared  before  Fort  William.  It 
was  exceedingly  lucky  for  the  English  that  the  war  should  have  been 
fought  out  in  an  area  of  minor  financial  importance.  They  stood  to 
gain  everything  and  to  lose  little. 

For  the  first  eighteen  months  after  the  news  of  war  had  been 
received  in  November,  1756,  the  only  outstanding  event  was  the 
capture  of  Chandernagore,  which  has  already  been  described.  The 
English  squadron  was  still  lying  in  the  Hugli,  and  Madras  and  Pon- 
dichery were  both  too  bare  of  troops  to  attempt  hostilities.  Leyrit, 
governor  of  Pondichery,  had  sent  all  the  troops  he  could  spare  to 
assist  Bussy  at  Hyderabad;  Pigot,  governor  of  Madras,  had  sent  the 
major  part  of  the  English  forces  to  recover  Calcutta.  It  had,  however, 
been  definitely  understood  that  on  the  outbreak  of  war  Clive  was  to 
return  to  the  south  with  the  Madras  troops;  and  as  no  one  in  Fort 
St  George  knew  what  momentous  designs  he  was  revolving,  much 
annoyance  was  felt  and  expressed  at  his  failure  to  carry  out  his 
promises.2  The  French  were  the  first  to  receive  reinforcements.  In 
September,  1 757,  a  squadron  often  vessels  arrived  under  the  command 
of  Bouvet,  who  had  made  a  fugitive  appearance  on  the  coast  nine 
years  before;  and  he  brought  a  battalion  of  the  regiment  de  Lorraine 
under  the  Chevalier  de  Soupire.  But  the  season  was  too  advanced 
for  active  operations.  Within  a  month  or  so  the  north-east  monsoon 
might  be  expected  to  set  in  with  the  storms  which  made  the  harbour- 
less  coast  so  dangerous  to  ships  at  that  season,  and  deluges  of  rain  that 
rendered  all  military  movements  impossible.  Bouvet  therefore  made 
haste  to  return  to  Mauritius  whence  he  had  come,  and  Soupire  did 
little  except  send  some  troops  against  Trichinopoly  and  seize  the  little 
fortofChetpattu. 

Operations  really  began  in  1758.  In  February  Pocock,  who  had 
succeeded  to  the  naval  command  on  the  death  of  Watson  in  1757, 
sailed  from  the  Hugli  and  assembled  his  whole  squadron  of  seven 
ships  of  the  line  at  Madras.  He  then  cruised  down  the  coast  in  order 
to  intercept  any  fleet  that  might  be  making  for  Pondichery.  On 
28  April  he  sighted  a  French  fleet  of  nine  ships  of  the  line  a  little  to 
the  northward  of  Pondichery.  After  an  action  lasting  from  3  to  5  in 
the  afternoon,  the  French  bore  away,  and  the  English  were  too 
crippled  to  pursue;  but  the  former  had  lost  400  killed  and  wounded 
as  against  118  among  the  English. 

This  fleet  had  convoyed  the  second  portion  of  the  French  reinforce- 
ments, with  its  leader,  Lally.  He  brought  with  him  his  own  regiment, 
and  had  been  invested  with  the  fullest  civil  and  military  powers. 
He  was  syndic  for  the  company,  commissary  for  the  king,  and 
commandant-general  of  the  French  settlements  in  India;  and  he  was 

1  Madras  (Military)  to  the  Company,  28  June,  1759. 
1  Madras  Military  Consultations,  28  April,  1757. 


CAPTURE  OF  FORT  ST  DAVID  159 

charged  with  the  two-fold  task  of  reforming  the  French  administration 
and  driving  the  English  out  of  India.  However,  the  control  of  the 
squadron  was  reserved  for  the  commander  d'Ach£,  so  that  Lally 
might  find  himself  unexpectedly  deprived  of  its  co-operation. 

The  instant  his  troops  were  brought  ashore,  he  hurried  them  off 
to  besiege  Fort  St  David.  He  was  naturally  and  properly  anxious  to 
lose  nothing  by  delay.  Accordingly  all  the  available  troops  were 
dispatched  and  the  siege  formed  on  i  May.  After  some  delay,  while 
the  material  was  being  collected,  Lally  was  able  to  break  ground  on 
the  i  yth.  The  same  day  he  carried  the  outworks  of  the  place  by 
storm.  On  the  27th  he  began  to  batter  in  breach;  and  on  2  June  the 
place  capitulated.  This  was  a  disagreeable  surprise  for  the  English, 
who  had  expected  it  to  hold  out  much  longer.  But  the  place  was  not 
really  strong.  Its  extensive  outworks  demanded  more  men  for  their 
defence  than  the  place  could  accommodate;  there  was  no  bomb- 
proof shelter  for  the  men  off  duty;  above  all  the  commandant,  Major 
Polier,  distrusted  and  was  distrusted  by  his  men.1  But  though  the 
issue  was  not  flattering  to  English  hopes,  there  were  ugly  omens  on 
the  French  side  too.  Lally  had  shown  great  vigour  and  resolution, 
but  it  was  something  of  that  vis  consilii  expers  which  does  not  lead  to 
victory.  When  the  mortars  or  fascines  were  delayed  beyond  expecta- 
tion, he  would  hasten  to  Pondichery  and  tell  off  Leyrit  and  the  coun- 
cillors, who  retained  their  offices,  much  as  he  would  tell  off  a  private 
who  appeared  dirty  on  parade.2 

Fort  St  David  taken,  Lally  desired  to  proceed  at  once  against 
Madras.  But  d'Ach<£  refused  to  sail  against  Pocock;  and  without  his 
assistance  the  siege  was  impossible  until  the  approach  of  the  north- 
east monsoon  should  have  driven  the  English  squadron  off  the  coast. 
Meanwhile,  therefore,  Lally  resolved,  mainly  on  the  advice  of  the 
Jesuit,  P£re  Lavaur,  to  raise  money  by  attacking  Tanjore.  In  1749 
the  raja,  when  besieged  by  Chanda  Sahib  and  the  French,  had  given 
them  his  bond  for  seventy  lakhs  of  rupees  on  condition  of  their  raising 
the  siege.  Later  developments  had  relieved  him  of  the  need  of  paying 
any  part  of  it;  Lally  decided  to  demand  payment  of  the  bond,  sword 
in  hand,  and  he  might  doubtless  have  secured  a  considerable  sum  of 
money  had  he  gone  to  work  a  little  less  ferociously,  and  with  a  little 
more  forethought.  But  he  displayed  the  same  inconsiderate  haste 
with  which  he  had  marched  against  Fort  St  David.  He  marched  his 
men  off  down  the  coast  without  adequate  arrangements  for  feeding 
them,  and  without  sufficient  quantities  of  military  stores.  On  entering 
Tanjore,  he  seized  the  seaport  of  Nagur  and  sold  the  plunder  of  the 
place  to  his  colonel  of  hussars.  Then  turning  inland  he  reached 
Tiruvalur,  a  place  with  a  temple  famous  for  its  sanctity.  Here  Lally 
expected  to  find  great  plunder,  but  got  nothing  and  displayed  such 

1  Dodwell,  Dupleix  and  Clive,  p.  162. 

1  Cf.  Dimy  ofAnanda  Ranga  Pillai,  xi,  278. 


160  THE  SEVEN  YEARS5  WAR 

severity,  executing  six  of  the  temple  Brahmans  whom  he  took  for  spies, 
that,  when  he  marched  on,  the  inhabitants  abandoned  the  country 
through  which  he  passed.  When  he  arrived  before  the  city  of  Tanjore 
(18  July),  he  could  not  begin  the  siege  for  want  of  powder  and  shot. 
He  therefore  opened  negotiations,  in  the  hope  that  with  the  assistance 
of  the  raja  he  might  be  able  to  attack  the  English  force  at  Trichinopoly. 
The  raja  sat  comfortably  behind  his  walls,  content  to  negotiate  till 
famine  drove  away  the  enemy.  At  last  Lally  grew  tired  of  fruitless 
discussions.  He  improvised  batteries  and  opened  an  attack  upon 
the  place.  Then  on  8  August  he  heard  that  Pocock  had  beaten 
d'Ache  off  Karikal;  he  lacked  material  to  carry  through  his  attack; 
and  at  midnight  10-11  August  he  raised  the  siege  and  marched 
for  the  coast,  having  dispirited  his  men  by  useless  hardships  and 
inflicted  a  deep  wound  on  his  own  reputation.1 

The  action  at  sea,  too,  had  serious  consequences.  After  the  first 
battle  d'Ache  had  been  prevented  with  difficulty  from  sailing  back 
to  the  French  islands,  and  only  remained  on  the  coast  in  consequence 
of  the  urgent  demands  of  Lally  and  every  other  Frenchman  in  Pon- 
dichery.  He  lay  there  till  27  July,  and  then  put  to  sea  on  the  news  of 
Pocock's  approach.  An  action  followed  on  3  August,  which  lasted 
for  about  an  hour,  during  which  the  French  squadron  lost  over  500 
men  while  the  English  did  not  lose  200.  This  time  d'Ach6  refused  to 
remain  longer  on  the  coast  or  again  to  encounter  the  English  ships. 
After  embittered  discussions  in  a  council  consisting  of  the  chief  naval, 
military,  and  civil  officers,  d'Ach^  called  another  council  consisting 
of  his  naval  officers  only,  who  resolved  with  one  accord  that  the 
squadron  could  not  remain  longer  upon  the  coast.  Having  landed 
a  body  of  seamen  under  the  Chevalier  de  Poete  to  reinforce  Lally's 
land  forces,  he  set  sail  from  Pondichery  on  3  September,  and  did  not 
reappear  for  a  twelvemonth  all  but  a  day.2 

All  that  Lally  could  do  for  the  moment  was  to  wait  until  the  change 
in  the  season  should  compel  Pocock  likewise  to  depart,  when  he 
might,  if  the  rains  were  favourable,  have  a  couple  of  months  free  in 
which  to  besiege  Madras.  He  was  still  very  superior  to  the  English 
in  numbers.  The  latter  were  still  waiting  for  their  reinforcements,  and 
had  received  only  a  detachment  of  Draper's  regiment,  together  with 
its  commander,  an  amiable  and  not  unskilful  soldier,  whose  main 
claim  to  memory,  however,  is  his  courage  in  venturing  to  cross  pens 
with  Junius.  But  though  their  numbers  were  few,  a  different  spirit 
reigtied  in  the  place  from  that  which  had  so  meekly  submitted  to 
La  Bourdonnais,  The  governor,  George  Pigot,  was  irascible  but 
resolute;  he  had  the  old  veteran  Colonel  Lawrence  to  command  the 
forces;  he  had  John  Call  as  engineer.  The  works  had  been  entirely 
new-drawn;  and  though  they  were  but  earth,  faced  with  turf,  and 

1  Cf.  Duteil,  Unefamlle  militaire,  pp.  131  sqq. 
•  Dodwell,  op.  cit.  p.  1 68. 


SIEGE  OF  MADRAS  161 

needed  constant  repair,  they  were  skilfully  designed  to  frustrate 
attack.  Ever  since  Lally's  arrival  Pigot  had  been  busy  gathering  great 
stores  of  munitions  and  food;  and  orders  had  come  from  the  Company 
that,  if  ever  an  enemy  sat  down  before  the  place,  the  council  was  to 
deliver  its  authority  over  to  the  governor  and  the  four  principal 
military  officers.  Moreover,  they  were  united,  whereas  Lally  and  the 
French  council  hated  each  other  worse  than  they  hated  the  English. 

Early  in  October  the  French  marched  to  take  possession  of  various 
posts  lying  between  Pondichery  and  Madras.  This  was  successfully 
carried  out,  with  the  exception  of  Chingleput,  which  remained  in 
English  hands.  For  the  moment  that  place,  Madras,  and  Trichinopoly 
were  the  only  spots  in  the  Carnatic  left  to  them.  Then,  when  the 
rains  were  over,  the  French  advanced  and  formed  the  siege  (14  De- 
cember). No  attempt  was  made  to  defend  the  Black  Town,  which 
was  at  once  occupied,  though  an  unsuccessful  sally  was  made  on  the 
news  that  the  besiegers  had  got  drunk  on  stores  of  arrack  which  they 
found  there  on  their  arrival.  After  this  the  siege  dragged  on  with  few 
incidents.  As  usual  Lally  had  been  unable  to  co-ordinate  his  efforts. 
The  preparation  of  stores  for  the  attack  and  their  transport  to  Madras 
took  longer  than  he  had  expected  ;  and  he  was  not  able  to  open  fire 
until  2  January,  1  759.  After  a  month's  steady  fire  a  breach  was  made, 
but  the  fire  of  the  place  was  still  unsubdued,  and  the  breach  itself  so 
steep  and  so  commanded  by  the  fire  of  the  neighbouring  works  that 
it  was  deemed  impracticable.  Neither  had  the  besiegers  been  able  to 
carry  on  their  work  unmolested.  While  all  the  French  forces  were 
lying  before  Madras,  a  detachment  of  the  English  had  marched  up 
from  Trichinopoly  to  join  the  Chingleput  garrison,  and  these  troops 
had  harassed  the  besiegers,  threatening  their  convoys  and  posting 
themselves  near  St  Thomas  Mount,  until  Lally  had  been  obliged  to 
send  out  strong  detachments  against  them.  The  French  army  was 
worn  out  between  its  work  in  the  trenches  and  the  pursuit  of  this 
elusive  enemy.  Lally  hesitated,  but  did  not  venture  to  attempt  a 
storm.  Finally,  on  1  6  February,  a  squadron  of  ships  hove  in  sight.  It 
proved  to  be  English;  and  Lally  at  once  quitted  his  trenches  and 
abandoned  the  siege.  This  was  the  second  great  blow  to  his  reputation 
and  a  proportionate  encouragement  to  the  English.  Indeed  their 
defence  had  been  gallant.  The  whole  of  the  garrison  off  duty  as  well 
as  on  had  been  exposed,  for  want  of  bomb-proof  shelter,  to  the  enemy's 
shell  which  he  threw  perpetually  into  the  fort,  and  many  were  thus 
killed  in  their  sleep  ;  but  in  spite  of  everything  they  held  on  with 
admirable  determination.  1  Indeed  their  failure  would  have  imperilled 
Clive's  work  in  Bengal. 

This  severe  check  to  the  French  arms  was  speedily  followed  by 
another.  Clive,  well  aware  of  the  importance  of  keeping  the  French 

1  The  official  narrative  of  the  siege  is  Madras  Public  Sundry,  no.  13.  —  Diary  of  the  siege 
of  Fort  St  George,  1758-59  (Records  of  Fort  St  George,  1915). 


cmv 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS'  WAR 

at  a  distance,  and  yet  having  no  troops  that  could  be  permanently 
spared,  decided  to  help  Madras  by  sending  a  detachment  under 
Colonel  Forde  against  the  French  in  the  Northern  Sarkars.  Lally, 
as  has  been  said  in  a  previous  chapter,  had  resolved  to  recall  Bussy 
and  his  troops  from  the  Deccan.  But  he  had  not  fully  carried  out  his 
first  intention.  He  had  insisted  on  the  return  of  Bussy  and  Moracin; 
but  he  had  allowed  a  body  of  troops  to  continue  under  other  and 
incapable  commanders.  Lally  had  urged  with  great  truth  the  need 
of  drawing  together  the  whole  force  of  the  French;  and  there  he  had 
been  right.  But  he  had  not  persisted  in  his  purpose.  Bussy  joined 
him  without  a  man  of  his  northern  troops,  who  had  been  left  behind 
to  guard  what  were  probably  private  interests.  The  French  troops 
were  still  separated,  and  the  Deccan  detachment  was  now  in 
incompetent  hands.  Forde  had  landed  at  Vizagapatam  early  in 
October,  1758,  and  was  joined  by  Ananda  Razu,  the  important 
zamindar  of  Vizianagram.  After  a  pause  spent  in  collecting  pro- 
visions and  coming  to  exact  terms  with  his  ally,  Forde  marched  south, 
and  completely  defeated  the  French  under  Conflans  at  Kondur,  a 
little  to  the  north  of  Rajahmundry,  the  capital  of  the  province 
(7  December).  That  place  was  occupied,  and  there  a  long  delay 
occurred,  owing  to  the  difficulty  of  getting  the  promised  funds  from 
Ananda  Razu,  without  which  the  men  would  not  advance.  In 
February,  1 759,  Forde  renewed  his  march  and  appeared  (6  March) 
before  Masulipatam.  There  he  lay  for  a  month,  distressed  by  news  of 
the  approach  of  Salabat  Jang,  by  shortage  of  gunpowder,  and  by  a 
mutiny  of  his  Europeans.1  But  on  the  night  of  7-8  April  he  carried 
the  place  by  escalade,  capturing  a  greater  number  of  regular  troops 
than  he  had  under  his  own  command.2  On  14  May  a  treaty  was 
signed  with  Salabat  Jang,  and  Forde  remained  in  undisturbed  pos- 
session till  the  following  October,  when  he  returned  to  Bengal  just  in 
time  to  meet  and  defeat  Roussel  and  his  Dutchmen. 

The  siege  of  Madras  and  the  capture  of  Masulipatam  marked  the 
turning-point  in  the  war.  In  the  Carnatic  the  English  took  the  field, 
although  they  still  could  only  bring  1000  Europeans  against  Lally's 
2000;  nor  had  they  at  first  a  leader  able  to  carry  them  to  victory. 
Draper  went  home  for  reasons  of  health;  Lawrence  was  too  old  and 
worn  to  take  the  field,  so  that  the  command  fell  to  Major  Cholmondely 
Brereton,  who  had  never  had  any  experience  of  war  as  a  subaltern.8 
He  made  a  rash  attack  on  Conjeeveram  in  September,  where  he  was 
beaten  off  with  considerable  loss;  but  the  French  were  unable  to  use 
their  strength  to  press  this  advantage  home  because  their  men  were 
thoroughly  discontented  with  the  lack  of  pay,  and  in  the  next  month 
their  discontent  broke  out  into  a  very  alarming  mutiny,  which  com- 

1  Forde  to  Madras,  1 9  March,  1 759,  ap.  Madras  Military  Consultations,  28  March,  1 759. 

2  Forde  to  Madras,  10  April,  1759,  loc.  cit.  20  April,  1759. 

8  Call  to  Speke,  30  October,  1759  (Brit.  Mus.  Add.  MSS,  35917,  ff.  40  sqq.). 


DEFEAT  OF  D'ACHfi  163 

pelled  the  principal  people  of  Pondichery  to  part  with  their  plate  in 
order  to  provide  a  proportion  of  the  arrears. 

Shortly  before  these  events  took  place  d'Ache  had  reappeared  for 
the  last  time  in  Indian  waters.  He  had  not  been  able  to  revictual  his 
ships  at  Mauritius,  which,  with  its  sister  island,  Bourbon,  did  not 
produce  enough  food  for  their  joint  consumption;  and  consequently 
he  had  been  obliged  to  send  to  the  Cape,  where  he  had  to  pay  heavily, 
thus  using  up  a  large  part  of  the  funds  that  had  arrived  from  France 
for  the  use  of  Lally.  When  at  last  d'Ach6  made  the  Coromandel 
Coast  (2  September),  he  fell  in  at  once  with  Pocock  who  was  on  the 
watch  for  him.  Several  days  were  spent  in  manoeuvres.  But  on  the 
loth  a  stubborn  battle  was  joined.  D'Ach6  managed  to  catch  the 
English  at  a  moment  when  their  ships  were  widely  strung  out,  so  that 
two  of  them  could  take  little  or  no  part.  For  two  hours  the  squadrons 
continued  their  action  within  musket  shot.  The  English  suffered 
severely.  Two  ships  had  all  their  sail  shot  away,  and  over  500  men 
were  killed  or  wounded.  But  at  last  the  French  rear  gave  way  and 
broke  the  line,  then  the  flagship  was  put  about  by  her  pilot  at  the 
moment  when  d'Ach6  himself  fell  wounded,  and  the  French  took 
refuge  under  the  guns  of  Pondichery.  They  had  lost  nearly  900  men 
and,  though  their  fleet  was  still  intact,  it  had  been  too  severely  handled 
to  encounter  the  English  again.  In  that  way  the  action  had  been 
decisive.  D'Ach6  lay  for  a  fortnight  off  Pondichery,  patching  up  his 
vessels,  then  on  i  October  he  sailed  never  to  return.1  Nothing  more 
would  break  the  blockade  of  the  English  squadron  before  Pondichery. 

Meanwhile,  at  the  end  of  October,  Coote  had  arrived  with  his 
regiment,  which,  even  when  a  detachment  had  been  sent  up  to  Bengal, 
made  up  the  English  forces  to  1700  men.  With  these  he  took  the  field 
as  soon  as  the  rains  were  over,  and  began  reducing  the  numerous 
little  forts  which  studded  the  Carnatic.  But  his  great  object  was  to 
bring  Lally  to  an  action.  With  this  in  view,  he  looked  on  while  Lally 
invested  the  fort  of  Wandiwash  which  the  French  had  lately  lost;  and 
then,  when  Lally  was  fairly  committed  to  the  siege,  Coote  advanced 
swiftly  on  him.  The  result  was  a  battle  (22  January,  1760)  as  decisive 
on  land  as  Pocock's  late  action  had  been  at  sea.  Lally  was  routed, 
and  it  was  the  last  pitched  battle  of  the  war.  The  remaining  posts  in 
the  Carnatic  were  soon  reduced,  and  in  the  course  of  March  the 
French  were  reduced  to  Pondichery,  Jinji,  and  Karikal,  of  which  the 
last  surrendered  on  5  April. 

There  remained  the  reduction  of  Pondichery.  For  the  moment  Coote 
judged  his  forces  too  few  to  enable  him  to  form  the  siege  of  the  place. 
Meanwhile  Lally  attempted  to  retrieve  his  position  by  means  of  help 
from  Hyder  'Ali,  the  rising  general  in  the  service  of  Mysore.  A  treaty 
was  made  by  which  Hyder  was  promised  certain  forts,  French  assist- 
ance to  conquer  territories  to  the  southward  as  soon  as  the  English 
1  Dodwcll,  Dupleix  and  Clivet  p.  182,  and  references  there  cited. 

1 1-2 


164  THE  SEVEN  YEARS*  WAR 

had  been  beaten,  and  two  lakhs  of  rupees  a  month.  On  this  Hyder 
sent  his  brother-in-law  with  a  detachment  to  Pondichery;  but  he 
brought  no  provisions,  he  suggested  no  feasible  plans  for  the  destruc- 
tion of  Coote  and  his  army,  and  after  a  month's  hesitation  he  departed, 
giving  up  the  fort  which  had  been  delivered  to  him.  Meanwhile 
Coote  had  captured  the  fort  of  Villiyanallur,  and  induced  the  admiral 
to  land  a  body  of  marines  to  reinforce  his  troops.  With  them  he 
prepared  to  drive  the  French  within  their  bound-hedge. 

At  this  moment  the  command  changed  hands.  Dispatches  arrived 
with  a  commission  giving  Monson  rank  over  Coote  who  till  then  had 
been  the  senior  alike  in  service  and  in  position.  The  latter  therefore 
retired  to  Madras,  and  prepared  to  proceed  with  his  regiment  to 
Bengal,  whither  indeed  he  had  been  ordered.  That  would  have  meant 
the  abandonment  of  the  siege  of  Pondichery.  Monson  offered  to 
leave  the  army  till  the  place  had  been  captured,  and  Coote  then 
agreed  to  leave  his  regiment  behind.  Monson  drove  the  French  within 
the  bound-hedge,  but  was  severely  wounded  in  the  operation,  and 
Coote  then  resumed  the  command  on  the  understanding  that  the 
other  should  not  rejoin  the  army  before  the  fall  of  Pondichery.1  This 
was  on  20  September. 

Pondichery  had  now  been  blockaded  for  several  months,  and  the 
condition  within  the  place  was  miserable.  Lally  and  the  Company's 
servants  were  on  the  worst  possible  terms.  No  money  was  to  be  had. 
Attempts  to  wring  money  out  of  either  the  European  or  the  Indian 
inhabitants  of  the  place  had  proved  singularly  fruitless;  and  en- 
deavours to  fetch  up  supplies  from  the  neutral  settlements  on  the 
coast  had  been  frustrated  by  the  vigilance  of  the  blockading  ships. 
The  enemy  without  pressed  nearer  and  nearer.  In  December  they 
opened  fire  on  the  defences;  in  the  first  days  of  January  a  storm 
scattered  the  English  squadron  lying  in  the  roads,  and  for  an  instant 
the  way  lay  open  for  supplies,  but  before  advantage  could  be  taken 
of  this  the  men-of-war  were  back  at  their  old  posts;  the  position  of 
the  town  was  hopeless;  and  on  1 6  January,  1761,  it  surrendered  at 
discretion.  Jinji  surrendered  after  some  weeks  of  blockade;  Mahe, 
on  the  west  coast,  surrendered  to  an  overpowering  force  which  sat 
down  before  it,  and  the  French  were  left  without  a  foot  of  ground  in 
India. 

The  principal  cause  which  had  contributed  to  this  complete  victory 
was  certainly  the  relentless  pressure  of  sea-power.  Although  the 
French  fleet  was  never  destroyed,  yet  the  cumulative  effect  of  the 
three  actions  which  were  fought  established  an  irresistible  superiority, 
such  as  later  in  1783  Suffren  had  just  established  when  the  news  of 
peace  robbed  him  of  the  fruits  of  victory.  While  the  English  received 
supplies  of  food  and  money  from  Bengal,  recruits  of  men  from  Europe, 
and  grain  from  their  northern  settlements,  the  French  could  receive 

1  Dodwell,  op.  cit.  pp.  186-7,  and  references  there  cited. 


LALLVS  DIFFICULTIES  165 

nothing  but  what  came  to  them  laboriously  by  land.  The  first  were 
constantly  strengthened,  the  second  as  constantly  weakened.  And 
this  enabled  Coote  to  establish  his  military  superiority  over  Lally 
in  the  field  and  to  hem  him  in  within  the  walls  of  Pondichery.  And 
in  this  connection  we  may  doubt  whether  the  possession  of  Mauritius 
was  an  unmixed  blessing  to  the  French.  It  possessed  an  excellent 
harbour  where  their  squadrons  could  refit;  but  it  was  remote  from  the 
decisive  area  of  the  war,  and  was  a  constant  temptation  to  a  faltering 
commander  to  abandon  the  coast  to  the  enemy. 

Next  to  the  pressure  of  sea-power  we  must  set  the  influence  of 
superior  finance.  From  first  to  last  Lally  was  embarrassed  for  means 
of  paying  his  troops;  of  obtaining  material;  of  paying  work-people. 
He  came  out  with  scanty  supplies,  nor  could  the  war-ravaged  Carnatic 
make  good  this  crushing  disadvantage.  But  here  the  control  of  the 
Bengal  nawab,  established  in  1757,  was  a  strong  help  to  the  English. 
At  more  than  one  critical  moment,  when  our  men  were  on  the  point 
of  mutiny,  Bengal  sent  down  supplies  which  enabled  Madras  to  carry 
on.  The  one  good  thing  which  can  be  said  for  the  revolution  of  1 760 
is  that  it  enabled  the  siege  of  Pondichery  to  be  continued  to  its  con- 
clusion. It  has  been  said  that  had  Lally  retained  Bussy  in  the  Deccan 
he  might  have  been  able  to  secure  funds  thence;  but  I  cannot  accept 
that  view.  The  Deccan  had  never  been  able  to  remit  money  to  the 
south.  Whatever  had  been  got  there,  or  from  the  Sarkars  which  had 
been  ceded  to  Bussy,  had  always  been  eaten  up  by  the  establishments 
which  were  maintained  there,  and,  except  the  lakh  and  a  half  of 
rupees  which  Bussy  sent  to  Lally  in  1758,  the  place  had  never 
provided  any  resources  for  the  public  treasury  of  the  French. 

Thirdly,  we  must  place  the  personal  character  of  Lally  among  the 
causes  of  the  French  failure.  His  hastiness,  his  violent  temper,  his 
uncontrolled  and  cutting  speech,  his  habit  of  threatening  without 
punishing,  were  all  strong  obstacles  in  his  way.  Nor  was  his  task  made 
easier  by  the  orders  which  he  received  to  carry  into  execution  a 
reform  of  the  Pondichery  administration  in  a  time  of  war.  The  two 
things  were  incompatible.  Against  such  difficulties  and  such  defects 
his  personal  gallantry  fought  in  vain. 


CHAPTER  IX 

BENGAL,  1760-72 

Clive  quitted  Bengal  early  in  1760,  the  position  of  affairs 
was  still  very  unsettled.  'Ali  Gauhar  was  still  lingering  on  the  borders 
of  Bihar,  financial  relations  with  Mir  Ja'far  were  still  unsatisfactory, 
and  the  share  which  the  nawab  had  taken  in  the  recent  attempts  of 
the  Dutch,  though  as  yet  unknown  in  detail,  was  strongly  suspected. 
Moreover,  Olive's  successor,  Holwell,  was  a  man  of  grater  talent 
than  character;  he  only  held  his  office  temporarily  an9>n  Occident 
till  dive's  permanent  successor  arrived;  and  he  was.,nd  Gobble  of 
imposing  his  will,  as  Clive  had  done,  either  on  the  Cofoe  Frencfcrvants 
or  on  the  nawab.  Consequently  the  unstable  political  suuersuii,  which 
had  grown  up  in  the  last  three  years  as  the  result  of  the  military  power 
of  the  Company  and  the  personal  character  of  Clive,  was  not  likely 
to  remain  unshaken  when  the  control  passed  into  weaker  hands. 

The  command  of  the  troops  had  fallen  to  Caillaud,  who  had  been 
brought  up  from  Madras  at  the  particular  request  of  Clive.  He  was 
a  skilful  soldier,  and  under  his  command  the  English  forces  were  not 
likely  to  undergo  defeat ;  but,  like  Holwell,  he  was  not  a  man  of  any 
moral  vigour  or  capable  of  making  good  the  deficiencies  of  the  tem- 
porary governor.  At  the  moment  he  was  on  campaign  against  the 
shahzada,  with  a  battalion  of  Europeans  and  another  of  sepoys,  to- 
gether with  a  large  body  of  cavalry  under  the  nawab's  son,  Miran. 
He  succeeded  by  the  action  of  Sirpur  (22  February)  in  relieving 
Patna,  which  had  been  attacked  by  the  shahzada,  but  Miran's  men 
did  not  follow  up  their  success,  mainly,  Caillaud  thought,  owing  to 
the  inertness  of  their  leader;  and  then  for  a  week  Miran  insisted  on 
nursing  some  slight  wounds  he  had  received,  while  the  shahzada, 
having  collected  his  scattered  troops,  raided  into  the  province  of 
Bengal.  Caillaud  followed  him  so  closely  that  he  had  little  opportunity 
of  doing  anything  effectual,  and  again  withdrew;  but  the  nawab's 
horse  had  again  proved  unserviceable,  and  the  nawab  entered  into 
correspondence  with  the  shahzada,  declaring,  it  was  believed,,  that 
his  resistance  was  solely  due  to  the  insistence  of  the  English.  However, 
when  Caillaud  had  once  again  relieved  Patna,  the  shahzada  finally 
retired  from  Bihar.1  Caillaud  and  Miran  then  set  out  to  chastise  the 
zamindars  who  had  afforded  him  help  during  his  raid  into  Bengal. 
But  in  the  course  of  these  operations,  on  3  July,  Miran  perished, 
probably  killed  by  lightning.2 

1  Caillaud's  Journal,  ap.  Ormc  MSS,  India,  vi. 

2  India  Office,  Home  Miscellaneous,  456  o. 


HOLWELL'S  PROJECTS  167 

The  death  of  Miran  was  in  itself  no  great  loss.  From  the  Indian 
historians  we  gather  a  conception  of  his  character  much  resembling 
that  which  they  attribute  to  Siraj-ud-daula.1  But  the  event  at  once 
brought  up  the  question  of  succession,  and  placed  in  a  position  of 
great  prominence  a  man  of  consummate  political  skill,  connected 
with  the  nawab  by  marriage,  and  generally  well-reputed  among  the 
English.  This  was  Mir  Kasim.  He  sought  at  once  to  obtain  a  promise 
of  being  named  either  the  diwan  or  the  successor  of  Mir  Ja'far;  and 
for  the  moment  Mir  Ja'far  seems  to  have  acquiesced  in  his  plans. 
But  for  some  time  before  this  occurrence  Holwell  and  Caillaud  had 
been  discussing  the  political  future  of  the  provinces.  Holwell  had 
taken  up  an  attitude  strongly  opposed  to  the  maintenance  of  the 
present  nawab.  He  argued  that  he  had  betrayed  the  English  both 
with  the  Dutch  and  with  the  shahzada,  that  he  had  failed  to  make 
the  payments  that  he  had  promised  the  Company,  that  the  country 
was  going  to  ruin  under  his  government,  and  that  the  sooner  he  was 
removed  the  better  for  the  English  and  for  the  country.  Caillaud,  to 
whom  these  views  were  communicated,  did  not  agree  with  them. 
He  thought  the  Company  was  bound  to  support  the  nawab  and  that 
a  revolution  would  be  fraught  with  ill  consequences.  Hastings  held 
the  same  ideas. 

"Mr  Holwell's  censures  on  the  Nabob's  conduct,"  he  wrote,  "are  but  too  just; 
but  I  dread  the  consequences  he  seems  to  draw  from  them.  Let  the  Nabob  be 
ever  so  bad,  we  are  bound  if  not  in  justice,  in  honour  and  policy  to  support  him 
through  these  troubles,  now  we  are  so  far  engaged.  I  do  not  suppose  he  is  grown 
a  worse  man  since  the  commencement  of  this  war . . .  .That  he  is  a  usurper  is  certain, 
and  one  of  our  making. . . ." 2 

Caillaud  replied  with  a  long  letter  traversing  Hoi  well's  arguments. 
The  latter  rejoined : 

Had  it  ever  been  my  wish  or  intention  to  have  taken  our  support  from  the  present 
Nabob  and  transfer  it  to  any  other,  your  arguments  in  that  case  would  have  all  the 
weight  with  me  they  so  greatly  merit . . .  .But  my  views  for  the  Company  went 
much  higher.  That  the  country  will  never  be  in  a  settled  peaceful  state  whilst  this 
family  is  at  the  head  of  it,  is  a  position  I  lay  down  as  incontestable,  and  that  until 
the  country  enjoys  that  state  the  Company's  affairs  must  be  daily  approaching  to 
certain  ruin:  I  therefore  judge  we  coula  never  be  possessed  of  a  more  just  or  favour- 
able opportunity  to  carry  into  execution  what  must  be  done,  I  plainly  see,  one 
time  or  other,  if  the  Company  have  ever  a  secure  footing  in  the  provinces,  to  wit, 

take  this  country  into  their  own  hands The  situation  of  the  rrince  at  present 

is  such  that  I  am  sure  he  would  readily  and  thankfully  hearken  to  an  overture  from 
us,  and  without  hesitation  grant  a  phirmaund  appointing  the  Company  perpetual 
subas  of  the  province 3 

Holwell  already  knew  that  his  term  of  office  was  limited,  and  in  those 
circumstances  he  could  not  press  views  which  he  knew  found  little 
support  with  his  councillors.4 

1  Jam-ut-tawarikh,  ap.  Elliott  and  Dowson,  vm,  429. 

•  Hastings  to  Caillaud,  4  June,  1760. 

*  Holwefl  to  Caillaud,  14  June,  1760. 

4  The  correspondence  between  Holwell  and  Caillaud  will  be  found  in  Holwell's  India 
Tracts  and  Vindicatum,  and  in  the  Orme  MSS,  India,  xn. 


1 68  BENGAL,  1760-72 

On  27  July  arrived  the  new  governor,  Henry  Vansittart.  He  was 
•  a  Madras  servant  of  some  fourteen  years'  standing.  He  possessed  a 
good  knowledge  of  Persian,  and  had  transacted  with  success  the 
business  between  the  Madras  Council  and  Nawab  Muhammad  'Ali; 
his  tact  and  dexterity  had  won  him  very  favourable  notice  at  Madras, 
and  Glive  had  urged  his  appointment  on  the  Company  in  the  strongest 
terms.  It  proved,  however,  to  be  singularly  unfortunate.  He  en- 
countered the  sharp  jealousy  of  all  the  Bengal  servants  whom  he  had 
superseded;  and  though  always  well-intentioned,  the  policy  which 
he  adopted  proved  to  be  the  source  of  many  misfortunes.  He  was 
one  of  that  large  body  of  men  who  can  execute  the  orders  of  their 
superiors  much  better  than  they  can  frame  a  policy  of  their  own.  In 
the  present  case  he  adopted  the  policy  suggested  to  him  by  Holwell, 
who  by  this  time  had  abandoned  his  original  plan  in  favour  of 
appointing  Mir  Kasim  heir-apparent.  It  is  more  likely  that  Holwell 
yielded  to  the  material  arguments  of  Mir  Kasim  than  to  the  reasons 
which  Caillaud  and  others  had  produced  against  the  establishment 
of  the  Company  as  subahdar.1  After  prolonged  discussions  Mir 
Kasim  was  invited  down  to  Calcutta.  The  negotiations  with  him  were 
confided  to  Holwell  in  person;  and  on  27  September  an  agreement 
was  reached  by  which  Mir  Kasim  was  to  receive  the  office  of  deputy 
subahdar,  with  a  guarantee  of  succession  to  the  subahdari,  while  the 
English  were  to  receive  the  three  districts  of  Burdwan,  Midnapur, 
and  Chittagong  for  the  maintenance  of  their  troops.  Mir  Kasim  also 
agreed  to  pay  off  the  outstanding  debts  of  Mir  Ja'far  to  the  Company.2 

He  then  returned  to  Murshidabad.  Vansittart  and  Caillaud 
reached  the  same  place  in  order  to  carry  the  agreement  into  effect 
on  14  October.  But  they  then  found  that  Mir  Ja'far  refused  absolutely 
to  place  his  person  and  government  in  the  hands  of  his  kinsman. 
After  five  days'  discussion,  Caillaud  was  ordered  to  occupy  the  palace 
of  Motijhil,  where  the  nawab  was.  In  the  face  of  superior  force,  the 
latter  at  last  decided  to  resign  his  office,  on  which  Mir  Kasim  was 
immediately  seated  on  the  masnad,  and  the  revolution  of  1760  was 
completed.  Mir  Ja'far  went  down  to  reside  at  Calcutta  under  an 
English  guard  which  he  demanded,  and  Mir  Kasim  grudgingly  agreed 
to  allow  him  i5xooo  rupees  a  month.3 

Thus  the  matter  ended  by  pulling  down  one  nawab  only  to  set  up 
another.  Nothing  was  done  to  reconcile  the  essentially  opposed  in- 
terests of  the  nawab  and  the  English.  Nor  was  the  agreement  with 
Mir  Kasim  so  full  and  explicit  as  to  exclude  future  causes  of  misunder- 
standing. In  that  respect  the  settlement  was  most  unsatisfactory,  and 
Vansittart  merits  the  severest  criticism  for  having  adopted  it.  It  was 
also  followed  by  the  grant  of  presents  which  cast  a  sordid  air  over 

1  Dodwell,  Dupleix  and  Clive,  p.  205. 

1  Bengal  Select  Committee,  n,  15,  16,  and  27  September,  1760. 

1  Calendar  of  Persian  Correspondence,  i,  43,  130,  135,  138  and  140. 


SHAH  'ALAM  169 

the  whole  business;  but  except  in  the  case  of  Holwell,  these  do  not 
seem  to  have  been  stipulated  beforehand,  as  had  been  the  case  with 
the  presents  that  were  bestowed  after  Plassey;  nor  is  it  likely  that  they 
formed  an  element  in  the  motives  of  Vansittart  and  his  followers. 
There  were,  as  Grant  said,  "many  easier  avenues  to  irregular  emolu- 
ment than  the  troublesome,  hazardous,  and... public  road  of  a 
general  revolution".1 

The  unstable  nature  of  the  settlement  quickly  manifested  itself  in 
three  principal  affairs — the  question  of  the  shahzada,  the  question  of 
Ramnarayan,  and  the  question  of  the  internal  trade.  The  shahzada, 
whose  father  the  emperor  'Alamgir  II  had  been  murdered  in  the 
previous  year,  was  still  in  Bihar,  while  the  nawab's  troops  in  that 
region  were  mutinous  for  want  of  pay.  In  spite  of  this,  Carnac,  who 
had  just  arrived  as  commander  of  the  Company's  troops  in  Bengal, 
defeated  him  (15  January,  1761)  on  the  Son,  taking  Law  and  most 
of  the  other  Frenchmen  with  him,  .and  on  6  February  the  shahzada, 
who  had  assumed  the  title  of  Shah  'Alam  II,  was  induced  to  confer 
with  Carnac  at  Gaya,  and  then  to  accompany  him  to  Patna.  Before 
Mir  Kasim  had  become  subahdar,  he  and  the  Select  Committee  had 
agreed  on  a  project  to  make  peace  with  and  assist  the  shahzada  in 
marching  to  Delhi  and  establishing  himself  as  emperor.2  The  design 
proves  the  political  imbecility  of  Vansittart.  It  mattered  nothing  to 
the  English  who  called  himself  emperor,  and  it  would  have  been  the 
height  of  folly  to  dissipate  their  unconsolidated  power  in  interfering 
in  the  affairs  of  Upper  India.  In  fact,  however,  the  project  came  to 
nothing,  because  when  Mir  Kasim  had  been  safely  installed,  he 
offered  a  persistent,  though  half-concealed,  opposition  to  the  design. 
He  was  clearly  obsessed  with  the  fear  that  the  English  would  obtain 
from  Shah  'Alam  a  grant  for  the  provinces  on  their  own  account,  as 
Holwell  had  at  first  intended  and  as  Rai  Durlabh,  who  had  been 
consulted,  had  advised.3  There  had,  indeed,  been  from  the  first  a 
party  strongly  opposed  to  Vansittart  and  therefore  to  any  policy 
which  he  advocated;  and  the  substitution  of  Carnac  for  Caillaud  had 
strengthened  this  party.  When  in  April  Coote  arrived  from  Madras, 
and  took  over  the  command  from  Carnac,  the  change  emphasised  the 
opposition,  for  Coote  entertained  as  his  diwan  Nandakumar,  whom 
Mir  Kasim  regarded  as  pledged  to  the  restoration  of  Mir  Ja'far.8 
When  Mir  Kasim  went  up  to  Patna,  more  than  one  misunderstanding 
arose  between  him  and  the  military  commander;  Mir  Kasim  refused 
to  proclaim  Shah  'Alam  as  emperor  till  after  his  departure,  and  even 
then  was  only  brought  to  do  so  by  Coote's  threat  of  doing  it  himself 
if  Mir  Kasim  delayed  any  longer.4  When  the  emperor  departed  in 

1  Grant,  Sketch,  p.  187. 

1  Letter  to  McGwire  and  Carnac,  ap.  Bengal  Select  Committee,  13  February,  1761; 
letter  to  Mir  Kasim,  a  February,  1761  (Calendar  of  Persian  Correspondence,  i,  63). 
»  Vansittart  to  Mir  Kasim,  27  October,  1761  (Calendar  of  Persian  Correspondence,  i,  130). 
4  Coote's  Journal,  Orme  MSS,  India,  vm. 


170  BENGAL,  1760-72 

June,  the  nawab  evidently  felt  that  he  had  narrowly  escaped  seeing 
power  transferred  over  his  head  to  the  English  by  Shah  'Alam. 
Although  there  was  not  a  shred  of  truth  in  the  nawab's  suspicions, 
Vansittart's  policy  was  already  beginning  to  break  down  under  the 
stress  of  circumstances  and  lack  of  union  among  the  English. 

Ramnarayan's  case  was  to  demonstrate  this  even  more  clearly.  In 
Mir  Ja'far's  time  the  English  had  steadily  protected  him  from  the 
nawab,  and  his  conduct  had  justified  their  protection.  He  had  reso- 
lutely and  at  times  skilfully  resisted  the  inroads  of  the  shahzada;  and 
the  new  governor  was  resolved  to  continue  the  protection  which 
Clive  had  given.  Goote's  instructions,  when  he  was  proceeding  to 
Patna  in  April,  contained  a  clause  directing  him  to  secure  Ramnarayan 
from  injustice  and  at  all  events  to  maintain  him  in  his  government.1 
However,  the  tone  of  the  Calcutta  government  gradually  cooled.  On 
1 8  June  the  committee  agreed  to  Ramnarayan's  suspension  and 
Vansittart  wrote  to  Mir  Kasim  that  he  could  do  what  he  liked  about 
the  deputy.  Coote  and  Carnac  were  recalled  from  Patna.  In  August 
Vansittart  approved  of  the  appointment  of  a  new  deputy,  and  in 
September  he  ordered  Ramnarayan  to  be  delivered  into  the  nawab's 
hands.2  When  as  much  money  as  possible  had  been  extracted  from 
him,  he  was  put  to  death.  In  this  matter  Vansittart  had  acted  in 
plain  opposition  to  the  policy  of  Clive.  The  latter  had  desired  above 
everything  to  strengthen  the  English  position;  Vansittart  desired  to 
strengthen  that  of  the  nawab.  The  first  had  therefore  made  a  point 
of  protecting  the  principal  Hindu  ministers;  the  second  deliberately 
desisted  from  protecting  them.  He  failed  to  see  how  far  his  policy 
would  lead  him  and  how  strong  a  reaction  it  would  provoke.3 

Having  succeeded  in  getting  rid  of  the  emperor  and  in  getting  the 
chief  English  protege  into  his  hands,  Mir  Kasim  now  proceeded  to 
raise  the  third  question,  that  of  the  internal  trade  of  the  province. 
This  was  a  matter  which  neither  Clive  nor  Vansittart  had  ever  fairly 
faced.  Its  history  goes  back  to  the  days  before  the  battle  of  Plassey, 
when  the  imperial  farmans  conferred  on  the  English  complete  liberty  of 
trade  exempt  from  the  imperial  transit  dues.  The  Company's  servants 
had  always  interpreted  this  as  authorising  them  to  trade  in  articles 
such  as  salt,  betel  and  tobacco,  without  paying  the  tolls  imposed  on 
those  articles.  The  nawab  had  always  insisted  on  their  doing  nothing 
of  the  sort.  The  Company,  having  no  interest  in  this  matter,  had 
prohibited  its  servants  from  following  the  internal  trade,  for  fear  of 
their  provoking  troubles  with  the  nawab  on  that  account.  The 
Company's  servants  felt  that  they  had  been  kept  out  of  their  rights  by 
the  strong  hand;  and  when  the  strong  hand  was  at  last  on  their  side 

1  Bengal  Select  Committee,  ai  April,  1761. 

1  Vansittart  to  Mir  Kasim,  1 8  June  and  21  September,  1761  (Calendar  of  Persian  Com- 
spondtrwe,!,  108  and  122). 
*  Gf.  Scrafton,  Observations  on  Mr  Vansittart s  NarratUM,  p.  32. 


INTERNAL  TRADE  QUESTION  171 

they  resolved  to  exercise  their  supposed  rights  to  the  full.  Clive  in 
1757  was  instructed  to  procure  an  express  authorisation  from  Mir 
Ja'far  for  their  participation  in  the  internal  trade  free  of  duties.  No 
such  article  appears  in  the  treaty;  but  the  parwanas  issued  by  the 
nawab  in  execution  of  the  treaty  were  phrased  in  such  wide  terms 
and  included  such  definite  instructions  as  show  that  Clive  carried  out 
this  part  of  his  orders. 

Whatever  goods  the  Company's  gumastahs  may  bring  or  carry  to  or  from  their 
factories,  the  aurungs  or  other  places,  by  land  or  by  water,  with  a  dustuck  from 
any  of  the  chiefs  of  their  factories,  you  shall  neither  ask  nor  receive  any  sum, 
however  trifling  for  the  same.  Know  they  have  full  power  to  buy  and  sell;  you  are 

by  no  means  to  oppose  it Whoever  acts  contrary  to  these  orders,  the  English 

have  full  power  to  punish  them.1 

As  the  Company's  servants  had  always  been  thought  entitled  to  enjoy 
the  same  privileges  as  the  Company  itself,  they  proceeded  to  take 
advantage  of  their  new  freedom  from  control  to  trade  in  the  articles 
so  long  prohibited.  Clive  on  the  whole  seems  to  have  set  his  face 
against  this  practical  extension  of  English  privileges;  but  it  seems 
clear  that  under  his  government  it  went  on,  though  perhaps  not  in 
any  great  volume,  and  that  at  the  end  of  his  government  Mir  Ja'far 
complained  of  it.  On  that  occasion,  Clive,  who  was  on  the  eve  of  his 
departure,  refused  to  give  any  decided  answer,  but  the  council  seems 
to  have  decided  in  favour  of  the  fullest  interpretation  of  English  rights; 
the  practice  grew;  and  when  Vansittart  arrived  at  Calcutta  it  was  in 
full  swing.  In  the  discussions  which  preceded  Mir  Ja'far's  removal, 
the  matter  never  seems  to  have  been  mentioned.  Indeed,  had  Mir 
Kasim  proposed  its  abolition,  he  would  almost  certainly  have  received 
not  a  shred  of  English  support.  But  he  was  too  wise  to  raise  such  a 
thorny  matter  at  a  time  when  the  favour  of  the  English  meant  every- 
thing to  him.  He  therefore  waited  till  the  emperor  had  departed,  till 
Ramnarayan  had  been  delivered  over  to  him,  and  the  Hindus  could 
no  longer  look  to  the  English  for  countenance  and  support,  and  then, 
in  December,  1761,  came  the  first  complaints  that  the  nawab's 
officers  were  obstructing  the  trade  of  the  Company  and  its  depend- 
ents.2 In  May,  1 762,  came  the  first  recorded  complaint  from  the  other 
side,  Mir  Kasim  alleging  misconduct  on  the  part  of  the  English  traders' 
Indian  agents.8  Vansittart  still  thought  the  nawab  was  making 
himself  uneasy  about  small  matters,  and  that  the  whole  question 
could  be  cleared  up  by  a  personal  interview;  but  in  fact  complaints 
doubled  and  redoubled.  The  officers  of  the  nawab  obstructed  English 
trade;  the  English  "did  themselves  justice";  the  nawab  claimed  the 
right  of  himself  administering  justice.  Such  different  persons  as 

1  Dodwell,  op.  cit.  pp.  214  sqq. 

*  Vansittart  to  Mir  Kasim,  18  and  19  December,  and  to  Mir  Shcr  'Ali,  19  December, 
1761  (Calendar  of  Persian  Correspondence  >  I,  137). 

•  Idan,  i,  161. 


172  BENGAL,  1760-72 

Scrafton  and  Hastings  both  accord  in  testifying  not  only  that  the 
words  of  the  nawab's  parwana  quoted  above  had  been  steadily  acted 
upon,  but  also  that  such  privilege  was  necessary.1  It  had  constantly 
been  exercised  during  the  government  of  Mir  Ja'far;  it  had  not  been 
mentioned  when  Mir  Kasim  succeeded  his  father-in-law,  any  more 
than  had  been  the  question  of  the  internal  trade;  but  now  he  suddenly 
discovered  that  these  practices  were  incompatible  with  the  proper 
exercise  of  his  powers  and  complained  of  them  as  new  and  unbearable 
usurpations.  It  is,  indeed,  clear  that  they  were  incompatible  with 
Vansittart's  policy  of  strengthening  the  nawab ;  but  no  engagements 
seem  to  have  been  sought  or  given  in  1760;  and,  indeed,  Vansittart 
had  probably  not  realised  what  a  difficulty  they  offered. 

Out  of  them  sprang  the  war  of  1 763  and  the  restoration  of  Mir 
Ja'far  as  nawab.  At  the  close  of  1 762  Vansittart  visited  the  nawab 
at  Mongir,  where  he  had  established  his  capital,  and  made  a  treaty 
with  him  on  the  subject  of  the  internal  trade.  In  future  English 
merchants  were  to  pay  9  per  cent.,  whereas  Indian  merchants  paid 
40  on  salt  carried  up  to  Patna,  but,  as  against  this,  disputes  were  to 
be  heard  and  determined  by  the  nawab's  officers.  This  agreement 
was  not  to  have  been  announced  until  Vansittart  had  procured  the 
assent  of  the  council;  but  Mir  Kasim  published  it  at  once.  It  is 
doubtful  whether  the  council  would  in  any  case  have  accepted  it; 
but  the  news  of  the  abandonment  of  the  right  of  "doing  themselves 
justice",  received  as  it  was  through  the  nawab's  officers,  excited  a 
blaze  of  anger.  This  was  exaggerated  by  various  other  news  that  came 
in  about  the  same  time.  One  was  that  Vansittart  had  been  imprudent 
enough  to  accept  seven  lakhs  from  the  nawab,  in  part  as  a  refund 
of  advances  he  had  made,  but  in  part  as  a  present,  and  of  course 
everyone  declared  that  the  money  was  the  price  of  abandoning 
English  rights;  it  is  curious  that  Mir  Kasim  had  instriV(led  his  deputy 
at  Dacca  to  show  special  favour  to  Vansittart's  agents;2  perhaps  he 
expected  to  strengthen  his  position  by  setting  the  English  quarrelling; 
if  so,  the  event  must  have  disappointed  him.  Ellis,  thf^ihief  at  Patna, 
had  been  in  constant  disputes  with  the  nawal?&  Coirants,  who  had 
neglected  to  visit  him  on  his  arrival  as  chief ;/m  to,  of  the  council 
were  deeply  suspicious  of  Mir  Kasim,  who  hacjg  thcntly  entered  into 
relations  of  an  unknown  character  with  the  on  thb  of  Oudh.  All 
these  things  combined  to  produce  a  revolt  ajfcst  fet  the  authority  of 
Vansittart  and  the  policy  with  which  he  wasfcersocdated.  His  agree- 
ment was  rejected;  all  the  absent  members  lo*  council  were  called 
down  to  Calcutta;  and  it  was  resolved  that  in  future  the  English 
should  trade  duty-free  except  for  <z\  per  cent,  on  their  salt,  and  that 
English  agents  should  be  subject  to  none  but  English  control.  When 

1  Scrafton,  op.  dt.  p.  34;  Hastings  to  Holwell,  19  February,  1760  (Brit.  Mus.  Add.  MSj£, 
29096,1,  233  verso). 
1  MiilkaamtotW^aibottiac^^ 


FALL  OF  MIR  KASIM  173 

the  nawab  resolved  to  abolish  the  duties,  the  council  refused  to  assent 
and  deputed  Amyatt  and  Hay,  two  of  their  members,  to  insist  on  large 
preferential  terms  for  the  English  trade.  These  Mir  Kasim  refused  to 
concede.  At  the  same  time  affairs  at  Patna  had  greatly  exasperated 
feelings  on  both  sides.  Ellis,  the  chief,  a  man  of  violent  temper,  and 
a  bitter  enemy  of  Vansittart,  had  insisted  on  the  English  privileges 
without  any  heed  to  appearances;  while  Mir  Kasim  had  begun  to 
prepare  against  those  events  which  evidently  drew  nearer  every  day. 
He  closed  and  stockaded  the  Patna  gate  close  to  the  English  factory; 
he  assembled  troops  in  Patna;  and  in  June  he  sent  emissaries  to  seduce 
the  Company's  European  and  sepoy  troops  stationed  there.  On 
21  June  he  sent  a  fresh  body  of  troops  from  Mongir  towards  Patna; 
and  on  this  news  Ellis  attempted  to  seize  the  city;  after  a  temporary 
success  he  failed  to  retain  it;  his  garrison  was  destroyed;  and  the  war 
had  begun. 

Blameworthy  as  were  individuals,  it  was  a  war  of  circumstances 
rather  than  intentions.  Vansittart  had  failed  to  realise  that  a  strong 
nawab  would  inevitably  desire  to  reduce  the  extraordinary  privileges 
which  the  English  claimed,  and  he  had  made  no  allowance  for  the 
fact  that  the  English  councillors  would  become  uncontrollable  if  their 
material  interests  were  attacked.  In  short  he  lacked  the  insight  and 
vigour  which  his  position  demanded.  The  councillors  with  the  ex- 
ception of  Hastings  allowed  their  material  interests  to  colour  and 
distort  their  policy.  Mir  Kasim  had  displayed  great  political  dexterity 
but  little  wisdom.  But  the  dominating  fact  of  the  situation  was  that 
the  interests  of  the  English  and  of  the  nawab  were  irreconcilable. 
There  could  be  no  stability  in  affairs  so  long  as  the  nawab  fancied 
himself  an  independent  governor  and  the  English  claimed  privileges 
wholly  inconsistent  with  that  independence. 

The  war  which  thus  began  in  1763  was  destined  to  end  this  un- 
certain position.  On  10  June  Major  Adams,  an  officer  of  Coote's, 
took  the  field  at  the  head  of  1 100  Europeans  and  4000  sepoys  against 
Mir  Kasim's  army  of  15,000  to  20,000  men.  Between  that  date  and 
5  September  he  won  four  considerable  victories  in  the  course  of  his 
advance  upon  the  nawab's  capital  of  Mongir.  Mir  Kasim  had  now 
lost  all  confidence  in  his  troops  and  their  leaders.  He  fled  to  Patna, 
where  he  put  to  death  all  the  English  who  had  fallen  into  his  hands; 
and  he  had  already  murdered  his  commander-in-chief,  who  had  been 
guiltless  of  any  crime  but  that  of  failure,  and  the  Seths,  who  had  been 
guiltless  of  any  crime  at  all.  He  was,  indeed,  displaying  that  same 
weak  violence  which  the  English  councillors  had  already  displayed, 
though  in  a  less  bloody  fashion.  He  then  fled  into  Oudh,  where  he 
hoped  to  find  assistance  with  which  to  recover  the  provinces  from 
the  English.  The  nawab  of  Oudh,  Shuja-ud-daula,  agreed  to  assist 
hjpi,  and  the  emperor  Shah  'Alam  joined  the  confederates.  But  at 
this  point  the  war  came  to  a  pause.  On  the  one  side  the  Oudh  troops 


174  BENGAL,  1760-72 

were  not  ready  for  attack;  on  the  other,  the  English  commander, 
Adams,  retired  to  Calcutta  to  die;  he  was  succeeded  by  Carnac  who 
was  hampered,  not  only  by  lack  of  conspicuous  military  talent  in 
himself,  but  also  by  mutiny  among  his  men,  by  disputes  with  the 
council,  and  by  counteraction  on  the  part  of  the  restored  nawab, 
Mir  Ja'far,  who  had  been  sent  back  from  Calcutta  to  reign  once  more 
at  Murshidabad.1  After  a  series  of  very  inconclusive  events  on  the 
borders  of  Oudh  and  Bihar,  which  occupied  the  first  half  of  1764, 
Major  Hector  Munro,  of  the  8gth,  arrived  and  took  command  of  the 
army.  He  spent  August  and  September  in  restoring  the  discipline  of 
the  army.  After  executing  twenty-five  mutineers  by  blowing  them 
from  his  guns,  and  breaking  one  sepoy  battalion  with  all  possible 
ignominy,2  he  invaded  Oudh,  and  on  22  October,  after  a  stubborn 
contest,  completely  defeated  the  enemy  at  Baksar.  There  was  no  more 
resistance.  Oudh  was  overrun  by  Fletcher,  who  succeeded  Munro 
in  the  command.  Shah  'Alam  joined  the  English  camp  once  more; 
Shuja-ud-daula  fled  into  the  Rohilla  country;  while  Mir  Kasim, 
stripped  of  his  treasure  and  deserted  by  his  followers,  escaped  into 
obscure  poverty. 

Meanwhile  the  old  nawab  had  been  restored.  On  10  July,  1763, 
was  signed  a  new  treaty,  by  which  he  agreed  to  limit  the  forces  he 
kept  up,  to  receive  a  permanent  resident  at  the  durbar,  and  to  levy 
no  more  than  2^  per  cent,  on  the  English  trade  in  salt.  Advantage 
was  also  taken  to  secure  a  promise  of  compensation  for  all  losses, 
public  and  private,  caused  by  the  war  with  Mir  Kasim.  These 
stipulations  regarding  private  interests  were  severely  criticised^/  the 
Company.  Nor  even  were  the  other  provisions  found  to  conc*efe  all 
that  was  required.  The  nawab  appointed  Nandakumar  as  hi$olii^f 
minister;  and  in  the  course  of  the  war  the  latter  was  believed  tj[oning 
betrayed  the  English  plans,  and  in  various  ways  to  have  ob^jepu^ 
their  operations.  Accordingly  when  Mir  Ja'far  died  early  Vn  1765 
his  son  Najm-ud-daula  was  only  recognised  on  condition  of  his 
appointing  a  minister  nominated  by  the  English,  and  agreeing  not 
to  displace  him  without  their  approval.  The  minister  held  the  title 
of  deputy  subahdar,  and  was  to  have  under  the  nawab  the  chief 
management  of  all  affairs.3  By  this  agreement  the  long  struggle 
between  the  English  and  the  nawab  was  brought  to  an  end.  The 
nawab  survived  as  a  figurehead,  in  whose  name  administration  was 
conducted  by  a  nominee  of  the  English,  but  who  of  himself  could  do 
nothing.  Clive,  whose  appointment  as  governor  of  Fort  William  had 
already  been  announced,  was  very  indignant  with  the  council  in  thus 
determining  an  affair  of  importance  before  his  arrival;  but,  venal  as 

1  Besides  the  proceedings  of  the  Bengal  Select  Committee,  see  also  Champion's  Journal, 
ap.  India  Office  Home  Miscellaneous,  no.  198. 

8  Munro's  reports,  ap.  Bengal  Select  Committee,  24  September,  1 764. 
8  Bengal  Select  Committee,  14  and  28  February,  and  16  March,  1765. 


STRUGGLES  IN  ENGLAND  175 

the  council  were,  in  this  case  their  action  from  the  point  of  view  of 
policy  was  irreproachable.  It  would  have  been  very  unwise  to  have 
left  the  matter  of  the  succession  hanging  over  until  dive's  arrival, 
and  still  more  so  to  have  invested  the  new  nawab  with  powers  which 
it  afterwards  would  have  been  found  expedient  to  diminish.  Unfor- 
tunately the  council  marred  their  conduct  by  making  this  settlement 
the  occasion  of  taking  large  presents  in  defiance  of  the  orders  of  the 
Company  which  had  already  been  received. 

Olive's  victories  in  Bengal  had  transformed  not  only  the  position 
of  the  English  in  India  but  also  the  proceedings  of  the  Company  in 
England.  Violent  political  discussions  succeeded  to  the  dull  and 
decorous  statements  of  the  course  of  the  trade  in  the  East.  Control 
of  the  Company  and  of  its  policy  became  a  thing  worth  paying  for. 
Clive  on  the  one  side  and  Laurence  Sulivan  on  the  other,  entered 
into  a  series  of  campaigns  to  secure  a  dominant  interest,  buying  up 
stock,  and  subdividing  it  so  as  to  create  if  possible  a  majority  of 
secure  votes.  The  right  to  dive's  jagir  had  been  the  great  bone  of 
contention,  and  the  preservation  of  that  valuable  property  had  cost 
Clive  great  sums  of  money.  Sulivan,  the  great  friend  of  Warren 
Hastings,  was  a  man  without  an  idea  in  advance  of  the  low  level  of 
his  time.  He  almost  ruined  himself  in  his  struggle  with  Clive,  while 
his  friend  Vansittart  did  so  completely;  and  he  then  took  advantage 
of  his  position  and  following  at  the  East  India  House  to  seek  to  retrieve 
his  position  by  procuring  lucrative  posts  for  his  sons  and  relatives  in 
the  East.1  In  1764  Clive  succeeded  for  the  time  being  in  obtaining 
the  control  of  the  Company;  and  the  fact  was  marked  by  his  accept- 
ance for  a  second  time  of  the  office  of  governor  of  Fort  William.  He 
went  out  in  order  to  set  right  the  errors  that  had  evidently  been 
committed  by  his  successors.  The  revolution  of  1 760  had  been  bitterly 
attacked  in  England,  and  so  had  the  war  which  followed  with  the 
new  nawab.  It  was  generally  felt  that  unless  the  Company  set  its 
house  in  order,  it  would  be  impossible  to  prevent  the  ministry  from 
interfering  in  Indian  affairs,  and  perhaps  abolishing  the  Company 
itself. 

Clive  reached  Calcutta  in  May,  1765,  and  found  two  problems 
awaiting  his  solution — one  political,  the  future  relations  of  the  English 
with  the  emperor,  the  nawab  of  Oudh,  and  the  nawab  of  Bengal;  and 
the  other  administrative,  the  reform  of  the  swollen  profits  from  illicit 
or  quasi-illicit  sources,  and  the  re-establishment  of  order  and  sub- 
ordination, which  had  disappeared  in  the  revolt  of  the  council  against 
Vansittart.  On  his  arrival  the  new  governor  found  that  Vansittart 
had  promised  Oudh  to  the  emperor.  It  seemed  to  Clive  a  foolish 
step.  There  was  no  ground  for  thinking  that  Shah  'Alam  would  be 
able  to  maintain  himself  there  without  English  help,  so  that  the 

1  Polk  MSS,  pp.  91,  126  and  188;  Sulivan  to  Hastings,  6  June,  1781  (Brit.  Mus.  Add. 
MSS,  29149,  f.  244). 


176  BENGAL,  1760-72 

settlement  contained  within  itself  all  the  elements  of  future  compli- 
cations. Clive  therefore  sent  up  Carnac  to  reopen  negotiations  until 
he  himself  should  be  able  to  visit  Oudh  in  person.  Carnac  soon  found 
himself  in  communication  with  the  fugitive  Shuja-ud-daula,  with 
whom  Clive  decided  to  come  to  terms,  restoring  to  him  his  old 
dominions  with  the  exception  of  Allahabad,  on  condition  of  a  pay- 
ment of  fifty  lakhs  of  rupees.  Allahabad  with  the  surrounding  districts 
was  bestowed  on  the  emperor.  The  settlement  has  been  attacked  on 
both  sides — as  a  breach  of  faith  with  the  emperor  in  taking  away 
from  him  what  had  been  promised,  and  as  bestowing  territory  on 
one  who  would  not  be  able  to  protect  it.  As  regards  the  first  no  formal 
treaty  had  as  yet  been  arranged,  so  that  Clive's  hands  were  still  free; 
as  regards  the  second,  some  sort  of  provision  had  to  be  made  for  the 
emperor,  and  the  one  which  Clive  adopted  cost  the  Company  nothing, 
and  committed  it  to  nothing.  Indeed  the  grant  of  Allahabad  marks 
the  end  of  those  foolish  dreams  which  had  been  cherished  by  almost 
everyone  in  Bengal,  of  restoring  the  empire  to  its  legitimate  holder. 
Any  such  attempt  would  have  strained  the  Company's  resources 
beyond  their  power.  It  would  have  united  the  princes  of  India  against 
the  English.  At  the  same  time  the  restoration  of  the  nawab  of  Oudh 
placed  on  the  frontiers  an  ally  who  at  the  moment  was  too  grateful 
to  attack  them,  and  who  afterwards  was  much  too  severely  threatened 
by  other  powers  to  think  of  doing  so.  Clive's  settlement  was  a  middle 
course,  which  afforded  more  advantage  and  threatened  fewer  dangers 
than  any  other  that  could  have  been  adopted  at  the  time.  In  Bengal 
itself  Clive  decided  on  a  long  step  forward  towards  the  assumption 
of  ostensible  power.  He  demanded  from  the  emperor  as  the  price  of 
Allahabad  and  its  districts  a  farman  granting  the  diwanni  of  Bengal 
to  the  Company.  That  involved  the  complete  control  of  the  finances 
of  the  province,  and  carried  to  its  completion  that  process  of  the 
extrusion  of  the  nawab's  power  which  had  been  almost  secured  by 
the  arrangement  of  February,  1765.  The  disadvantages  of  this  plan 
are  obvious  enough ;  but  they  were  such  as  counted  for  less  in  those 
days  than  they  would  now.  Power  was  separated  from  responsibility. 
But  no  one  at  the  moment  thought  of  undertaking  the  administration 
of  large  tracts  of  India,  and  the  fact  of  bad  and  corrupt  administration 
appeared  one  of  those  natural  and  inevitable  evils  which  are  beyond 
possibility  of  reform.  As  against  this  the  plan  offered  certain  imme- 
diate advantages.  It  secured  that  control  over  the  nawab  which  was 
regarded  as  the  most  pressing  need  of  the  time;  it  also  promised  some 
protection  against  the  complaints  of  foreign  powers  and  the  demands 
of  the  home  government.  Clive  still  remembered  how  the  too- 
ostensible  assumption  of  power  contributed  to  produce  the  unyielding 
opposition  of  the  English  to  the  schemes  of  Dupleix;  and  farmans  of 
the  emperor  or  parwanas  of  the  nawab,  though  valueless  without  the 
support  of  English  power,  could  not  be  fully  discounted  at  Paris  or 


CLIVERS  REFORMS  177 

the  Hague  without  a  serious  breach  of  diplomatic  etiquette.  It  was 
thought  too  that  something  short  of  the  assumption  of  full  dominion 
would  be  less  likely  to  excite  legal  difficulties  in  England  or  provoke 
the  interference  of  parliament.  In  short  the  grant  of  the  diwanni  was 
designed  to  secure  the  full  control  of  Bengal  affairs  so  far  35  the 
Company's  interests  went  without  incurring  the  inconvenience  of 
formal  and  avowed  dominion. 

The  administrative  questions  that  demanded  settlement  were  much 
more  difficult  than  these  political  questions.  First  there  were  the 
Company's  covenanted  servants.  They  had  been  demoralised  by  the 
conditions  under  which  they  had  been  working  and  the  facility  with 
which  wealth  could  be  acquired  through  the  English  privileges  in 
the  internal  trade  of  Bengal;  while  a  tradition  had  arisen  that  each 
change  of  nawab  should  be  the  occasion  of  large  presents,  open  or 
concealed.  The  accession  of  Najm-ud-daula  had  been  a  particularly 
bad  case,  because  the  succession  was  normal,  and  because  the  pre- 
cedent of  presents  from  the  nawab  had  been  extended  to  the  minister 
as  well.  Further,  this  extension  of  a  bad  practice  had  been  made  in 
the  face  of  specific  orders  from  the  Company  prohibiting  the  accept- 
ance of  presents  and  requiring  its  servants  to  sign  covenants  agreeing 
not  to  accept  such  in  future.  Instead  of  announcing  their  orders  the 
councillors  had  quietly  left  them  over  for  Clive  to  deal  with  on  his 
arrival.  Indeed  they  seem  to  have  thought  that  his  previous  practice 
and  present  influence  would  have  led  him  to  procure  the  abrogation 
of  the  orders  before  he  came  out  again  as  governor.  But  they  were 
mistaken  in  their  man.  Clive  feared  nothing,  not  even  his  own  past; 
and  he  was  as  fully  bent  on  enforcing  the  orders  of  the  Company  as 
if  he  himself  had  never  made  a  rupee  by  the  revolution  of  1757  or 
were  not  still  in  enjoyment  of  a  jagir  of  £30,000  a  year.  One  of  his 
earliest  acts  on  his  arrival  at  Calcutta  was  to  require  the  covenants 
to  be  signed  by  civil  and  military  servants  alike.  That  was  done,  but 
Champion,  and  probably  many  others  as  well,  did  so  with  the  idea 
that  this  reforming  zeal  could  not  last  and  that  their  signature  was 
a  mere  matter  of  form.1 

Clive,  however,  saw  as  clearly  as  did  Cornwallis  twenty  years  later 
that  if  illicit  gains  were  to  be  abolished,  considerable  regular  ad- 
vantages had  to  be  provided.  On  his  arrival  he  found  that  there  was 
a  great  lack  of  senior  servants.  Since  everyone  had  been  held  entitled 
to  passes  for  the  internal  trade,  it  had  been  possible  for  even  junior 
servants  to  make  fortunes  by  selling  their  passes  to  the  Indian  mer- 
chants of  Calcutta.  The  result  was  that  Clive  found  the  secretary's 
department  in  charge  of  a  writer  of  three  years'  standing,  the  ac- 
countant was  a  writer  yet  younger  than  the  secretary,  while  the 
paymaster  of  the  army,  with  balances  of  twenty  lakhs  in  his  hands 

1  Champion's  Journal,  6  August,  1765. 
crav  12 


178  BENGAL,  1760-72 

for  months  together,  had  also  been  a  writer.1  Clive  resolved  therefore 
to  reorganise  the  internal  trade,  to  place  it  on  a  wholly  new  basis, 
and  to  employ  the  profits  so  as  to  secure  handsome  salaries  for  the 
senior  servants  of  the  Company;  and  meanwhile  to  call  up  from 
Madras  a  small  number  of  covenanted  servants  to  fill  the  immediate 
vacancies  in  council.  This  last  measure  produced  the  sort  of  uproar 
that  was  to  be  expected.  An  association  was  formed;  Clive's  enter- 
tainments were  boycotted;  memorials  were  framed.  But  when  the 
malcontents  found  that  they  were  promptly  deprived  of  every  lucrative 
office,  refused  passes,  and  sent  hither  and  thither  very  much  against 
their  liking,  they  concluded  at  last  that  they  had  better  put  up  with 
Clive's  tyranny,  and  the  opposition  died  down.  Meanwhile  Clive 
went  on  with  his  salt  scheme.  That  had  always  been  a  government 
monopoly,  and  as  such  Clive  decided  to  administer  it  and  employ 
the  profits  arising  out  of  it  in  the  payment  of  allowances  to  the 
principal  civil  and  military  servants.  He  did  so  under  the  form  of  a 
trading  company,  under  the  close  control  of  the  council,  and  the 
allowances  took  the  form  of  shares  in  the  company.  This  was  contrary 
to  the  orders  of  the  Company;  but  Clive  considered  that  those  orders 
had  been  issued  before  he  had  taken  over  the  revenue  administration 
of  the  provinces,  that  his  new  plan  could  not  possibly  Btose  difficulties 
with  the  nawab,  and  that  consequently  the  main  qrely^Cpns  of  the 
Company  did  not  apply  to  his  present  proposals.  ,ftt  was  a  fffispect 
he  was  guilty  of  a  miscalculation.  When  the  new.ed  fewer  danjiad 
done  reached  England,  the  Company  at  once  on*  time.  In  Ban  rial 
trade  to  be  entirely  abandoned;  these  orders  werei'ujUm  suspended, 
and  Clive  hoped  to  procure  their  reversal  on  his  return  to  England; 
but  the  directors  insisted  on  their  views  being  carried  out;  and  so  at 
last  the  trading  company  was  wound  up.  In  this  matter  Clive  has 
been  unduly  blamed.  His  proposals  amounted  in  reality  to  the 
continuation  of  the  monopoly  which  had  been  customary  and  the 
assignment  of  the  revenues  so  raised  to  the  payment  of  establishment. 
Although  in  form  his  plan  seemed  to  continue  the  vices  of  the  Van- 
sittart  rigimej  in  essence  it  was  wholly  different  and  amounted  to  just 
that  measure  of  reform  for  which  Cornwallis  has  received  such  high 
praise.  The  mistake  which  Clive  made  was  apparently  one  of  tactics. 
He  thought  the  Company  would  be  less  likely  to  oppose  the  scheme 
so  long  as  the  payment  of  the  extra  allowances  did  not  appear  to 
come  out  of  its  own  revenues.  He  forgot  that  the  apparent  similarity 
between  his  plan  and  the  abuses  of  the  past  might  lead  to  its  con- 
demnation. 

With  the  military  officers  Clive  had  even  more  trouble  than  with 
the  civilians.  This  was  natural,  because  in  the  latter  case  he  had  had 
only  to  deal  with  illicit  gains  whereas  in  the  former  he  was  required 
to  cut  down  regular  and  acknowledged  allowances.  For  some  years 

1  Bengal  Select  Committee  to  the  Company,  124  March,  1766. 


THE  BATTA  QUESTION  179 

the  Company  had  been  endeavouring  to  cut  down  the  batta  or  field- 
allowances  of  the  Bengal  officers.  These  allowances  were  designed  to 
make  good  the  extra  cost  of  living  in  the  field  as  compared  with 
living  in  garrison.  They  originated  in  the  Carnatic,  where  both 
Chanda  Sahib  and  Muhammad  'Ali  had  paid  batta  to  the  French 
and  English  officers  respectively  in  their  service;  and  difficulties  had 
arisen  when  Muhammad  'Ali  had  transferred  lands  to  the  English 
Company  in  lieu  of  this  batta,  and  the  question  of  its  regulation  had 
arisen  between  the  officers  and  the  Company.  Affairs  had  followed 
the  same  course  in  Bengal,  where  batta  had  at  first  been  paid  by  the 
nawab  and  then  became  a  charge  upon  the  Company,  who  desired 
to  reduce  it  to  the  more  moderate  level  paid  at  Madras.  Orders  to 
this  effect  had  reached  Bengal  when  the  war  with  Mir  Kasim  had 
been  on  the  point  of  breaking  out;  their  immediate  execution  had 
thus  been  impossible.  But  when  they  were  repeated,  in  1764,  they 
met  with  the  same  fate  as  those  other  unpleasant  orders  prohibiting 
presents,  and  obedience  was  deferred  until  Clive's  arrival.  He 
accordingly  prepared  regulations  on  the  subject.  Officers  in  canton- 
ments at  Mongir  or  Patna  were  to  draw  half  batta,  as  did  officers  at 
Trichinopoly;  when  they  took  the  field  they  would  draw  batta  while 
within  the  limits  of  Bengal  and  Bihar,  but  if  they  crossed  into  Oudh 
they  would  then  become  entitled  to  double  batta.  For  a  captain 
these  rates  amounted  to  three,  six,  and  twelve  rupees  a  day.  These 
orders  led  to  a  combination  among  the  officers,  just  as  the  appoint- 
ment of  covenanted  servants  from  Madras  had  led  to  a  combination 
among  the  civilians.  It  was  agreed  that  they  should  simultaneously 
resign  their  commissions.  In  this  step  they  seem  to  have  been  en- 
couraged by  the  commander  of  one  of  the  brigades,  Sir  Robert 
Fletcher,  who  was  not  only  the  friend  of  Clive's  opponents  in  England, 
but  also  thought  himself  injured  by  decisions  of  Clive  regarding 
pecuniary  claims  which  he  had  put  forward.1  The  agitation  coincided 
in  time  with  the  trouble  with  the  civilians,  and  there  was  talk  of  a 
subscription  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  should  suffer  through  Clive's 
conduct.  In  this  matter  as  in  the  other  Clive  overbore  all  opposition 
with  a  bold  front.  Every  resignation  was  to  be  accepted;  supplies  of 
officers  were  requested  from  Madras;  everyone  displaying  the  least 
inclination  to  mutiny  was  to  be  sent  down  at  once  to  Calcutta.  Clive 
visited  the  headquarters  of  the  three  brigades  in  person,  to  assure 
himself  that  the  men  were  under  control;  and  the  officers  gradually 
fell  out  among  themselves.  Those  who  had  already  made  their  fortunes 
were  careless  of  what  might  come  out  of  the  affair,  but  those  who 
still  had  their  fortunes  to  make  were  more  timid,  and,  when  it  came 
to  the  point,  were  reluctant  to  forgo  their  prospects.  In  these  cir- 
cumstances the  mutiny  broke  down.  Those  who  were  considered  the 
least  guilty  were  allowed  to  return  to  duty  on  condition  of  signing 

1  Dodwell,  Dupltix  and  dive,  p.  266. 


12-2 


i8o  BENGAL,  1760-72 

a  three  years'  agreement,  which  under  the  East  India  Mutiny  Act 
would  bring  within  the  penalty  of  death  any  who  so  conducted  them- 
selves in  future.  Of  the  rest  Fletcher  and  six  more  were  cashiered. 

At  the  same  time  Clive  resolved  to  apply  to  the  yse  of  the  Company's 
officers  a  sum  of  five  lakhs  which  Mir  Ja'far  was  alleged  to  have  desired 
on  his  deathbed  to  be  delivered  to  him.  One  of  the  great  lacks  of 
the  service  was  some  provision  for  those  who  were  compelled  to  retire 
from  the  service  by  wounds  or  ill-health  while  their  circumstances 
were  still  embarrassed.  Being  a  legacy  the  sum  was  deemed  not  to 
come  within  the  Company's  prohibition;  it  was  therefore  accepted, 
vested  in  trustees,  and  under  the  name  of  Lord  Clive's  Fund  did  much 
to  bridge  over  the  interval  until  the  Company  adopted  the  practice 
of  pensioning  its  servants. 

Clive  quitted  India  for  the  last  time  in  February,  1767.  It  is  not 
necessary  to  dilate  upon  the  greatness  of  his  character  or  the  results  of 
his  work.  He  had  a  supreme  faculty  for  seeing  into  the  heart  of  a 
situation,  undistracted  by  side-issues,  for  compelling  the  obedience  of 
others,  and  for  finding  an  immediate  expedient  for  the  needs  of  the 
moment.  His  principal  defect  was  a  certain  bluntness  of  moral 
feeling  which  enabled  him  to  perform  and  defend  actions  which 
did  not  commend  themselves  even  to  his  own  age.  But  there  was 
nothing  small  or  petty  about  him.  Though  he  made  an  enormous 
fortune,  he  was  not  mercenary;  though  he  tricked  Omichand,  he  was 
trusted  implicitly  by  Indians  of  every  class.  His  unfaltering  will  and 
uncompromising  vigour  took  the  fullest  advantage  of  a  peculiarly 
happy  concourse  of  events  firmly  to  establish  the  Company's  power 
in  the  wealthiest  province  of  India. 

Between  him  and  Warren  Hastings  come  two  governors  who  were 
hardly  more  than  stop-gaps.  Verelst  succeeded  Clive,  and  at  the  end 
of  1769  Carrier  succeeded  Verelst.  But  their  combined  five  years  of 
rule  were  little  more  than  an  introduction  to  the  period  of  Hastings. 
The  stage  was  being  set  for  new  performers.  The  Marathas,  recovering 
from  their  overthrow  at  Panipat,  were  beginning  once  more  to  inter- 
fere in  Northern  India;  the  emperor  quitted  Allahabad,  where  Clive 
had  settled  him,  and  went  off  to  Delhi  under  their  protection; 
misunderstandings  arose  with  Shuja-ud-daula,  but  they  did  not  break 
the  alliance  which  Clive  had  established;  the  English  in  Bengal  began 
to  take  a  share  in  the  administration  which  they  had  so  long  regarded 
with  suspicion;  attempts  were  made  to  enter  into  communication 
with  the  Himalayan  states  and  to  come  to  terms  with  our  Maratha 
neighbours  on  the  south.  But  in  all  these  ways  the  time  was  preparatory 
only  for  the  time  of  growth  and  formation  which  Hastings  was  to 
inaugurate. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY  AND  THE  STATE. 

1772-56 

A  HE  period  1772-86  is  the  formative  epoch  of  British  Indian 
History.  During  these  years  three  important  questions  had  to  be 
dealt  with :  firstly,  the  relation  of  the  East  India  Company  to  the 
state;  secondly,  the  relation  of  the  home  to  the  Indian  administration 
of  the  Company;  and  thirdly,  the  relation  of  the  supreme  government 
in  Bengal  to  the  subordinate  presidencies.  In  this  chapter  we  are 
concerned  with  the  first  of  these  questions,  and  it  may  be  pointed  out 
that  the  fourteen  years  of  our  period  witnessed  all  the  great  statutes 
which  definitely  subjected  the  Company  to  the  control  of  the  crown 
and  parliament,  and  converted  it  into  a  quasi-state  department. 
Between  1786  and  1858  we  feel  that  the  constitutional  changes  are 
not  really  fundamental.  Even  the  taking  over  of  the  Company's 
powers  by  the  crown  in  1858  was  less  a  revolution  than  a  formal  and 
explicit  recognition  of  facts  already  existing.  Again,  this  was  the 
period  which  saw  the  Company  subjected  to  minute  and  severe 
inspection  at  the  hands  of  parliamentary  commissions,  the  Select  and 
Secret  Committees  of  1772,  and  the  Select  and  Secret  Committees  of 
1781.  Each  occasion  was  followed  by  a  great  statute  and  an  attack 
upon  a  great  individual.  In  1772  we  have  the  attack  upon  Clive, 
followed  by  the  Regulating  Act  of  1773.  After  1781  we  have  Pitt's 
Act  of  1784,  followed  by  the  impeachment  of  Warren  Hastings. 
Lastly,  as  a  result  of  these  inspections  a  reformation  of  the  civil  service 
was  carried  through,  partly  by  Hastings  himself,  and  in  fuller  measure 
by  Lord  Cornwallis. 

At  no  time  was  the  question  of  British  dominion  in  India  so  closely 
interwoven  with  political  and  party  history  at  home.  In  Cobbett's 
Parliamentary  Historv  a  very  large  space  from  1 767  to  the  end  of  the 
century  is  devoted  to  Indian  debates.  uThe  affairs  of  the  East  India 
Company",  wrote  the  editor  in  1768,  "were  now  become  as  much 
an  object  of  annual  consideration,  as  the  raising  of  the  supplies."1 
The  Indian  question  was  entangled  with  a  serious  constitutional  crisis 
and  with  the  personal  rivalry  and  political  ambitions  of  the  two 
greatest  statesmen  of  the  time.  It  caused  the  fall  of  the  notorious 
Coalition  Government  of  Fox  and  North,  gave  George  III  the 
opportunity  to  effect  a  daring  coup  tfttat,  doomed  Fox  to  almost  a 
lifetime  of  opposition  and  put  Pitt  in  power  practically  for  the  rest  of 
his  life.  From  1772  to  1795  Indian  affairs  were  constantly  before 
parliament  in  both  its  legislative  and  its  judicial  aspect. 

1  ParliarmrUary  History  of  England)  xvi,  402. 


182         THE  COMPANY  AND  THE  STATE,  1772-86 

Now  all  this  was  inevitable  and,  when  everything  is  taken  into 
consideration,  not  to  be  regretted.  It  is  easy  to  paint  the  interference 
of  parliament  as  mischievous  and  misinformed,  and  to  complain  that 
India  was  made  a  pawn  in  the  party  game;  butrfhere  was — as  some 
of  the  most  clear-sighted  of  contemporary  statesmen  saw — a  serious 
risk  of  a  great  empire  being  created  and  ruled  by  Englishmen  outside 
the  sphere  and  control  of  the  British  cabinet.  "The  East  India 
Company",  as  Burke  said,  "did  not  seem  to  be  merely  a  Company 
formed  for  the  extension  of  the  British  commerce,  but  in  reality  a 
delegation  of  the  whole  power  and  sovereignty  of  this  kingdom  sent 
into  the  East."1  No  national  government  could  be  expected,  or 
indeed  ought,  to  tolerate  such  a  dangerous  shifting  of  the  centre  of 
political  gravity.  Some  action  on  the  part  of  the  state  was  necessary; 
the  question  had  to  be  tackled  even  at  the  cost  of  strife,  dislocation, 
and  possibly  some  injustice  to  individuals.  "In  delegating  great 
power  to  the  India  Company",  wrote  Burke,  "this  kingdom  has 
not  released  its  sovereignty.  On  the  contrary,  its  responsibility  is 
increased  by  the  greatness  and  sacredness  of  the  power  given."2 

This  bringing  into  relation  of  the  Company  and  the  stat^  was  from 
the  nature  of  the  case  a  very  difficult  problem.  It  had  to  be  worked 
out  experimentally,  for  there  were  no  precedents.  We  cannot  be 
surprised  that  many  mistakes  were  made. 

"The  British  legislature",  says  Malcolm,  "has  hitherto  but  slowly  followed  the 
progress  of  the  power  of  the  Company  in  India.  It  had  legislated  for  factories  on 
a  foreign  shore,  when  that  Company  was  in  the  possession  of  provinces;  and  when 
the  laws  were  completed  to  govern  these,  it  had  obtained  kingdoms."3 

This  was  entirely  true,  but  it  was  inevitable.  The  rapid  developments 
in  the  East  out-distanced  the  efforts  of  parliament  to  comprehend 
and  to  deal  with  them.  According  as  men  visualised  the  position 
from  the  eastern  or  the  western  point  of  view,  authority  in  the  East 
seemed  dangerously  circumscribed  or  perilously  unhampered. 
Hastings  describes  the  sphere  of  his  administration  as  "a  dominion 
held  by  a  delegated  and  fettered  power  over  a  region  exceeding  the 
dimensions  of  the  parent  state,  and  removed  from  it  a  distance  equal 
in  its  circuit  to  two-thirds  of  the  earth's  circumference".4  Its  remote- 
ness postulated,  the  necessity  of  semi-independence,  "distant  as  it  is 
from  the  reach  of  more  than  general  instruction  from  the  source  of 
its  authority,  and  liable  to  daily  contingencies,  which  require  both 
instant  decision,  and  a  consistency  of  system".5  Burke,  on  the  other 
hand,  from  the  home  aspect,  declares,  "  It  is  difficult  for  the  most  wise 
and  upright  government  to  correct  the  abuses  of  remote,  delegated 

1  Speeches. .  .in  the  trial  of  Warren  Hastings  (Ed.  Bond),  x,  15. 

•  Idem,  p.  13. 

•  Malcolm,  The  Political  History  of  India,  I,  8. 

•  Selections  from  the  State  Papers  of  the  Governors-General  of  India.   Warren  Hastings.  Ed.  by 
(Sir)  G.  W.  Forrest,  n,  92. 

1  Idem,  p.  93. 


POSITION  OF  THE  COMPANY  183 

power,  productive  of  unmeasured  wealth,  and  protected  by  the 
boldness  and  strength  of  the  same  ill-got  riches";1  and  he  puts  his 
finger  on  the  crux  of  the  whole  matter,  though  no  doubt  he  here 
inculcates  a  counsel  of  perfection,  when  he  says,  "I  think  I  can  trace 
all  the  calamities  of  this  country  to  the  single  source  of  our  not  having 
had  steadily  before  our  eyes  a  general,  comprehensive,  well-connected 
and  well-proportioned  view  of  the  whole  of  our  dominions,  and  a  just 
sense  of  their  true  bearings  and  relations".2  The  question  then  before 
the  statesmen  of  the  eighteenth  century  was:  How  was  the  Company's 
quasi-sovereignty  in  the  East  to  be  reconciled  with  the  necessary 
subordination  to  the  imperial  parliament?  There  were  three  possi- 
bilities. The  first  was  that  the  Company's  privileges  and  powers  should 
remain  untouched,  with  the  hope  that  some  practical  modus  Vivendi 
would  in  time  be  worked  out.  But  this  was  felt  by  the  majority  of 
the  nation  and  even  by  the  more  far-sighted  of  the  Company's  own 
servants  to  be  no  longer  feasible.  Both  Clive  and  Warren  Hastings 
suggested  tentatively  to  the  prime  ministers  of  their  time  that  it  might 
be  advisable  for  the  state  to  take  over  the  Company's  powers.  There 
seemed  a  danger  not  only  that  misgovernment  in  India  might  tarnish 
the  name  of  Great  Britain  as  an  imperial  state,  but  that  the  Indian 
interest  in  England,  supported  by  huge  revenues  and  corrupt  par- 
liamentary influence,  might  gain  a  preponderating  and  improper 
power  in  home  affairs. 

The  second  possibility  was  that  the  state  should  take  over  in  full 
sovereignty  the  territorial  possessions  in  India  and  convert  the 
Company's  servants  into  a  civil  service  of  the  crown.  But  this  was 
felt  to  be  too  great  and  drastic  a  change.  It  was  opposed  to  all 
eighteenth-century  notions  of  the  sacredness  of  property,  and  the 
problem  was  complicated  by  all  kinds  of  delicate  legal  and  political 
questions.  It  might  even  be  plausibly  contended  that  the  Company 
had  no  considerable  territorial  possessions  at  all.  It  administered 
Bengal,  Bihar  and  Orissa  merely  as  the  diwan  of  the  Moghul  emperor. 
That  was  a  tenable  position  for  a  private  corporation ;  it  was  not  a  ten- 
able position  for  the  government  of  Great  Britain.  If  the  "territorial " 
possessions  were  annexed  by  the  crown,  the  act  might  be  represented 
as  sheer  usurpation  against  the  Moghul  Empire,  and  Great  Britain 
might  be  embroiled  with  the  representatives  of  other  European  nations 
in  the  East. 

It  remained  that  the  state  should  take  the  Company  into  partner- 
ship, assuming  the  position  of  controlling  and  predominant  partner 
in  all  matters  relating  to  the  higher  branches  of  government,  but 
leaving  to  the  Company  the  monopoly  of  the  trade,  the  disposal  of 
its  valuable  patronage  under  crown  sanction,  and  the  details  of  the 
administration.  What  we  see  going  on  during  the  period  1772-86  is 

1  Works  of  Edmund  Burke tm,  193-4. 
1  Idem,  p.  125. 


184        THE  COMPANY  AND  THE  STATE,  1772-86 

the  gradual  realisation  of  this  conception.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  some  attempts  in  this  direction  had  already  been  made  before 
1772.  A  little  band  of  members  of  parliament,  prominent  among 
whom  were  Beckford,  Barr£  and  General  Burgoyne,  had  long  been 
urging  that  conquests  in  India  should  pass  to  the  crown.  Their 
persistent  efforts  met  with  some  success  in  1767  when  five  separate 
acts  were  passed.  These  measures  amongst  other  things  interfered  in 
the  regulations  for  voting  in  the  General  Courts  of  the  Company, 
regulated  the  amount  of  dividends  to  be  paid  and  the  manner  of 
paying  them,  and,  most  important,  obliged  the  Company  to  pay  the 
exchequer  an  annual  sum  of  £400,000  for  two  years  from  February, 
1767,  for  the  privilege  of  retaining  their  territorial  acquisitions  (the 
payment  was  afterwards  extended  to  1772).  "Thus",  says  Sir 
Courtenay  Ilbert,  "the  state  claimed  its  share  of  the  Indian  spoil, 
and  asserted  its  rights  to  control  the  sovereignty  of  Indian  territories. J>1 
These  changes  were  only  carried  in  the  teeth  of  a  strong  opposition. 
The  protests  of  the  dissentients  in  the  House  of  Lords  showed  how 
strong  as  yet  were  the  barriers  of  the  rights  of  property,  and  the 
sanctity  of  contract. 

A  legislative  interposition  controlling  the  dividend  of  a  trading  Company,  legally 
voted  and  declared  by  those  to  whom  the  power  of  doing  it  is  entrusted ...  is 
altogether  without  example. a 

The  solution,  it  may  be  admitted,  was  not  particularly  logical.  It 
was  on  the  face  of  it  absurd  that  a  British  chartered  company  should 
pay  the  crown  of  England  an  annual  sum  of  money  for  permission 
to  hold  certain  lands  and  revenues  of  an  eastern  potentate,  and  the 
friends  of  the  Company  did  not  hesitate  to  describe  the  payment  as 
mere  political  blackmail. 

But  for  five  years  at  any  rate  the  attack  against  the  Company  was 
stayed.  Then  again  in  1772  troubles  gathered  round  it,  arising  from 
the  following  circumstances.  In  March,  1772,  a  dividend  at  the  rate 
of  12^  per  cent,  was  declared.  In  the  same  month  the  Company, 
obviously  endeavouring  to  forestall  a  drastic  reformation  from  outside, 
attempted  through  Sulivan  their  deputy-chairman  to  introduce  a  bill 
for  the  better  regulation  of  their  affairs.  Lord  Clive,  being  assailed, 
defended  himself  by  taking  the  offensive  and  roundly  attacked  the 
Company.  In  the  debate  some  interesting  points  were  raised  as  to 
the  relations  between  the  Company  and  the  state.  Clive  had  in  1759 
proposed  to  Chatham  that  the  crown  should  take  over  the  Company's 
dominions,  Chatham,  probably  because  he  had  no  leisure  to  face  the 
practical  and  exceedingly  thorny  difficulties,  contented  himself  with 
an  oracular  answer  that  the  scheme  was  of  a  very  nice  nature  and, 
as  dive's  agent  reported,  "spoke  this  matter  a  little  darkly".8  Clive 

1  Ilbert,  The  Government  of  India,  p.  39. 
*  Parliamentary  History,  xvi,  356. 
8  Malcolm,  The  Life  of  dive,  n,  126, 


DEBATES  OF  1772  185 

had  resented  this  treatment  and  now  with  an  imprudence  amazing  in 
a  man,  around  whom  his  enemies  were  closing,  struck  out  in  all 
directions  as  though  his  one  aim  was  not  to  leave  himself  a  single 
partisan.  With  a  magnificent  recklessness  he  included  the  govern- 
pient,  the  directors,  the  proprietors  and  the  servants  in  the  East  in 
one  comprehensive  condemnation: 

"I  attribute  the  present  situation  of  our  affairs",  he  said,  "to  four  causes:  a  relaxa- 
tion of  government  in  my  successors;  great  neglect  on  the  part  of  administration; 
notorious  misconduct  on  the  part  of  the  directors;  and  the  violent  and  outrageous 
proceedings  of  General  Courts."1 

The  Company  had  acquired  an  empire  and  a  revenue  of  £4,000,000. 

It  was  natural  to  suppose  that  such  an  object  would  have  merited  the  most 
serious  attention  of  administration ;  that  in  concert  with  the  Court  of  Directors 
they  would  have  considered  the  nature  of  the  Company's  charter,  and  have  adopted 
a  plan  adequate  to  such  possessions.  Did  they  take  it  into  consideration?  No,  they 

did  not They  thought  of  nothing  but  the  immediate  division  of  the  loaves  and 

fishes. . . .  They  went  so  far  as  to  influence  a  parcel  of  temporary  Proprietors  to 
bully  the  Directors  into  their  terms. 

They  ought  to  have  forced  the  directors  to  produce  a  plan,  or  with 
the  aid  of  Parliament  to  have  made  one  themselves. 

If  administration  had  done  their  duty,  we  should  not  now  have  heard  a  speech 
from  the  throne,  intimating  the  necessity  of  Parliamentary  interposition,  to  save 
our  possessions  in  India  from  impending  ruin.2 

One  of  those  who  took  part  in  the  debate,  Governor  Johnstone, 
maintained  views  of  some  interest.  He  declared  that : 

The  British  legislature  should  not  move  in  the  affairs  of  Asia,  unless  she  acts  with 

dignity  and  effect I  am  clear  we  hold  those  lands  by  conquest.    I  think  the 

conquest  was  lawfully  made  by  the  Company  and  a  small  part  of  the  King's  forces 
in  conjunction.  I  deny  that  conquest  by  a  subject,  lawfully  made,  vests  the  property 
in  the  state,  though  I  maintain  it  conveys  the  sovereignty.3 

He  went  on  to  advocate  that  the  crown  under  certain  conditions 
should  grant  the  lands  to  the  East  India  Company  as  was  done  in 
the  case  of  New  England  and  several  other  of  our  chartered  colonies. 
He  did  not  accept  the  theory  that  we  need  consider  the  susceptibilities 
of  other  European  nations. 

Does  any  man  believe  that  foreign  nations  permit  us  virtually  to  hold  these 
territories  under  the  magic  word  Devannee?  Can  it  be  supposed  they  are  not 
equally  sensible  of  the  imposition  as  ourselves,  or  will  it  be  believed  they  would 
not  be  much  better  contented  to  hold  their  different  privileges  under  the  confirma- 
tion of  a  British  legislature,  than  of  a  cypher  of  a  Nabob,  directed  by  a  Governor 
and  Committee  whom  they  can  never  trace?4 

In  the  end  leave  to  introduce  Sulivan's  bill  was  refused,  and  in 
April,  1772,  Burgoyne  carried  a  motion  to  appoint  a  select  committee 

1  Parliamentary  History,  xvn,  361.        2  Idem,  pp.  363-4. 
8  Idem,  pp.  376-7.  *  Idem,  p.  378. 


i86         THE  COMPANY  AND  THE  STATE,  1772-86 

of  thirty-one  to  enquire  into  the  affairs  of  the  East  India  Company. 
The  debate  testifies  to  the  intensity  of  feeling  against  the  Company. 
Burgoyne  declared  that: 

The  most  atrocious  abuses  that  ever  stained  the  name  of  civil  government  called 
for  redress ...  if  by  some  means  sovereignty  and  law  are  not  separated  from  trade . . . 
India  and  Great  Britain  will  be  sunk  and  overwhelmed  never  to  rise  again. 

Any  bill  based  upon  the  present  state  of  the  Indian  Government 
must  be  "a  poor,  paltry,  wretched  palliative".  The  committee  was 
to  enquire  into 

that  chaos  where  every  element  and  principle  of  government,  and  charters,  and 
firmauns,  and  the  rights  of  conquests,  and  the  rights  of  subjects,  and  the  different 
functions  and  interests  of  merchants,  and  statesmen,  and  lawyers,  and  kings,  are 
huddled  together  into  one  promiscuous  tumult  and  confusion. 

He  ended  with  an  impassioned  peroration : 

The  fate  of  a  great  portion  of  the  globe,  the  fate  of  great  states  in  which 
your  own  is  involved,  the  distresses  of  fifteen  millions  of  people,  the  rights  of 
humanity  are  involved  in  this  question — Good  God !  What  a  call — the  native  of 
Hindustan  born  a  slave — his  neck  bent  from  the  very  cradle  to  the  yoke — by  birth, 
by  education,  by  climate,  by  religion,  a  patient,  submissive,  willing  subject  to 
eastern  despotism,  first  begins  to  feel,  first  shakes  his  chains,. .  .under  the  pre- 
eminence of  British  tyranny.1 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  Burke,  who  was  himself  to  write  some  of 
the  most  condemnatory  reports  in  the  1781  enquiry,  spoke  against 
any  investigation  at  all. 

The  Select  Committee  was  presided  over  by  General  Burgoyne 
himself,  and  included  among  its  members  Lord  George  Germain, 
Barr6,  Lord  Howe,  Sir  Gilbert  Elliot,  Pulteney,  and  Charles  James 
Fox.  But  the  Company's  troubles  were  not  yet  over.  In  August,  1 772, 
though  it  had  recently  been  helped  by  the  bank,  it  was  obliged 
to  apply  to  government  for  a  loan  of  £1,000,000.  There  was  a  storm 
of  opposition,  for  this  application  seemed  to  show  that  there  was  no 
justification  for  the  dividend  declared  in  March.  Parliament  was 
especially  summoned.  Lord  North  moved  for  a  committee  of  secrecy 
on  the  ground  that  complaints  had  been  made  of  the  disclosure  of 
confidential  information  by  the  Select  Committee.  North  was  careful 
to  state  that  he  himself  believed  that,  however  closely  pressed  the 
Company  might  be  by  present  exigencies,  it  was  nevertheless  in 
point  of  external  strength  and  vigour  in  full  health.  Burgoyne  rose 
in  defence  of  the  Select  Committee,  and  in  the  end,  though  a  new 
secret  committee  of  thirteen  was  set  up,  the  old  Select  Committee  was 
continued  in  being.  The  Select  Committee  produced  twelve,  and  the 
Secret  Committee  six,  reports,  all  highly  condemnatory.  Tremendous 
feeling  against  the  Company  was  aroused.  Horace  Walpole  records 
the  popular  impression:  "Such  a  scene  of  tyranny  and  plunder  has 

1  Parliamentary  History*  xvn,  454-9. 


ATTACKS  ON  THE  COMPANY  187 

been  opened  up  as  makes  one  shudder We  are  Spaniards  in  our 

lust  for  gold,  and  Dutch  in  our  delicacy  of  obtaining  it".1  Responsible 
statesmen  took  a  view  hardly  less  grave.  Lord  Shelburne  writes  to 
Chatham:  "Every  man  of  every  party  acknowledges  a  blow  to  be 
impending  in  that  part  of  the  world,  which  must  shake  to  its  founda- 
tions the  revenue,  manufactures,  and  property  of  this".2  As  the 
reports  continued  to  appear,  Chatham's  indignation  rose,  and  we 
find  him  writing  in  1773,  "  India  teems  with  iniquities  so  rank,  as  to 
srhell  to  earth  and  heaven".8  But  mere  abuse  of  the  servants  in  India 
was  of  little  avail.  We  have  Warren  Hastings's  authority  for  the 
statement  that  Shelburne  was  "better  informed  in  India  affairs 
than  almost  any  man  in  England",4  and  the  latter,  in  a  further  letter 
to  Chatham,  distributed  the  blame  pretty  impartially.  He  declared 
that  though  the  crimes  and  frauds  of  the  servants  in  India  were 
enormous,  yet  the  directors  appear  to  be  accomplices  throughout, 
while  the  proprietors  seem  to  be  the  most  servile  instruments  of  both, 
"nor",  he  continues,  "has  there  been  found  as  yet,  to  speak  im- 
partially, anywhere  in  the  House  of  Commons  that  firm,  even,  judicial 
spirit,  capable  of  administering,  much  less  originating,  that  justice 
which  the  case  requires".6 

The  Company  now  made  feverish  efforts  to  conduct  its  own 
reformation  and,  following  the  precedent  of  1769,  nominated  six 
supervisors,  who,  with  plenary  powers  and  salaries  of  £10,000  each, 
were  to  proceed  at  once  to  India  to  overhaul  the  whole  system  there. 
But  this  was  more  than  parliament  could  stand,  and,  on  the  advice 
of  the  Committee  of  Secrecy,  a  bill  was  passed  in  December,  1772, 
prohibiting  the  Company  from  sending  out  the  supervisors.  Burke, 
still  as  yet  the  stalwart  friend  of  Leadenhall  Street,  opposed  the  bill ; 
Clive,  on  the  other  hand,  supported  it.  "I  could  wish",  he  said,  "the 
Company  had  met  this  house  half-way  instead  of  petitioning  and 
quarrelling  with  the  mouth  that  is  to  feed  them",  then,  in  reference 
to  the  supervisors  and  thinking  of  his  own  past  history,  he  added, 
"had  they,  Sir,  known  the  East  Indies  as  well  as  I  do,  they  would 
shudder  at  the  bare  idea  of  such  a  perplexing  and  difficult  service".6 
In  March  the  Company  again  petitioned  parliament  for  a  loan  of 
£1,500,000.  In  May,  Burgoyne  developed  his  attack  upon  Clive  in 
the  Commons,  and  amongst  the  resolutions  accepted  by  the  House 
was  one  "That  all  acquisitions,  made  under  the  influence  of  a  military 
force,  or  by  treaty  with  foreign  princes,  do  of  right  belong  to  the 
State".7  This  was  in  one  sense  a  definite  declaration  of  sovereignty 
over  the  Company's  territories,  but  it  might  be  asked  first,  what  is 
the  exact  validity  of  a  resolution  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and 

1  Pagct-Toynbec,  Letters  of  Horace  Walpole,  vra,  149. 

*  Correspondence  of  Chatham,  iv,  210.  *  Idem,  p.  276. 

*  Glcig,  Memoirs  of  Warren  Hastings ,  n,  557.         *  Correspondence  of  Chatham,  iv,  271 . 

*  Malcolm,  Life  of  Lord  Clive,  m,  313.  7  Parliamentary  History,  xvn,  856. 


i88         THE  COMPANY  AND  THE  STATE,  1772-86 

secondly,  could  the  claim  apply  to  the  anomalous  system  created  in 
Bengal  by  the  grant  of  the  diwanni?  The  curious  form  of  the  ex- 
pression used,  "under  the  influence  of  a  military  force",  instead  of 
some  simpler  phrase  such  as  "by  conquest",  was  no  doubt  intended 
to  cover  the  de  facto  position  in  Bengal.  Burke  in  various  speeches 
still  resisted  all  attempts  to  extend  state  control  over  the  Company. 
He  disbelieved  in  the  motives  of  the  government:  "The  pretence  of 
rectifying  abuses,  of  nourishing,  fostering  and  protecting  the  Company 
was  only  made  with  a  design  of  fleecing  the  Company".  The  pretext 
for  interfering  was  the  same  in  1773  as  in  1767,  but  "Have  these  evils 
been  rectified?  Have  any  of  the  criminals  been  summoned  before 
you?  Has  their  conduct  been  enquired  into?  Not  one  single  suspected 
person  has  been  examined".  If  these  evils  really  existed,  it  could 
only  be  concluded  that  ministers 

sanctified  this  bloodshed,  this  rapine,  this  villainy,  this  extortion. .  .for  the  valuable 

consideration  of  £400,000 This  crime  tax  being  agreed  to,  we  heard  no  more 

of  malpractices.  The  sinners  were  arrayed  in  white-robed  innocence ;  their  misdeeds 
were  more  than  atoned  for  by  an  expiatory  sacrifice  of  the  pecuniary  kind .... 

And  again: 

I  have  studied,  God  knows ;  hard  I  have  studied,  even  to  the  making  dogs'  ears  of 
almost  every  statute  book  in  the  kingdom,  and  I  now  thus  publicly  and  solemnly 
declare  that  all  you  have  been  doing  and  all  you  are  about  to  do,  in  behalf  of  the 
East  India  Company,  is  impolitic,  is  unwise,  and  entirely  repugnant  to  the  letter  as 
well  as  the  spirit  of  the  laws,  the  liberties,  and  the  constitution  of  this  country.1 

Two  acts  of  parliament  were  now  passed.  The  first  granted  the 
Company  a  loan  of  £1,400,000  at  4  per  cent,  on  certain  conditions. 
The  second  was  the  important  Regulating  Act.  The  latter  did  three 
things.  It  remodelled  the  constitution  of  the  Company  at  home,  it 
remodelled  the  constitution  of  the  Company  in  India,  and  it  ten- 
tatively and  incompletely  subjected  the  Company  to  the  supervision 
of  the  ministry  and  the  subordinate  presidencies  to  the  supervision 
of  the  supreme  government  in  Calcutta.  The  bill  was  fiercely  opposed 
by  the  Company  and  its  friends.  The  Company's  own  petition  declared 
that  the  bill  "will  destroy  every  privilege  which  the  petitioners  hold 
under  the  most  sacred  securities  that  subjects  can  depend  upon  in 
this  country".  The  act  "under  the  colour  of  Regulation,  will  anni- 
hilate at  once  the  powers  of  the . . .  Company,  and  virtually  transfer 
them  to  the  Crown".2  The  City  of  London  also  petitioned  against 
the  bill  on  the  ground  that  "the  privileges  the  City  of  London  enjoy 
stand  on  the  same  security  as  those  of  the  East  India  Company".8 
One  of  the  directors  in  the  House  of  Commons  stigmatised  the  bill 
as  "a  medley  of  inconsistencies,  dictated  by  tyranny,  yet  bearing 
throughout  each  line  the  mark  of  ignorance".4  Burke  described  the 
principle  of  the  measure  as  "an  infringement  of  national  right, 
national  faith,  and  national  justice".6  But  the  bill  was  passed  by 

1  Parliamentary  History,  xvii,  819 — 21,  835.  *  Idem,  pp.  889-90. 

8  Idem,  p.  889.  *  Idem,  pp.  890-1.  *  Idem,  p.  902. 


THE  REGULATING  ACT  189 

131  to  21  votes  in  the  Commons  and  by  74  to  17  in  the  Lords. 
Its  main  provisions  were  as  follows:  The  qualification  for  a  vote  in 
the  Court  of  Proprietors  was  raised  from  £500  to  £1000  and  was 
restricted  to  those  who  had  held  their  stock  for  at  least  twelve  months. 
Measures  were  taken  to  prevent  the  collusive  transfer  of  stock,  and 
the  consequent  multiplying  of  votes.  The  directors  were  henceforth 
to  be  elected  for  four  years,  and  one-fourth  of  their  number  must 
retire  every  year,  remaining  at  least  one  year  out  of  office.  There  was 
to  be  a  Governor-General  of  Bengal  assisted  by  four  councillors.  The 
vote  of  the  majority  was  to  bind  the  whole,  the  governor-general 
having  merely  a  casting  vote  when  there  was  an  equal  division  of 
opinion.  The  governor-general  and  council  were  to  have  power  to 
superintend  the  subordinate  presidencies  in  making  war  or  peace. 
The  directors  were  to  lay  before  the  treasury  all  correspondence  from 
India  dealing  with  the  revenues;  and  before  a  secretary  of  state 
everything  dealing  with  civil  or  military  administration.  The  first 
governor-general  and  councillors,  Warren  Hastings,  Clavering, 
Monson,  Barwell  and  Philip  Francis,  were  named  in  the  act.  They 
were  to  hold  office  for  five  years,  and  future  appointments  were  to 
be  made  by  the  Company.  The  act  empowered  the  crown  to  establish 
by  charter  a  Supreme  Court  of  Justice,  consisting  of  a  chief  justice 
and  three  puisne  judges.  Liberal  salaries  were  granted,  £25,000  to 
the  governor-general,  £10,000  to  each  councillor  and  £8000  to  the 
chief  justice. 

Something  by  way  of  detailed  criticism  may  now  be  attempted  on 
these  clauses.  The  alteration  in  the  voting  qualification  of  the  General 
Court  was  introduced  with  a  view  to  prevent  the  Company's  servants, 
when  they  returned  from  the  East,  from  gaining  an  excessive  influence 
over  the  directors.  The  raising  of  the  qualification  meant  that  1246 
of  the  smaller  holders  of  stock  were  disqualified.  It  was  generally 
held  that  the  clause  failed  to  attain  its  object. 

"The  whole  of  the  regulations  concerning  the  Court  of  Proprietors",  said  the 
authors  of  the  Ninth  Report  of  the  Select  Committee  of  1781,  "relied  upon  two 
principles,  which  have  often  proved  fallacious,  namely  that  small  numbers  were 
a  security  against  faction  and  disorder,  and  that  integrity  of  conduct  would  follow 
the  greater  property.  "l 

There  was  certainly  a  good  deal  of  point  in  the  argument  of  those 
who  held  that,  by  abolishing  the  vote  of  the  £500  stock-holders,  the 
act  punished  the  small  proprietors,  who  could  not  split  votes,  and 
rewarded  those  who  could. 

The  change  in  the  constitution  of  the  court  of  directors  was  made 
with  the  view  of  giving  the  members  of  the  court  greater  security  of 
tenure,  lessening  the  temptation  to  secure  votes  by  a  corrupt  dis- 
pensation of  patronage,  and  encouraging  a  more  continuous  and 

1  Reports  from  Committees  of  the  House  of  Commons,  vi,  46. 


igo        THE  COMPANY  AND  THE  STATE,  1772-86 

consistent  policy  at  home  and  abroad.  Hitherto  the  twenty-four 
directors  were  elected  each  year,  and  might  have  been  completely 
changed  at  each  election.  As  Clive  once  averred,  they  spent  the  first 
half  of  their  year  of  office  in  discharging  the  obligations  by  which 
they  had  purchased  their  seats,  and  the  other  half  in  canvassing  and 
preparing  for  a  new  election.  At  the  first  election  after  the  bill  passed, 
six  directors  were  to  be  chosen  for  one  year,  six  for  two  years,  six  for 
three  years  and  six  for  the  full  term  of  four  years.  In  practice  the  six 
who  retired  each  year  were  always  re-elected  for  the  following  year 
and  the  effect  therefore  was  as  Kaye  notes,  "to  constitute  a  body  of 
thirty  directors,  of  whom  six,  forming  a  sort  of  non-effective  list,  go 
out  every  year  by  rotation".1  It  was  of  course  possible  for  the  pro- 
prietors at  each  election  to  have  chosen  six  new  members,  but  in 
practice  they  never  did  so. 

It  was  unfortunate  that  the  governor-general  was  not  given  in  the 
last  resort  power  to  override  his  council.  After  1786  this  was  found 
to  be  necessary,  and  it  has  ever  since  remained  a  prerogative  of  the 
governor-general.  Hastings  always  felt  deeply  the  restrictions  on  his 
power  and  more  than  once  declared  that  experience  would  prove 
the  governor-general  must  have  this  privilege  in  reserve.  After  five 
years'  experience  of  the  working  of  the  act,  he  writes  in  1779: 

I  would  not  continue  the  pageant  that  I  am. .  .for  all  the  rewards  and  honours 
that  the  king  could  give  me.  I  am  not  Governor.  All  the  means  I  possess  are  those 
of  preventing  the  rule  from  falling  into  worse  hands  than  my  own. 2 

And  again: 

What  I  have  done  has  been  by  fits  and  intervals  of  power,  if  I  may  so  express  it, 
and  from  the  effects,  let  a  judgement  be  formed  of  what  this  state  and  its  resources 
are  capable  of  producing  in  hands  more  able  and  better  supported.3 

It  was  not  perhaps  the  fault  of  the  framers  of  the  act,  for  the  matter 
was  very  difficult  to  define,  but  the  clause  giving  Calcutta  control 
over  the  subordinate  presidencies  worked  badly.  Calcutta  was  given 
powers  of  superintending  and  controlling  the  subordinate  govern- 
ments so  far  that  the  latter  were  not  to  commence  hostilities  or  make 
treaties  without  its  consent,  but  then  followed  two  exceptions  of 
disastrous  latitude;  namely,  unless  the  case  were  one  of  such  imminent 
necessity  as  would  make  it  dangerous  to  await  the  arrival  of  orders, 
or  unless  the  local  government  had  received  orders  direct  from  home. 
But  the  main  reason  probably  was  that  the  other  presidencies  had 
been  so  long  independent  that  it  would  take  some  time  before  a 
tradition  of  loyalty  to  the  supreme  government  could  grow  up. 
Hastings  records  his  disappointment  at  the  result  of  the  act  in  this 
respect, 

1  Kaye,  The  Administration  of  the  East  India  Company,  p.  123. 
1  Gleig,  op.  cit.  n,  274.  *  Idem,  p.  309. 


THE  REGULATING  ACT  191 

The  act  gives  us  a  mere  negative  power  and  no  more.  It  says  the  other  presidencies 
shall  not  make  war  nor  treaties  without  the  sanction  of  this  government,  but  care- 
fully guards  against  every  expression  which  can  imply  a  power  to  dictate  what  the 
other  presidencies  shall  do  t ...  Instead  of  uniting  all  the  powers  of  India,  all  the  use 
we  have  hitherto  made  of  this  act  of  Parliament  has  been  to  tease  and  embarrass".1 

The  clause  empowering  the  crown  to  establish  a  Supreme  Court  of 
Justice  by  charter  was  unhappily  vague.  It  left  undefined  the  field 
of  jurisdiction,  the  law  to  be  administered  and,  above  all,  the  relations 
between  the  council  and  the  court. 

It  is  interesting  to  note,  in  view  of  what  happened  afterwards,  that 
when  the  names  of  the  governor-general  and  councillors  were  inserted 
in  the  act,  Lord  North  recommended  the  name  of  Hastings  "as  a 
person  to  whom  nobody  would  object".2  For  the  post  of  councillor 
General  Monckton's  claims  were  advocated  against  Clavering's,  but 
the  other  names  were  accepted  without  any  opposition.  The  dis- 
sentient Lords  recorded  a  protest  against  the  appointment  of  executive 
officers  in  parliament  as  plainly  unconstitutional. 

The  Regulating  Act  was  in  operation  for  eleven  years  till  it  was 
superseded  by  Pitt's  act  of  1784.  Warren  Hastings  was  the  only 
governor-general  who  had  to  administer  India  under  it.  After  1784 
we  have,  as  Sir  Alfred  Lyall  has  pointed  out,  a  series  of  parliamentary 
governors-general  with  wider  powers  and  a  more  independent 
position.  The  act  was  probably  on  the  whole  an  honest  attempt  to 
deal  with  a  difficult  problem,  but  it  was  open  to  many  criticisms. 
A  speaker  in  the  Commons  in  1781  said  of  it  not  unfairly,  "In  the 
mode  of  applying  a  reform,  Parliament  was  precipitate  and  individuals 
were  intemperate  " . 3 

Certain  remedial  and  supplementary  legislation  followed  on  the 
Regulating  Act.  It  will  be  remembered  that  the  governor-general 
and  council  were  appointed  for  five  years.  Their  period  of  office 
would  therefore  normally  lapse  in  1779.  It  also  happened  that  by 
the  act  of  1744  the  Company's  privileges  were  to  determine  in  1780 
unless  definitely  extended.  The  position  was  a  curious  one;  there  was 
a  possibility  of  the  government  in  India  and, the  existence  of  the 
Company  at  home  coming  to  an  end  almost  simultaneously.  North,  to 
call  attention  to  the  legal  position,  moved  in  1 780  that  the  state  debts 
to  the  Company  should  be  paid  off  (they  amounted  to  £4,200,000) 
and  that  formal  notice  should  be  given  to  the  Company  of  its  dis- 
solution. The  motion  was  made  the  excuse  for  an  acrimonious  attack 
from  the  opposition.  Fox  asked  "whether  the  Noble  Lord  was  not 
content  with  having  lost  America?  Or  was  he  determined  not  to 
quit  the  situation  in  which  he  stood,  till  he  had  reduced  the  dominions 
of  the  Crown  to  the  confines  of  Great  Britain"?4  Burke,  with 
characteristic  violence,  stigmatised  the  proposal  to  give  notice  to  the 

1  Gleig,  op.  cit.  n,  41-2.  *  Parlianuntary  History,  xvn,  896. 

*  Idem,  xxi,  1 194.  *  Idem,  p.  310. 


192        THE  COMPANY  AND  THE  STATE,  1772-^6 

Company  as  "the  most  wicked,  absurd,  abandoned,  profligate,  mad, 
and  drunken  intention  that  ever  was  formed".1  North  replied  coolly 
that  his  motion  was  meant  merely  "as  putting  in  a  claim  on  the 
behalf  of  the  public,  to  the  reversion  of  a  right  which  undoubtedly 
belonged  to  them,  at  that  moment  when  it  was  especially  proper  that 
it  should  be  formally  made5'.2  By  acts  of  17 79  and  1 780  the  Company's 
privileges  were  extended  for  a  year  and  it  was  enacted  that  no  changes 
were  to  take  place  in  the  offices  of  governor-general  and  council  at 
Calcutta.  As  North  had  now  for  some  time  shown  himself  hostile  to 
Hastings,  the  reason  for  this  reappointment  is  undoubtedly  that  given 
by  Gleig:  "the  Minister  who  had  lost  America,  did  not  care  to  risk 
the  loss  of  India  likewise,  and  therefore  sought  to  represent  matters  as 
great  and  prosperous  there".3  A  more  permanent  act  was  passed  in 
1781.  This  act,  besides  other  less  important  regulations,  extended 
the  Company's  privileges  to  three  years'  notice  after  i  March,  1791, 
and  obliged  it  to  submit  to  a  secretary  of  state  all  dispatches  proposed 
to  be  sent  to  India  relating  to  political,  revenue  and  military  matters. 
The  Company  was  also  to  pay  £400,000  to  the  state  in  discharge  of 
all  claims  up  to  i  March,  1781,  to  pay  dividends  out  of  its  profits  of 
8  per  cent.,  and  out  of  the  remainder  of  its  profits,  if  any,  three- 
quarters  were  to  go  to  the  state. 

The  year  1781  saw  also  the  appointment  of  two  more  committees 
of  enquiry,  one  select,  on  the  administration  of  justice  in  India, 
presided  over  by  Burke,  and  the  other  secret,  on  the  causes  of  the  war 
in  the  Carnatic,  presided  over  by  Dundas.  The  first  committee 
resulted  in  the  act  of  1781  amending  the  constitution  of  the  Supreme 
Court,  which  will  be  dealt  with  later.  Both  committees  poured  forth 
voluminous  reports.  Twelve  were  issued  by  the  Select  and  six  by  the 
Secret  Committee.  The  ninth  and  eleventh  reports  of  the  Select 
Committee  were  written  by  Burke  himself.  The  friends  of  the  Company 
naturally  did  not  like  them.  Lord  Thurlow  in  the  House  of  Lords  said 
contemptuously  that  he  paid  as  much  attention  to  them  as  he  would 
do  to  the  history  of  Robinson  Crusoe.  Johnstone  in  the  Commons  on 
a  motion  for  the  printing  of  one  of  the  reports  declared  that  he  did 
not  object  to  the  publication  of  what  was  "frivolous,  ridiculous,  and 
absurd,  and  fit  only  to  be  presented  on  such  a  day  as  this"  (it 
happened  to  be"  ist  April).  He  accused  the  majority  of  the  committee 
of  "heat  and  violence, ...  passion  and  prejudice".4  Burke  angrily 
defended  the  committees;  "their  conduct",  he  said,  "had  been  an 
instance  of  the  most  extraordinary  perseverance,  and  the  most  steady 
and  patient  assiduity,  that  perhaps  ever  had  occurred".5  Though 
the  reports  undoubtedly  display  a  certain  amount  of  prejudice,  yet 
they  have  often  been  unduly  neglected  by  the  historian,  and  their 
value  as  a  storehouse  of  facts  and  documents  is  considerable.  At  any 

1  Parliamentary  History,  xxi,  313.  *  Idem,  p.  312.  8  Gleig,  op.  cit.  n;  469. 

*  Parliamentary  History,  xxm,  715-16,  *  Idem,  p.  717. 


HASTINGS^  RECALL  DEMANDED  193 

rate  their  effect  at  the  time  upon  parliament  and  the  nation  was  very 
great.  In  April,  1782,  Dundas  moved  that  the  reports  of  the  Secret 
Committee  should  be  referred  to  a  committee  of  the  whole  house  and 
followed  this  up  by  a  long  series  of  forty-five  resolutions  condemning 
many  of  the  principles  and  practices  of  the  Indian  administration  as 
censured  in  the  reports.  But  the  attempt  of  the  Commons  at  dis- 
ciplinary action  proved  a  dismal  failure.  Bills  of  pains  and  penalties 
were  introduced  against  Sir  Thomas  Rumbold  and  Whitehill,  ex- 
governors  of  Madras,  but  these  bills  after  long  discussion  were  finally 
dropped  in  1  783  because  it  proved  impossible  to  keep  a  quorum  in 
the  House  to  discuss  them.  Mill  says  most  unfairly  that  Rumbold 
"consented  to  accept  of  impunity  without  acquittal".1  Rumbold, 
on  the  contrary,  had  repeatedly  urged  that  it  was  unfair  to  him  not 
to  come  to  a  definite  verdict,  and  as  late  as  June,  1  783,  implored  the 
House  in  God's  name  to  "put  an  end  to  the  business  speedily,  and 
either  send  him  to  condemnation  or  acquittal".2  But  a  stroke  was 
now  aimed  at  greater  game.  On  30  May,  1782,  the  Commons 
resolved  that  it  was  the  duty  of  the  directors  to  pursue  all  legal  and 
effectual  means,  i.e.  by  representation  to  the  crown,  to  recall  Hastings 
and  Hornby,  governor  of  Bombay,  for  "having,  in  sundry  instances, 
acted  in  a  manner  repugnant  to  the  honour  and  policy  of  this  nation, 
and  thereby  brought  great  calamities  on  India,  and  enormous  ex- 
penses on  the  East  India  Company".3  According  to  the  Regulating 
Act,  Hastings  was  only  removable  by  the  crown  on  representation 
from  the  court  of  directors.  The  Commons  therefore  could  only 
constitutionally  adopt  the  roundabout  course  of  calling  upon  the 
directors  to  approach  the  crown.  An  extraordinary  concatenation  of 
events  followed,  illustrating  the  cumbrousness  of  the  state's  semi- 
control  of  the  Company.  In  reply  to  the  House  of  Commons  the 
General  Court  on  19  June,  1782,  passed  a  resolution  of  contemptuous 
defiance  against  the  recall  of  Mr  Hastings  merely  in  compliance  with 
a  vote  of  one  house  of  the  legislature.  The  directors,  however,  who 
naturally  in  their  position  of  greater  responsibility  did  not  find  it  so 
easy  to  flout  the  government,  decided  on  2  October  reluctantly  by 
a  small  majority  after  holding  eleven  meetings  that  they  would 
approach  the  crown  for  his  recall.  Scott  told  Hastings  that  the 
governor  and  deputy-governor  carried  the  vote  against  him,  "  the  two 
chairs  are  against  you",4  and  declares  that  the  Company's  solicitor 
had  shown  him  the  draft  of  a  resolution  by  which  the  directors  hoped 
to  soften  the  blow  as  much  as  possible.  The  resolution,  after  acknow- 
ledging Hastings's  many  very  great  and  meritorious  services,  declared 

that  in  no  one  act  of  his  government  hath  he  been  actuated  by  a  corrupt  motive, 
nor  is  he  suspected  of  peculation;  but  it  is  resolved  by  this  court  that  Warren 

1  Mill,  The  History  of  British  India,  iv,  532. 

1  Parliamentary  History,  xxui,  985. 

•  Idem,  p.  75.  *  Gleig,  op.  cit.  n,  485. 


cmv 


194        THE  COMPANY  AND  THE  STATE,  1772-86 

Hastings  Esq.  hath  formed  wrong  opinions  upon  points  of  great  political  importance; 
and  that  he  hath  acted  upon  those  opinions  so  as  to  bring  great  distress  upon  this 
Company.1 

But  the  letter  of  recall  was  never  sent,  for  the  General  Court  by  a  large 
majority  rescinded  the  resolution  of  the  directors.  The  government 
upon  this  refused  to  pass  for  transmission  to  India  the  dispatch  drawn 
up  by  the  directors  informing  Hastings  of  this  series  of  occurrences, 
though  of  course  everyone  was  aware  that  unofficially  he  would  be 
cognisant  of  the  whole  of  them.  This  strange  imbroglio  showed 
three  things:  first  that  the  hold  of  Hastings  on  the  allegiance  of 
the  proprietors,  whom  indeed  he  was  wont  to  call  his  constituents, 
was  very  strong;  secondly,  that  the  Company  still  possessed  a  large 
measure  of  practical  independence ;  and  thirdly,  that  the  clause  in 
the  act  of  1781  making  it  necessary  to  submit  outward  dispatches  to 
the  secretary  of  state  was  liable  to  result  in  a  rather  ludicrous  dead- 
lock. 

Things  could  obviously  not  be  left  in  this  inconclusive  and  un- 
satisfactory state.  The  Regulating  Act  had  clearly  broken  down.  It 
had  neither  given  the  state  a  definite  control  over  the  Company,  nor 
the  directors  a  definite  control  over  their  servants,  nor  the  governor- 
general  a  definite  control  over  his  council,  nor  the  Calcutta  Presidency 
a  definite  control  over  Madras  and  Bombay.  The  whole  question  was 
reopened  in  1783,  for  the  Company  in  March  was  again  obliged  to 
petition  for  financial  relief,  and  the  country  as  a  whole  was  inclined 
to  agree  with  Burke  that  "the  relief  and  reformation  of  the  Company 
must  go  together.  The  Company  had  flown  in  the  face  of  Parliament " . 2 

Three  successive  proposals  were  put  forward,  those  namely  of 
Dundas,  Fox  and  Pitt.  Dundas  introduced  his  bill  in  April,  1783, 
Its  main  provisions  were :  That  the  crown  should  have  power  to  recall 
the  principal  servants  of  the  Company  (the  power  was  thus  no  longer 
to  be  consequent  on  representations  from  the  directors);  that  the 
control  of  Bengal  over  the  other  presidencies  should  be  increased ; 
that  the  governor-general  should  have  the  power  of  acting  on  his 
own  responsibility  in  opposition  to  the  opinions  of  his  council,  and 
also  be  empowered,  if  necessary,  to  hold  the  office  of  commander- 
in-chief;  that  the  displaced  zamindars  in  Bengal,  i.e.  those  displaced 
by  the  results -of  the  quinquennial  settlement,  should  be  restored. 
The  bill  was  obviously  aiming  everywhere  at  centralisation.  It 
strengthened  the  power  of  the  crown  over  the  governor-general  and 
the  control  of  the  governor-general  both  over  his  own  council  and 
the  subordinate  governments.  It  is  from  this  aspect  that  Malcolm 
called  it  a 

Bill  for  appointing  a  person  who,  under  the  high  title  of  Governor-General  and 
Captain-General,  should  exercise  in  his  own  person  (under  certain  checks)  complete 
authority  and  control  over  British  India.8 

1  Gleig,  op.  cit.  n,  493.        >  Parliamentary  History,  xxra,  647. 
8  Malcolm,  Political  Histovy  of  India*  i,  37. 


FOX'S  BILLS  195 

In  his  introductory  speech  Dundas  already  pointed  to  the  desirability 
of  appointing  Cornwallis  governor-general  by  a  strong  panegyric 
on  his  character: 

that  man,  of  whom  all  men  and  all  parties  were  lavish  in  commendation.  A  man 

of  family,  of  fortune,  and  the  most  unsullied  reputation On  the  virtues  of  this 

man  the  late  ministry  built,  and  justly  built,  all  their  hopes  of  the  salvation  of  our 
dying  interests  in  Asia.  Here  there  was  no  broken  fortune  to  be  mended,  here  was 
no  avarice  to  be  gratified.  Here  was  no  beggarly  mushroom  kindred  to  be  provided 
for — no  crew  of  hungry  followers  gaping  to  be  gorged.1 

But  as  Dundas  was  now  in  opposition  there  was  no  chance  of  his  bill 
becoming  law,  and  after  its  introduction  it  was  allowed  to  drop. 

On  1 8  November,  1783,  Fox  introduced  his  two  famous  bills.  The 
first  dealt  in  detail  with  matters  of  administration  and  may  not 
unfairly  be  said  to  have  definitely  forbidden  in  future  most  of  the 
characteristic  acts  of  the  Hastings  administration.  The  second  and 
better  known  bill  gave  the  Company  a  new  constitution.  In  the 
preliminary  debates  Pitt  himself  had  clamoured  for  a  bill  "not  of 
temporary  palliation  or  timorous  expedients;  but  vigorous  and 
effectual,  suited  to  the  magnitude,  the  importance  and  the  alarming 
exigency  of  the  case".  The  bill  was  in  some  respects  vigorous  and 
effectual  enough.  It  proposed  entirely  to  sweep  away  both  the  court 
of  directors  and  the  court  of  proprietors  and  to  set  up  two  bodies : 
(i)  seven  commissioners,  or  directors,  to  administer  the  revenues  and 
territories  of  India  and  to  appoint  or  dismiss  all  persons  in  the  Com- 
pany's service.  They  were  to  be  named  in  the  act  and  were  irremovable 
except  on  an  address  from  either  house  of  parliament.  Vacancies 
were  to  be  filled  by  the  crown.  Fox's  reason  for  this  last  provision  was 

that  he  felt  already  the  inconvenience  of  Parliamentary  appointments;  for  at 
present  the  Governor-General  of  Bengal,  deriving  under  an  Act  of  Parliament, 
seemed  to  disavow  any  power  in  the  Court  of  Proprietors,  Directors,  or  the  King 
himself  to  remove  him. 2 

The  board  was  to  sit  in  London  and  parliament  was  to  have  oppor- 
tunity to  inspect  the  minutes  of  its  proceedings.  This  faas  no  doubt  to 
meet  the  criticism  that  the  commissioners  were  given  too  independent 
a  power.  (2)  Nine  assistant  directors  (eight  in  the  original  draft)  were 
to  be  nominated  in  the  act  from  the  proprietors  with  the  largest 
holdings  in  the  Company.  They  were  to  be  appointed  for  five  years, 
and  vacancies  were  filled  by  the  court  of  proprietors. 

The  debates  on  the  bills  took  up  a  very  large  measure  of  parlia- 
mentary time  and  are  of  great  interest.  The  bills  were  bitterly  opposed 
by  the  Company  and  all  the  Indian  interest.  Fox,  with  his  usual  lack 
of  political  astuteness,  had  failed  to  make  any  terms  with  the  Com- 
pany, or  to  take  it  into  his  confidence.  He  avowedly  based  the 
necessity  for  the  measure  upon  the  Company's  "extreme  distress  and 

1  Parliamentary  History,  xxm,  759.  *  Idem,  p.  1201. 


1 96        THE  COMPANY  AND  THE  STATE,  1772-86 

the  embarrassed  state  of  their  affairs",  his  bill  "was  the  only  possible 
means  of  averting  and  preventing  the  final  and  complete  destruction 
of  the  Company's  interests".1  It  was  patent  to  all  the  world,  as 
Malcolm  says,  that  Fox's  seven  commissioners  were  "  to  act  like  trustees 
to  a  bankrupt  house  of  commerce",2  and  it  was  this  charge  of  in- 
solvency that  the  Company  and  its  friends  particularly  resented.  It 
was  indeed  clear  that  Fox,  who  never  really  understood  finance,  had 
largely  failed  to  grasp  the  pecuniary  position  of  the  Company,  which, 
as  one  of  its  supporters  in  parliament  declared,  "so  far  from  being 
bankrupt,  had  but  a  very  trifling  mortgage  on  a  very  fine  estate  ".8  In 
contrasting  his  bill  with  that  of  Dundas,  Fox  declared  the  latter 
"aimed  at  lodging  an  absolute  and  despotic  power  of  government 
in  India.  This  provided  a  controllable  government;  but  it  was  a 
powerful  government,  and  it  was  at  home".4  He  admitted  that  his 
bill  "was  a  child  not  of  choice,  but  of  necessity".6  He  was  willing 
at  present  to  leave  the  question  of  the  right  to  territorial  possessions 
undecided.  The  measure  was  to  set  up  "a  mixed  system  of  govern- 
ment, adapted. .  .to  the  mixed  complexion  of  our  interests  in  India".6 
He  met  the  charge  of  giving  patronage  to  the  crown,  or  rather  to 
ministers,  by  the  pertinent  question,  "What  great  officer  had  been 
appointed,  but  by  the  advice  and  influence  of  Ministers?  And  ought 
they  to  have  been  otherwise?"7  But  he  did  nothing  to  smooth  the 
passage  of  the  bill  by  his  fierce  onslaught  on  the  existing  government 
of  India,  which  he  described  as  "a  system  of  despotism  unmatched 
in  all  the  histories  of  the  world".8  Nor  could  he  refrain  from  fierce 
invective  against  the  governor-general, 

a  man  who,  by  disobeying  the  orders  of  his  employers,  had  made  himself  so  great 
as  to  be  now  able  to  mix  in  every  question  of  State,  and  make  every  measure  of 
government  a  personal  point  in  which  he  had  a  share.  * 

Both  the  virulence  and  the  honesty — however  mistaken — of  his 
detestation  of  Hastings  shine  out  clearly  in  his  final  speech  on  the 
bill. 

1'he  Indian  people,  he  cried,  "in  spite  of  every  exertion  both  of  the  legislature 
and  Court  of  Directors,  groan  under  me  scourge,  the  extortion,  and  the  massacre, 
of  a  cruel  and  desperate  man,  whom  in  my  conscience  and  from  my  heart  I  detest 
and  execrate".10  - 

Burke  delivered  one  of  the  greatest  of  all  his  speeches  in  support  of 
the  bill.  Wraxall,  who  was  no  particular  friend  of  his,  declared  that 
it  was  the  finest  speech  delivered  in  the  House  of  Commons  while  he 
was  a  member  of  it.11  Indeed,  though  the  orator's  language  was 

1  Parliamentary  History,  xxin,  1 188.    *  Malcolm,  Political  History  of  India,  i,  40. 
8  Parliamentary  History,  xxin,  1212. 

4  Idem,  p.  1276.  *  Idem,  p.  1262.  8  Idem,  p.  1200. 

7  Idem,  p.  1277.  8  Idem,  p.  1407.  »  Idem,  pp.  1274-5, 

w  Idtm,  xxiv,  221.  u  Wraxall,  Historical  memoirs,  rv,  567-8. 


BURKE'S  SPEECH  197 

surcharged  with  passion  and  emotion,  there  is  no  doubt  that  he  struck 
some  shrewd  blows  at  the  defects  of  the  Company's  administration 
and  testified  his  own  sincere  if  unbalanced  devotion  to  what  he 
conceived  to  be  the  wrongs  of  the  Indian  peoples.  He  spoke  of 
himself  with  a  certain  proud  humility  as 

a  member  of  Parliament,  who  has  supplied  a  mediocrity  of  talents  by  the  extreme 
of  diligence,  and  who  has  thought  himself  obliged,  by  the  research  of  years,  to 
wind  himself  into  the  inmost  recesses  and  labyrinths  of  the  India  detail.1 

And  again: 

Our  Indian  government  is  in  its  best  state  a  grievance.  It  is  necessary  that  the 
correctives  should  be  uncommonly  vigorous;  anal  the  work  of  men  sanguine,  warm, 
and  even  impassioned  in  the  cause.2 

As  long  as  he  remains  on  the  abstract  plane  of  political  philosophy, 
his  treatment  of  his  subject  is  lofty  and  unimpeachable: 

If  we  are  not  able  to  contrive  some  method  of  governing  India  well,  which  will 
not  of  necessity  become  the  means  of  governing  Great  Britain  ill,  a  ground  is  laid 
for  their  eternal  separation;  but  none  for  sacrificing  the  people  of  that  country  to 
our  constitution ...  .1  am  certain  that  every  means,  effectual  to  preserve  India 
from  oppression,  is  a  guard  to  preserve  the  British  constitution  from  its  worst 
corruption. 8 

He  would  have  none  of  the  doctrine  that  it  was  impossible  to  act 
owing  to  the  chartered  rights  of  the  Company.  Monopolistic  rights, 
granted  by  a  legislature,  are  something  very  different  from  natural 
rights.  The  Company's  rights  were  indeed  "stamped  by  the  faith  of 
the  King. .  .stamped  by  the  faith  of  Parliament",  but  if  abuse  was 
proved,  they  must  be  recalled: 

All  political  power  which  is  set  over  men,  and  all  privilege,  claimed  or  exercised 
in  exclusion  of  them,  being  wholly  artificial,  and  for  so  much  a  derogation  from 
the  natural  equality  of  mankind  at  large,  ought  to  be  some  way  or  other  exercised 
ultimately  for  their  benefit. .  .such  rights,  or  privileges. .  .are  all,  in  the  strictest 
sense,  a  trust;  and  it  is  of  the  very  essence  of  every  trust  to  be  rendered  accountable; 
and  even  totally  to  cease,  when  it  substantially  varies  from  the  purposes  for  which 
alone  it  could  have  a  lawful  existence. .  ..4 

But  his  indignation  too  often  hurried  him  into  invective.  The  Com- 
pany's government  was  "one  of  the  most  corrupt  and  destructive 
tyrannies,  that  probably  ever  existed  in  the  world".6 

There  is  not  a  single  prince,  state,  or  potentate,  great  or  small,  in  India,  with 
whom  they  have  come  into  contact,  whom  they  have  not  sold;. .  .there  is  not  a 
single  treaty  they  have  ever  made,  which  they  have  not  broken;. .  .there  is  not  a 
single  prince,  or  state,  who  ever  put  any  trust  in  the  Company,  who  is  not  utterly 
ruined.9 

1  Parliamentary  History,  xxni,  1313.  *  Idem,  pp.  1334-5. 

1  Idem,  p.  1314.  4  Idem,  pp.  1316-17.  •  Idem9  p.  1376. 

9  Idem,  p.  1322. 


198'        THE  COMPANY  AND  THE  STATE,  1772-^86 

The  speech  contains  the  famous  passage  on  the  Company's  servants? 
how 

animated  with  all  the  avarice  of  age,  and  all  the  impetuosity  of  youth,  they  roll  in  one 
after  another;  wave  after  wave;  and  there  is  nothing  before  the  eyes  of  the  natives 
but  an  endless,  hopeless,  prospect  of  new  flights  of  birds  of  prey  and  passage,  with 
appetites  continually  renewing  for  a  food  that  is  continually  wasting. .  ..Their 
prey  is  lodged  in  England;  and  the  cries  of  India  are  given  to  seas  and  winds,  to 
be  blown  about  in  every  breaking-up  of  the  monsoon,  over  a  remote  and  unhearing 
ocean.1 

It  is  the  fashion  to  discount  such  a  passage  as  mere  rhetoric  and 
prejudice,  but  it  is  after  all  its  universality  and  its  total  want  of  relief 
that  makes  it  misleading.  To  prove  the  large  residuum  of  truth  behind 
the  burning  words,  we  need  only  cite  the  evidence  of  Warren  Hastings 
himself.  In  the  first  year  of  his  governor-generalship  he  wrote : 

Will  you  believe  that  the  boys  of  the  service  are  the  sovereigns  of  the  country, 
under  the  unmeaning  title  of  supervisors,  collectors  of  the  revenue,  administrators 
of  justice,  and  rulers,  heavy  rulers  of  the  people?2 

and  eight  years  later,  after  all  his  attempted  reforms,  he  speaks  in  a 
moment  of  unwonted  candour  of  the  sphere  of  his  administration  as: 

r  u 

a  system  charged  with  expensive  establishments,  and  precluded  by  thcMnultitude 
of  dependents  and  the  curse  of  patronage,  from  reformation ;  a  government  de- 
bilitated by  the  various  habits  of  inveterate  licentiousness.  A  country  oppressed 
by  private  rapacity,  and  deprived  of  its  vital  resources  by  the  enormous  quantities 
01  current  specie  annually  exported  in  the  remittance  of  private  fortunes. .  ..8 

Are  these  admissions  of  the  administrator  at  all  at  variance  with  the 
terrible  invective  of  the  orator? 

It  is,  however,  clear  that  what  really  ruined  the  bill  was  the  tre- 
mendous unpopularity  of  the  Fox  and  North  coalition.  Most  of  the 
speakers  hardly  made  any  attempt  to  discuss  it  on  its  merits  at  all, 
but  were  never  tired  of  reflecting  obliquely  on  the  recent  amalgama- 
tion of  the  two  statesmen.  One  member  suggested  that  Hastings  and 
Francis  should  be  associated  in  the  government  of  India,  "and  thus 
make  a  new  coalition'5.4  Fox  at  last  was  stung  into  a  protest: 

The  coalition  is. .  .a  fruitful  topic;  and  the  power  of  traducing  it,  which  the 
weakest  and  meanest  creatures  in  the  country  enjoy  and  exercise,  is  of  course  equally 
vested  in  men  of  rank  and  parts,  though  every  man  of  parts  and  rank  would  not 
be  apt  to  participate  in  the  privilege.6 

Generally  speaking,  the  language  of  Fox's  opponents  seems  to  modern 
ears  grotesque  and  insincere.  Grenville,  for  instance,  said  that  the 
aim  of  the  bill  was  "no  less  than  to  erect  a  despotic  system  which 
might  crush  the  free  constitution  of  England5'.6  Pitt's  attack  was  the 
most  effective,  though  he,  too,  when  he  described  the  bill  as  "one  of 
the  boldest,  most  unprecedented,  most  desperate  and  alarming 
attempts  at  the  exercise  of  tyranny,  that  ever  disgraced  the  annals  of 

1  Parliamentary  History,  xxm,  1333-4.        *  Glcig,  op.  cit.  i,  234.        *  Idem,  n,  329. 
4  Parliamentary  History,  xxm,  1308.  5  Idem,  p.  1422.  *  Idem,  p.  1325. 


FOX'S  COMMISSIONERS 

this  or  any  other  country",1  was  yielding  to  the  unreal  histrionic 
atmosphere  of  the  debate.  Apart  from  this,  he  dwelt  mainly  on  the 
danger  of  conferring  the  patronage  of  India  on  the  nominees  of  a 
party,  and  the  want  of  co-operation  between  the  seven  commissioners 
and  the  cabinet.  The  former  were 

a  small  junto,  politically  connected,  established  in  a  manner  independent  of  the 
crown,  by  whom  India  was  to  be  converted  into  one  vast  political  engine,  an  engine 
that  might  be  brought  to  bear  against  the  independence  of  this  house.8 

Jenkinson  put  the  same  point  more  temperately  when  he  objected  to 
the  bill  as  "setting  up  within  the  realm  a  species  of  executive  govern- 
ment, independent  of  the  check  or  control  of  the  Crown".8  There 
was  undoubtedly  some  truth  in  this,  and  seven  commissioners  did  not 
appear  to  be  properly  subordinated  to  the  imperial  government;  but 
it  must  be  remembered,  first,  that  there  was  no  easy  solution  of  the 
problem,  and  if  Pitt  afterwards  succeeded  in  solving  it,  he  was  able 
to  profit  by  Fox's  errors  and  experiments. 

The  government  found  it  difficult  to  meet  the  charge  that  they 
were  destroying  the  East  India  Company.  Burke  declared  that  their 
aim  was  to  cure  not  to  kill.  In  sly  allusion  to  this  metaphor,  Wilberforce 
compared  the  seven  directors  and  eight  assistant  directors  to  seven 
physicians  and  eight  apothecaries  come  to  put  the  patient  to  death 
secundwn  artem.* 

The  commissioners  nominated  were  Lord  Fitzwilliam,  F.  Montague, 
Sir  Henry  Fletcher,  R.  Gregory,  Colonel  North,  Viscount  Lewisham 
and  Sir  Gilbert  Elliot.  Professor  Holland  Rose  declares  that  all  these 
were  partisans  of  Fox  or  North.  "If  Fox  and  North",  he  says,  "had 
chosen  the  seven  commissioners  fairly  from  among  all  three  parties, 
the  mouths  of  gainsayers  would  have  been  stopped."6  This  seems 
inherently  reasonable  and  probable,  but  it  would  not  appear  from 
the  parliamentary  debates  that  this  particular  point  was  made  by 
any  one  of  the  opponents  of  the  bill.  In  his  final  speech  Fox  answered 
his  critics  and  ended  by  declaring: 

I  risk  my  all  upon  the  excellence  of  this  Bill;  I  risk  upon  it  whatever  is  most  dear 
to  me,  whatever  men  most  value,  the  character  of  integrity,  of  talents,  of  honour, 
of  present  reputation  and  future  fame;  these,  and  whatever  else  is  precious  to  me, 
I  stake  upon  the  constitutional  safety,  the  enlarged  policy,  the  equity  and  the 
wisdom  of  this  measure. 6 

The  words  proved  true  in  a  sense  perhaps  other  than  he  had  intended. 
He  had  indeed  risked — and  lost — almost  the  whole  of  his  future  career 
upon  his  ill-fated  measure. 

The  bill  was  passed  in  the  Commons  by  208  to  108,  but  was 
defeated  in  the  Lords  by  nineteen  votes  through  the  daring  inter- 
vention of  George  III,  who  was  determined  to  stick  at  nothing  in  his 

1  Idem,  p.  1279.  *  Idem,  xxrv,  41 1.  8  Idem,  xxin,  1238. 

1  G.  Holland  Rose,  Life  of  William  Pitt,  Part  i,  p.  146. 
*  Parliamentary  History,  xxin,  1433. 


200*       THE  COMPANY  AND  THE  STATE,  1772-86 

efforts  to  free  himself  from  the  hated  control  of  the  Coalition.  He 
had  consulted  Lord  Temple  and  commissioned  him  to  show  to  the 
peers  a  letter  in  which  he  stated  that  he  would  regard  anyone  who 
voted  for  the  bill  as  "not  only  not  his  friend,  but  his  enemy".  The 
ministry  was  dismissed  on  18  December. 

Pitt  came  into  office  and  brought  in  his  India  bill,  January,  1784. 
It  was  treated  contemptuously  by  the  opposition,  who  still  had  a  large 
majority  in  the  Commons.  But  Fox  made  his  terrible  tactical  mistake 
of  opposing  a  dissolution;  his  only  chance  was  to  appeal  to  the  country 
as  soon  as  possible  in  the  hope  that  popular  disapproval  of  the  king's 
unconstitutional  action  might  counteract  the  unpopularity  of  the 
Coalition.  Instead  of  this  he  resisted  every  suggestion  of  such  a  course, 
and  so  enabled  Pitt  to  display  to  the  world  his  wonderful  skill  and 
adroitness  in  holding  his  enemies  at  bay.  At  the  right  moment  Pitt 
dissolved  parliament,  came  back  with  a  triumphant  majority,  re- 
introduced  his  bill  with  some  slight  modifications  and  passed  it  in 
August,  1784.  The  act  established  six  "Commissioners  for  the  Affairs 
of  India"  popularly  known  as  the  Board  of  Control.  They  were  to 
consist  of  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  a  secretary  of  state  and 
four  privy  councillors  appointed  by  the  king  and  holding  office  during 
pleasure.  They  were  unpaid,  for  Pitt  hoped  that  "there  could  be 
found  persons  enough  who  held  offices  of  large  emolument,  but  no 
great  employment,  whose  leisure  would  amply  allow  of  their  under- 
taking the  duty  in  question".1  The  secretary  of  state  was  to  preside; 
failing  him  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  and  failing  him  the  senior 
of  the  four  privy  councillors.  Urgent  or  secret  orders  of  the  com- 
missioners might  be  transmitted  to  India  through  a  secret  committee 
of  directors,  and  the  court  of  proprietors  was  deprived  of  any  right 
to  annul  or  suspend  any  resolution  of  the  directors  approved  by  the 
board.  The  government  of  India  was  placed  in  the  hands  of  a 
governor-general  and  council  of  three,  and  the  subordinate  presi- 
dencies were  made  definitely  subject  to  Bengal  in  all  questions  of  war, 
revenue  and  diplomacy.  Only  covenanted  servants  were  in  future  to 
be  appointed  members  of  council.  The  experiment  of  appointing 
outsiders  had  been  too  calamitous. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  how  largely  Pitt  had  profited  both  by  the 
experience  under  the  Regulating  Act  and  by  the  criticism  directed 
against  Fox's  India  bills.  In  his  introductory  speech  he  compares 
his  own  bill  with  that  of  his  rival,  as 

affording  as  vigorous  a  system  of  control,  with  less  possibility  of  influence,— 
securing  the  possessions  of  the  East  to  the  public,  without  confiscating  the  property 
of  the  Company;  and  beneficially  changing  the  nature  of  this  defective  government 
without  entrenching  on  the  chartered  rights  of  men.2 

The  Board  of  Control  obviously  represented  Fox's  seven  com- 
missioners, but  there  is  a  fundamental  difference.  They  do  not  stand 

1  Parliamentary  History,  xxiv,  1093.  *  Idem,  pp.  319-20. 


THE  BOARD  OF  CONTROL  201 

apart  as  an  independent  executive  body,  they  are  linked  up  with  the 
government  of  the  day,  for  the  two  most  important  members  at  least 
change  with  each  ministry.  Further,  they  had  no  patronage,  and  did 
not  appoint  or  dismiss  the  Company's  servants  in  India.  In  other 
respects,  though  their  power  was  veiled,  it  was  nearly  as  extensive  as 
that  of  Fox's  commissioners,  for  they  had  access  to  all  the  Company's 
papers  and  their  approval  was  required  for  all  dispatches  relating  to 
other  than  commercial  business.  In  case  of  emergency  they  could 
send  their  own  drafts  to  the  secret  committee  of  the  directors,  to  be 
signed  and  sent  out  in  the  name  of  the  Company.  This  secret  com- 
mittee was  a  curious  device  by  which  the  court  of  directors  kept  a 
show  of  independence,  though  liable  to  the  complete  control  of  the 
board.  According  to  the  act,  it  was  to  consist  of  not  more  than  three 
directors.  In  practice,  it  nearly  always  consisted  of  two,  the  chairman 
and  the  deputy  chairman  of  the  court.  Clearly  the  ultimate  direction 
had  passed  to  the  cabinet,  and  when  Pitt  was  pressed  to  the  point, 
he  frankly  and  openly  acknowledged  it,  the  public  control  of  India 
"could  not,  with  safety  or  propriety,  be  placed  in  any  other  hands 
than  those  of  the  genuine  and  legitimate  executive  power  of  the 
constitution".1  The  directors  were  mainly  satisfied,  because  they 
were  left  with  the  patronage  and  the  right  of  dismissing  their  servants. 
They  had  recognised  that  something  would  have  to  be  sacrificed, 
and  they  might  well  be  satisfied  with  what  they  had  been  allowed  to 
retain.  For,  though  Fox  declared  that  "if  ever  a  charter  was  com- 
pletely and  totally  annulled,  it  was  the  charter  of  the  East  India 
Company  by  the  present  bill",2  and  that  "it  worked  upon  the 
Company's  rights  by  slow  and  gradual  sap",8  yet,  besides  the 
patronage,  the  directors  were  left  with  considerable  powers  of  revision 
and  initiation.  As  Mill  says: 

The  power  is  considerable  which  appears  to  remain  in  the  hands  of  the  directors 
. . .  whenever  there  is  not  a  strong  motive  to  interfere  with  business  of  detail, 
there  is  always  a  strong  motive  to  let  it  alone.  There  yet  has  never  been  any  great 
motive  to  the  Board  of  control  to  interfere. .  ..Of  the  power  which  the  directors 
retain,  much  is  inseparable  from  the  management  of  detail.4 

In  any  case  Pitt  had  taken  the  wise  precaution  of  neutralising,  as  far 
as  possible,  opposition  from  the  Company. 

"In  proposing",  he  said,  "a  new  system  of  government  and  regulation,  he  did 
not  disdain  to  consult  with  those,  who,  having  the  greatest  stake  in  the  matter  to 
be  new-modelled,  were  likely  to  be  the  best  capable  of  giving  him  advice.  He 
acknowledged  the  enormous  transgressions  of  acting  with  their  consent,  rather 
than  by  violence;. .  ..He  had  not  dared  to  digest  a  bill  without  consultation."6 

In  January  he  had  a  conference  with  representatives  from  Leadenhall 
Street.  The  act  in  the  end  was  based  on  resolutions  which  were  drawn 

1  Idem,  p.  322.  *  Idem,  p.  1124.  8  Idem,  pp.  1127-8. 

Mill,  Histor  of  India,  rv,  396.  5  Parliamentary  History,  xxrv,  318-19. 


202         THE  COMPANY  AND  THE  STATE,  1772-86  * 

up  and  accepted  by  a  General  Court.  Pitt  was  therefore  able  to  claim 
that  the  bill  came  forward  "fortified  and  recommended  by  the  consent 
of  the  Company".1 

The  act  was  drafted  with  great  skill.  Burke  admitted  that  it  was 
"as  able  and  skilful  a  performance  for  its  own  purposes,  as  ever  issued 
from  the  wit  of  man".2  Pitt,  as  Sir  Courtney  Ilbert  has  pointed  out, 
had  done  two  things;  he  had  avoided  the  charge  of  conferring 
patronage  on  the  crown,  and  also  the  appearance  of  radically  altering 
the  constitution  of  the  Company.  He  himself  declared  "that  to  give 
the  Crown  the  power  of  guiding  the  politics  of  India  with  as  little 
means  of  corrupt  influence  as  possible,  is  the  true  plan  for  India,  and 
is  the  true  spirit  of  this  Bill".8  He  had  linked  up  the  East  India 
Company  and  the  imperial  government.  "Sir",  he  said  in  the  House, 
"I  do  wish  the  persons  who  shall  rule  India  to  maintain  always  a 
good  understanding  with  administration".  Fox  had  compared  the 
powers  of  the  Board  of  Control  to  those  of  a  new  secretary  of  state, 
and  had  lamented  that  such  an  office  should  be  created.  "I  accept 
of  his  comparison",  said  Pitt,  "and  I  say  that  the  power  of  govern- 
ment over  India  ought  to  be  in  the  nature  of  that  of  a  Secretary  of 
State".  Fox's  bill,  he  averred,  only  ensured  a  permanency  of  men, 
his  own  act  meant  a  permanency  of  system.4 

The  most  questionable  and  ineffective  clauses  in  the  act  were  those 
requiring  the  Company's  servants  to  declare  on  oath  the  amount  of 
property  they  had  brought  back  from  India,  and  establishing  a  special 
court,  consisting  of  three  judges,  four  peers  and  six  members  of  the 
House  of  Commons  for  trial  of  offences  committed  in  India.  The 
greatest  opposition  was  raised  to  this  clause.  "The  tribunal",  said 
Fox,  "might  fairly  be  called  a  bed  of  justice,  for  justice  would  sleep 
upon  it."5  It  was  attacked  as  inquisitorial  and  as  violating  the 
Englishman's  right  of  trial  by  jury. 

On  the  whole  we  may  admit  that  it  was  a  great  bill.  It  did  in  spite 
of  all  defects  answer  the  main  questions  as  propounded  by  Erskine  in 
the  House  of  Commons  in  1783:  "Was  it  fit  that  private  subjects 
should  rule  over  the  territories  of  the  state  without  being  under  its 
controlling  powers"?6  Pitt  never  pretended  that  his  solution  was  a 
perfect  one. 

"Any  plan",  he  said,  "which  he  or  any  man  could  suggest  for  the  government 
of  territories  so  extensive  and  so  remote,  must  be  inadequate;  nature  and  fate  had 
ordained  in  unalterable  degrees,  that  governments  to  be  maintained  at  such  a 
distance,  must  be  inadequate  to  their  end."7 

Scott,  Hastings's  agent  in  London,  believed  that  the  passing  of  the 
bill  heralded  a  change  for  the  better  in  his  patron's  fortunes.  He  tells 
Hastings  that  Dundas  has  now  become  his  friend,  that  Lord  Thurlow 

1  Parliamentary  History,  xxiv,  412.  »  Idem,  xxv,  206.  »  Idem,  xxrv,  408. 

4  Idem,  pp.  40^-10.  •  Idem,  p.  1 135.  •  Idem,  xxra,  1293. 

7  7<&m,  xxrv,  321. 


HASTINGS  ON  THE  INDIA  ACT  203 

is  anxious  to  make  him  an  English  peer  by  the  title  of  Lord  Daylesford, 
that  Burke  and  Francis  are  entirely  discredited.  He  only  regrets  that 
the  lack  of  opposition  in  the  Lords  prevented  Lord  Thurlow  from 
"giving  Mr  Francis  a  precious  trimming ".*  A  little  later  he  writes 
that,  though  Pitt  has  pronounced  Hastings  to  be  a  very  great,  and 
indeed  a  wonderful  man  who  has  done  very  essential  service  to  the 
state,  "and  has  a  claim  upon  us  for  everything  he  can  ask",  yet  the 
resolutions  of  the  House  of  Commons,  standing  upon  the  Journals, 
are  at  present  a  bar  to  the  granting  of  an  honour  "until  the  sting  of 
those  resolutions  is  done  away  by  a  vote  of  thanks  for  Mr  Hastings's 
great  services".2  But  Hastings  himself,  writing  and  watching  with 
anxiety  and  expectancy  in  the  East,  came  to  a  very  different  con- 
clusion. He  read  the  bill  and  the  speeches  in  the  debates  with  the 
deepest  disgust. 

"I  have  received  and  studied  Mr  Pitt's  bill",  he  wrote,  "and  receive  it  as  so 
unequivocal  a  demonstration  that  my  resignation  of  the  service  is  expected  and 
desired,  that  I  shall  lose  no  time  in  preparing  for  the  voyage. "  3 

He  was  perhaps  too  apt  to  regard  all  the  attacks  upon  the  Indian 
system  as  directed  against  himself  personally : 

It  has  destroyed  all  my  hopes,  both  here  and  at  home What  devil  has 

Mr  Pitt  dressed  for  his  exemplar,  and  clothed  with  such  damnable  attributes  of 
ambition,  spirit  of  conquest,  thirst  of  blood,  propensity  to  expense  and  troubles, 
extravagance  and  improvidence . . .  disobedience  of  orders,  rapacity,  plunder, 
extortion ...  .And  am  I  this  character?  Assuredly  not;  but  most  assuredly  was 
it  the  declaimer's  intention  to  fix  it  upon  me. 4 

The  logical  supplement  to  Pitt's  act  was  contained  in  three  short 
measures  passed  in  1 786.  The  first  repealed  the  provisions  requiring 
the  Company's  servants  to  disclose  on  oath  the  amount  of  property 
they  brought  home  from  India.  The  special  court  to  try  in  England 
offences  committed  in  India  was  remodelled,  but  it  was  in  fact  never 
constituted.  The  second  act  made  the  approval  of  the  crown  for  the 
choice  of  the  governor-general  unnecessary,  though  the  king  of  course 
had  still  the  power  of  recall.  The  third  empowered  the  governor- 
general  in  special  cases  to  override  the  majority  of  his  council — the 
dissentient  councillors  having  the  privilege  of  recording  written 
protests — and  enabled  the  governor-general  to  hold  also  in  emergencies 
the  office  of  commander-in-chief.  Lord  Cornwallis  had  made  this 
measure  a  condition  of  his  acceptance  of  the  post  of  governor-general. 
The  bill  was  fiercely  opposed  by  Burke,  who  declared  that  the 
principle  of  it  was 

to  introduce  an  arbitrary  and  despotic  government  in  India. .  .the  preamble  of 
the  clause  which  laid  it  down. . .  that  arbitrary  power  was  necessary  to  rive  vigour 
and  dispatch,  was  a  libel  on  the  liberties  of  the  people  of  England,  and  a  libel  on 
the  British  constitution.6 

1  Gleig,  op.  cit.  m,  107,  170,  172.  *  Idem,  p.  174. 

*  Idem,  p.  217.  *  Idem,  pp.  224,  226. 

5  Parliamentary  History,  xxv,  1274. 


204        THE  COMPANY  AND  THE  STATE,  1772-86 

Pitt  argued  that  the  bill  was  only  the  logical  development  of  the  act 
of  1784.  He  always  thought  that  the  power  of  the  governor-general 
ought  to  be  put  on  a  different  footing: 

in  the  former  Bill,  therefore,  his  powers  had  been  enlarged  by  diminishing  the 
number  of  the  Council,. .  .and  in  the  present  Bill  the  same  principle  was  still 
adhered  to  and  farther  followed  up.1 

1  Parliamentary  History,  xxv,  1290. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  EARLY  REFORMS  OF  WARREN  HASTINGS 

IN  BENGAL 

IN  1772  Warren  Hastings  was  appointed  governor  of  Bengal.  He 
had  already  been  twenty-two  years  in  India.  Born  at  Churchill  in 
Oxfordshire  on  6  December,  1732,  he  had  been  educated  at  West- 
minster School  and  reached  Calcutta  in  1 750  as  a  writer,  the  lowest 
grade  in  the  Company's  service.  In  the  troubles  in  Bengal,  1756-7) 
he  was  imprisoned  at  Murshidabad  by  Siraj-ud-daula,  but  was  soon 
released.  After  dive's  reconquest  of  Calcutta  he  was  made  Resident 
at  Murshidabad.  In  the  revolutions  in  the  Muhammadan  govern- 
ment in  1 760  and  1 763  he  seems  to  have  played  an  entirely  honourable 
part.  Burke  is  wrong  and  unjust  when  he  says:  "He  was  co-existent 
with  all  the  acts  and  monuments  of  that  revolution,  and  had  no  small 
share  in  all  the  abuses  of  that  abusive  period".1  Lord  North  declared 
more  truly  that  at  this  period  Hastings  "though  of  flesh  and  blood, 
had  resisted  the  greatest  temptations".2 

Hastings  returned  to  England  in  1 764.  His  hands  were  clean,  but 
it  is  unnecessary  to  speak  of  his  conduct  as  a  miracle  of  self-denial* 
He  did  indeed  bring  home  an  amount  of  wealth  honourably  moderate 
in  comparison  with  that  of  some  of  his  contemporaries,  and  every 
credit  should  be  given  to  him  for  it;  yet  at  the  age  of  thirty-two  he 
had  acquired  by  legitimate  means  in  fourteen  years  a  competence  of 
£30,000 — a  rather  striking  commentary  on  the  normal  emoluments 
at  this  time  of  an  Indian  career.  Of  this  sum  he  soon  lost  £25,000 
in  an  unwise  and  thoroughly  characteristic  investment,  for  he  was 
incurably  imprudent  in  the  conduct  of  his  own  money  matters. 

In  1 766  the  directors  were  impressed  by  the  ability  with  which  he 
gave  evidence  before  a  committee  of  the  Commons,  and  in  1769  he 
was  sent  back  to  India  to  be  second  of  council  at  Madras.  There  he 
won  further  favour  by  the  skill  with  which,  as  export  warehouse- 
keeper,  he  improved  the  plan  for  the  Company's  investments.  At 
the  end  of  1771  he  was  appointed  governor  of  Bengal,  "a  station", 
as  he  said  himself,  "of  more  £clat,  but  of  more  trouble  and  difficulty".8 
We  cannot  wonder  that  Hastings  felt  no  undue  elation  at  his  prospects. 
He  would  have  a  council  of  twelve  or  thirteen  members,  and  all 
questions  would  be  decided  by  a  majority  of  votes.  The  governor's 
chance  of  controlling  his  colleagues  depended  on  his  own  personality, 
on  his  being  the  sole  executive  official  when  council  was  not  actually 
sitting,  and  on  an  undefined  but  traditional  influence  over  the  exercise 

1  Burke* s  Works,  vu,  55.       a  M.  E.  Mpnckton  Jones,  Warren  Hastings  in  Bengal ',  p.  104. 

1  Glcig,  op.  cit.  i,  225. 


206     EARLY  REFORMS  OF  HASTINGS  IN  BENGAL 

of  patronage.  He  had  in  fact,  as  he  himself  declared,  "no  other  pre- 
eminence beside  that  of  a  greater  responsibility".1  Hastings,  how- 
^ever,  almost  dominated  his  council.  The  truth  is  that  as  long  as  a 
majority  of  votes  could  decide  all  questions,  the  governor-general  was 
more  secure  against  unreasonable  opposition  in  a  large,  than  in  a 
small,  council,  for  in  the  former  there  was  more  chance  of  finding  a 
certain  number  of  men  of  good  will,  and  a  wider  sphere  within  which 
his  personal  powers  might  exert  themselves.  In  the  smaller  council 
the  governor-general's  position  was  insecure  till  the  state  in  1786 
reluctantly  consented  to  grant  him  in  the  last  resort  the  power  to 
override  a  hostile  majority.  We  must  add  that  Hastings's  control  over 
foreign  relations  was  strengthened  by  the  fact  that  they  were  managed 
by  a  select  committee  of  himself  and  two  others.  It  is  evident  that 
down  till  October,  1774,  he  was  allowed  almost  unhampered  control. 

What  was  the  exact  position  of  the  British  in  Bengal  in  1772?  The 
British  dominions  consisted  of  a  curious  conglomeration  of  territories, 
held  by  a  curious  variety  of  titles.  We  may  divide  them  into  three 
classes.  The  first  class  consisted  of  Burdwan,  Midnapur,  Chittagong, 
acquired  in  1760,  which  were  held  free  of  all  revenue  tax.  The  second 
class  was  made  up  of  Calcutta  itself,  won  in  1698,  and  the  24- 
Parganas,  acquired  in  1757.  The  Company  held  these  territories  on 
a  zamindari  title  paying  an  annual  revenue  to  the  nawab.  But  by  a 
curious  legal  fiction  the  24-Parganas  would  after  1785  pass  into  the 
first  class.  This  came  about  as  follows :  The  revenue  paid  for  them  by 
the  Company  was  assigned  by  the  Moghul  emperor  in  1 759  to  Lord 
Clive  as  a  jagir.  The  directors  stopped  payment  of  it  to  him  in  1763, 
but  in  1 765,  wishing  to  make  use  of  his  services  again,  they  made  an 
agreement  with  him  by  which  he  or  his  representatives  were  to  enjoy 
the  revenue  of  the  jagir  for  ten  years,  after  which  time  it  would  lapse 
to  the  Company.  When,  however,  he  returned  home  in  1766,  they 
granted  to  him  or  to  his  representatives  another  period  extending  to 
1785.  In  the  third  class  we  must  place  Bengal,  Bihar  and  Orissa, 
over  which  provinces  the  Company  held  the  diwanni,  or  right  to 
collect  and  administer  the  revenue,  which  had  been  granted  to  them 
in  1765.  They  paid  at  this  time  twenty-six  lakhs  of  rupees  to  the 
emperor  for  the  right  to  administer  the  diwanni,  and  thirty-two  lakhs 
to  the  nawab  of  Bengal  for  the  expenses  of  government,  retaining  the 
surplus  for  themselves. 

From  1765  to  1772  the  actual  administration  was  in  the  hands  of 
two  Indian  officials  known  as  naib  diwans,  or  deputy  finance  ministers 
— the  Company  itself  being  the  actual  diwan — Muhammad  Reza 
Khan  in  Bengal  and  Shitab  Rai  in  Bihar.  Their  activities  were  to 
a  limited  extent  regulated  by  British  supervisors  who  were  to  have 
"a  controlling  though  not  an  immediate,  active  power  over  the 
collections",2  first  appointed  in  1769.  The  holders  of  this  office  must 

1  Monckton  Jones,  Warren  Hastings  in  Bengal,  p.  2200.  2  Idcmt  p.  89. 


HASTINGS'S  POSITION  207 

of  course  be  distinguished  from  the  three  eminent  ex-servants  of  the 
Company,  also  called  supervisors,  who  were  sent  out  this  same  year 
with  almost  autocratic  powers  to  reform  the  whole  administration 
of  the  Company,  but  whose  ship  after  leaving  the  Cape  sank  some- 
where in  mid-ocean.  This  system  of  Indian  executive  officers  under 
a  vague  British  control  was  the  famous  dual  system.  It  was  now 
in  ill  repute,  for  while  the  Company  itself  was  in  serious  financial 
straits,  its  servants  were  returning  to  England  with  great  fortunes. 
For  its  failure  in  India  we  have  to  go  no  further  than  the  admissions 
of  some  of  the  Company's  servants  who  were  endeavouring  to  ad- 
minister it. 

" It  must  give  pain  to  an  Englishman",  wrote  Becher,  Resident  at  Murshidabad 
in  1769,  "to  have  reason  to  think,  that  since  the  accession  of  the  Company  to  the 
Diwani,  the  condition  of  the  people  of  this  country  has  been  worse  than  it  was 
before;  and  yet  I  am  afraid  the  fact  is  undoubted. .  ..This  fine  country,  which 
flourished  under  the  most  despotic  and  arbitrary  government,  is  verging  towards 
its  ruin,  while  the  English  have  really  so  great  a  share  in  the  administration."1 

And  again: 

I  well  remember  this  country  when  Trade  was  free  and  the  flourishing  state  it 
was  then  in;  with  concern  I  now  see  its  present  ruinous  condition. .  ..* 

Furthermore,  the  directors  strongly  suspected  that  the  naib  diwans 
were  intercepting  a  great  part  of  the  revenue  that  ought  to  have 
reached  the  Company's  exchequer. 

Such  was  the  state  of  things  with  which  Hastings  was  called  upon 
to  deal.  He  was  definitely  appointed  to  put  an  end  to  the  dual 
system.  He  was,  in  fact,  selected  to  take  the  place  of  the  three  super- 
visors, Scrafton,  Forde  and  Vansittart,  to  whose  tragic  end  we  have  just 
referred.  "We  now  arm  you  with  our  full  powers",  wrote  the  Com- 
pany, "to  make  a  complete  reformation."8  The  responsibility  there- 
fore was  very  great.  Though  he  was  given  definite  instructions  on 
most  points,  it  is  to  a  certain  extent  true,  as  Lord  Thurlow  says,  that 
he  was  ordered  "  to  destroy  the  whole  fabric  of  the  double  government 
. .  .he  was  to  form  a  system  for  the  government  of  Bengal,  under 
instructions  so  general,  that  I  may  fairly  say  the  whole  plan  was  left 
to  his  judgment  and  discretion".4  So,  too,  Hastings  claimed  for 
himself:  "The  first  acts  of  the  government  of  Bengal,  when  I  presided 
over  it,  were  well  known  at  the  time  to  have  been  of  my  formation, 
or  formed  on  principles  which  I  was  allowed  to  dictate".6  For  good 
or  ill,  then,  the  internal  reforms  in  Bengal  prior  to  1774  are  mainly 
in  their  details  at  any  rate  the  work  of  Warren  Hastings  and  bear  the 
stamp  of  his  personality. 

*  Idem,  p.  85.  *  Idem,  p.  83.  »  Idem,  p.  145. 

4  Debates  of  the  House  of  Lords,  on  the  evidence  delivered  in  the  trial  of  Warren  Hastings. . . . 
London,  i797»P»  132. 

5  Selections  from  the  State  Papers  of  the  Governor-General. . .  Warren  Hastings,  Ed.  Forrest, 
1,63. 


ao8     EARLY  REFORMS  OF  HASTINGS  IN  BENGAL 

He  had  great  difficulties  to  confront.  Something  like  an  Indian 
Empire  had  grown  up,  but  it  had  no  administrative  framework. 
"The  new  government  of  the  Company  consists  of  a  confused  heap 
of  undigested  materials,  as  wild  as  the  chaos  itself."1  "Our  con- 
stitution is  nowhere  to  be  traced  but  in  ancient  charters,  which  were 
framed  for  the  jurisdiction  of  your  trading  settlements,  the  sales  of 
your  exports,  and  the  provision  of  your  annual  investment."2 
"I  found  this  government  in  possession  of  a  great  and  rich  dominion, 
and  a  wide  political  system  which  has  been  since  greatly  extended, 
without  one  rule  of  government,  but  what  descended  to  it  from  its 
ancient  commercial  institutions."8 

He  had  to  attack  strong  vested  interests,  and,  what  is  more,  he  had 
to  try  to  strengthen  an  overweakened  central  government  against 
a  too-powerful  exterior  ring  of  provincial  powers.  The  political  centre 
of  gravity  had  got  seriously  displaced.  The  government  of  the  country, 
he  wrote,  consisted  of  the  supervisors,  the  boards  of  revenue  at  Mur- 
shidabad  and  Patna,  the  governor  and  council  at  Calcutta.  Hastings 
is,  of  course,  naming  these  powers  in  exactly  the  reverse  of  their 
theoretical  position  in  the  hierarchy  of  administration,  but,  as  he  says, 
"the  order  in  which  I  have  named  them  is  not  accidental,  but 
consonant  to  the  degree  of  trust,  power  and  emolument  which  they 
severally  possess".4  In  the  government  of  Bengal  "all  trust,  power 
and  profit  are  in  the  hands  of  its  deputies,  and  the  degree  of  each 
proportionate  to  their  want  of  rank  in  the  service".6  He  tells  us  else- 
where that  "every  man  capable  of  business  runs  away  to  the  collector- 
ships  or  other  lucrative  stations At  the  Presidency,  where  the  best 

assistance  is  required,  the  worst  only  can  be  had. .  .".6 

The  reforms  themselves  fall  under  three  heads,  first  the  commercial 
reforms,  secondly,  the  reform  of  the  judicature  and  the  settlement  of 
land  revenue,  dealt  with  elsewhere,  and  thirdly,  all  those  measures 
which  followed  on  the  abolition  of  the  dual  government  in  pursuance 
of  the  Company's  professed  intention  "to  stand  forth  as  Diwan". 

Hastings's  commercial  reforms  involved  the  following  changes.  He 
abolished  in  March,  1775,  the  fraudulent  use  of  the  dustuck  or  free 
pass  under  which  the  goods  of  the  Company's  servants  or  their  agents 
were  exempted  from  dues.  Thus  the  old  problem  which  had  haunted 
so  disastrously  the  administrations  of  Vansittart  and  Verelst  was  at 
last  settled.  He  suppressed  the  custom-houses  (or  chokeys)  in  the 
zamindaris,  which  were  a  great  impediment  to  the  free  circulation 
of  goods.  Only  five  central  custom-houses  were  henceforth  main- 
tained, at  Calcutta,  Hugli,  Murshidabad,  Patna  and  Dacca.  Lastly, 
he  carried  out  a  uniform  lowering  of  the  duties  to  2  J  per  cent,  on  all 
goods,  except  the  monopolies  of  salt,  betel-nut  and  tobacco,  to  be 

1  Gleig,  op.  cit.  i,  317.  *  Idem,  p.  368.  *  Idem,  n,  148. 

4  Monckton  Jones,  Warren  Hastings  in  Bengal,  p.  148. 
*  Idem,  p.  146.  •  Gleig,  op.  cit.  i,  300. 


MUHAMMAD  REZA  KHAN  209 

paid  by  all  Europeans  and  Indians  alike.  These  reforms  were  entirely 
beneficial.  It  is  true  they  were  all  ordered  by  the  court  of  directors, 
but  Hastings  entirely  assented,  carried  out  the  details  with  expert 
knowledge  and  adroitness,  and  smoothed  away  all  opposition  by  his 
tactful  methods.  They  did  much  to  revive  the  decaying  internal  trade 
of  Benga^  Hastings  could  with  some  justice  boast  that  "goods  pass 
unmolested  to  the  extremities  of  the  province".1 

Hastings's  modification  of  the  land  revenue  system  and  the  reform 
of  the  judicature  will  be  dealt  with  elsewhere.  But  something  must 
be  said  of  the  abolition  of  the  dual  government.  Formally  it  meant 
no  more  than  that  the  Company  should  henceforth  collect  the 
revenues  through  the  agency  of  its  own  servants.  But  in  reality, 
and  in  the  peculiar  political  and  economic  position  of  Bengal,  it  meant 
becoming  responsible  for  the  whole  civil  administration.  Hastings 
hardly  exaggerated  when  he  described  it  as  "implanting  the  authority 
of  the  Company,  and  the  sovereignty  of  Great  Britain,  in  the  con- 
stitution of  this  country".2  The  first  step  was  the  abolition  of  the 
offices  of  naib  diwan  of  Bengal  and  Behar,  and  the  prosecution  of 
Muhammad  Reza  Khan  and  Shitab  Rai  for  peculation.  After  under- 
going a  long  trial  and  being  kept  in  custody  for  rather  more  than  a 
year  they  were  both  acquitted.  Shitab  Rai  was  entirely  cleared,  and 
Hastings  declared  he  scarce  knew  why  he  was  called  to  account. 
He  was  reappointed  to  high  office  in  Patna  as  rai-raian  of  Bihar,  but 
died  soon  afterwards,  largely  it  was  supposed  from  illness  brought  on 
by  the  anxieties  and  discredit  of  his  imprisonment.  Hastings  recorded 
his  epitaph  and  revealed  his  own  regret  for  the  whole  proceeding 
when  he  wrote: 

He  ever  served  the  Company  with  a  fidelity,  integrity  and  ability  which  they 
can  hardly  expect  to  expenence  in  any  future  officer  of  government,  whom  they 
may  choose  from  the  same  class  of  people. 8 

Muhammad  Reza  Khan  was  also  acquitted,  but  Grant  held  that  he 
had  for  years  intercepted  much  of  the  revenue  due  to  the  Company. 
Hastings  believed  that  he  was  culpable  but  that  it  was  impossible  in 
view  of  his  wide  connections  and  past  precautions  to  bring  him  to 
account.  The  whole  incident  is  a  curious  one  and  not  very  easy  to 
understand.  The  least  reputable  feature  of  it  was  the  expedient  of 
using  "the  abilities,  observation  and  active  malignity  of  Maharaja 
Nandakumar"  to  attack  Muhammad  Reza  Khan,  but  the  responsi- 
bility for  that  lies  with  the  court  of  directors  and  not  with  Hastings. 
It  is  clear  that  the  latter  looked  upon  the  whole  business  with  the 
greatest  distaste.  "These  retrospections  and  examinations",  he 
wrote,  "are  death  to  my  views".4  He  was  eager  to  get  on  with  his 
work  of  reformation,  and  he  could  foresee  dearly  enough  that  he 

1  Gleig,  op.  cit.  i,  304.  a  Idem,  n,  p.  30. 

1  Monckton  Jones,  Warren  Hastings  in  Bengal,  p.  199.           *  Gleig,  op.  cit.  r,  283. 

cmv  14 


2io     EARLY  REFORMS  OF  HASTINGS  IN  BENGAL 

would  not  escape  censure  for  having  brought  the  trials  "to  so  quiet 
and  unimportant  an  issue".1  In  this  he  was  not  mistaken.  Among 
the  charges  afterwards  brought  against  him  by  Nandakumar  was  one 
that  the  two  accused  men  had  offered  Hastings  and  himself  enormous 
bribes  for  an  acquittal. 

A  third  reform  was  the  reduction  from  thirty-two  to  sixteen  lakhs 
of  rupees  of  the  sum  paid  to  the  nawab  from  the  revenue  of  Bengal. 
This  was  the  third  reduction  of  this  tribute ;  originally  in  1 765  it  had 
been  fifty-three  lakhs,  in  1766  it  had  been  reduced  to  forty-one,  and 
in  1769  to  thirty-two.  As  this  change  was  carried  out  under  direct 
orders  of  the  court  of  directors,  neither  credit  nor  discredit  can  fairly 
be  attributed  to  Hastings  for  the  principle  involved,  but  the  skill  with 
which  he  so  reformed  the  administration  that  the  nawab  actually 
received  more  than  before  for  his  personal  requirements,  is  all  his 
own. 

Fourthly,  we  have  a  reform  which  in  the  eyes  of  Hastings  was  of 
the  greatest  importance,  namely,  the  removal  of  the  treasury  or  ' 
khalsa  from  Murshidabad  to  Calcutta.  This  was  the  method  taken  by 
Hastings  to  rectify  that  displacement  of  the  political  gravity  of  the 
British  administration  which  has  been  already  referred  to. 

"The  Board  of  Revenue",  wrote  Hastings,  "at  Murshidabad,  though  composed' 
of  the  junior  servants  of  the  Company,  was  superior  before  this  alteration,  to  the 
governor  and  council  of  the  presidency.  Calcutta  is  now  the  capital  of  Bengal,  and 
every  office  and  trust  of  the  province  issues  from  it. " s 

Again : 

The  seat  of  government  [is]  most  effectually  and  visibly  transferred  from 
Murshidabad  to  Calcutta,  which  I  do  not  despair  of  seeing  the  first  city  in  Asia, 
if  I  live  and  am  supported  but  a  few  years  longer. 3 

Fifthly,  we  come  to  an  expedient  which  is  much  more  difficult  to 
judge.  In  reorganising  the  household  of  the  nawab  of  Bengal,  who 
was  still  in  his  minority,  Hastings  decided  to  appoint  as  his  guardian 
not  only  a  princess,  which  considering  the  secluded  position  of  women 
in  the  East  was  itself  unusual,  but  one  who  was  not  even  the  nearest 
relative  to  the  nawab.  He  passed  over  the  prince's  mother  and  he 
appointed  the  widow  of  a  former  nawab,  Mir  Ja'far,  who  was  known 
as  the  Munm  Begam.  Rajah  Gurdas,  son  of  Nandakumar,  was  at  the 
same  time  appointed  steward  of  the  household.  For  these  appoint- 
ments Hastings  was  afterwards  vehemently  censured,  and  indeed  they 
do  seem  to  require  justification.  The  princess  was  said,  apparently 
with  truth,  to  have  been  originally  a  dancing  girl  in  the  court.  Burke 
stigmatised  Hastings's  act  as  "violent,  atrocious  and  corrupt'',4  and 
one  of  Hastings's  own  justifications— that  the  begam's  "interest  must 
lead  her  to  concur  with  all  the  designs  of  the  Company,  and  to  solicit 
their  patronage"6— may  itself  be  described  as  of  a  highly  questionable 

1  Gleig,  op,  cit.  i,  391.  »  Idem,  p.  271.  *  Idem,  p.  285. 

4  Bond,  Speeches  in  the  Trial  of  Warren  Hastings,  n,  32.  *  Gleig,  op.  cit.  i,  254. 


EXTENT  OF  REFORMS  211 

nature.  Lord  Thurlow  afterwards  protested  against  the  attacks  on 
the  princess: 

"Whatever  situation",  he  said,  "she  may  have  filled  in  her  very  early  life,, ,  4 
she  held  the  rank  of  the  first  woman  in  Bengal  for  near  forty  years,  the  wife  of  one 
prince,  the  mother  of  another  and  the  guardian  of  two  other  princes."1 

It  may  be  said  at  any  rate  that  Hastings's  choice  received  the  approval 
of  the  court  of  directors.  The  evidence  is  conflicting  as  to  the  begam's 
treatment  of  the  young  nawab.  When  in  1775  the  majority  of  the 
council  divested  the  begam  of  her  guardianship  and  appointed 
Muhammad  Reza  Khan,  the  British  officer  who  carried  out  the 
change  reported  that  the  nawab  was  rejoiced  to  recover  his  freedom, 
and  complained  that  he  had  been  stinted  of  his  proper  allowance, 
and  debarred  from  all  opportunity  of  learning  the  work  of  adminis- 
tration. The  officer  expressed  his  personal  belief  in  the  truth  of  these 
statements,  but  the  facts  and  the  deductions  from  them  were  disputed 
by  the  Resident  at  Murshidabad.2 

Before  pronouncing  a  final  verdict  on  the  work  of  these  two  years, 
1772-4,  we  may  for  a  moment  consider  the  question  how  far  Hastings 
secured  for  the  future  a  real  purification  of  the  British  administration 
in  Bengal — how  far  the  moral  of  the  Company's  servants  was  raised 
and  improved.  Undoubtedly  he  effected  much.  Recent  writers 
have  maintained  that,  when  Hastings  returned  to  England  in 
1785,  the  whole  system  of  administration  had  been  purified,  clarified 
and  reorganised,  and,  to  support  this  contention,  we  have  on 
record  an  early  letter  of  Sir  John  Shore,  then  a  junior  servant  of  the 
Company,  written  in  1782,  in  which  he  says: 

The  road  to  opulence  grows  daily  narrower,  and  is  more  crowded  with  competitors 
..  .the  court  and  directors  are  actuated  with  such  a  spirit  of  reformation  and 
retrenchment,  and  so  well  seconded  by  Mr.  Hastings,  that  it  seems  the  rescission 
of  all  our  remaining  emoluments  will  alone  suffice  it.  The  Company's  service  is 
in  fact  rendered  an  employ  not  very  desirable.1 

But  we  carj  only  accept  the  theory  that  Hastings  purified  the  ad- 
ministration with  considerable  qualifications.  In  contrast  to  such  a 
contention  we  must  set  the  fact  that  the  nearer  we  get  back 
to  Hastings's  own  time,  the  less  belief  do  we  find  in  this  theory  of 
the  entire  reformation  of  the  Company's  service.  Sir  John  Malcolm 
is  probably  much  nearer  the  truth  when  he  writes  that  Hastings's 
"  most  strenuous  advocates . . .  while  they  defend  his  personal  integrity, 
are  forced  to  acknowledge  that  the  whole  system  of  the  government 
over  which  he  presided  was  corrupt  and  full  of  abuses".4  Had 

1  Debates  of  the  House  of  Lords  in  the  Evidence. . . ,  p.  145. 

*  Forrest,  Selections  from  Letters,  Despatches  and  other  State  Papers  preserved  in  the  Foreign 
Department  of  the  Government  of  India,  1772-1785,  n,  381,  385. 

*  Lord  Teignmouth,  Memoirs  of  the  Life  and  Correspondence  of  John  Lord  Teignmouth,  I,  39. 
4  Malcolm,  Sketch  of  the  Political  History  of  India,  ed.  181 1,  p.  40. 

14-2 


212      EARLY  REFORMS  OF  HASTINGS  IN  BENGAL 

there  been  a  complete  purification  of  the  service,  there  would 
surely  have  been  nothing  for  Lord  Cornwallis  to  do,  when  he  came 
to  India  in  1 786,  but  we  know  that  there  was  abundant  material  for 
his  reforming  hand.  The  quotation  from  Sir  John  Shore  proves,  if 
any  proof  were  needed,  that  a  vigorous  attempt  at  reform  was  made, 
but  as  regards  results,  it  probably  records  the  exaggerated  appre- 
hension of  a  junior  servant  of  the  Company,  rather  than  an  actual 
fact.  Certainly  we  may  say  that  the  effects  anticipated  by  Shore  did 
not  follow. 

All  this,  however,  is  consistent  with  the  assumption  that  Hastings 
made  a  strenuous  and  loyal  endeavour,  as  far  as  in  him  lay,  to  amend 
and  purify  the  service.  Probably,  short  of  staking  his  retention  of 
office  upon  the  question,  he  did  as  much  at  first  as  was  humanly 
speaking  possible.  He  may  well  have  argued  that  to  quarrel  with  the 
court  and  to  throw  up  his  office,  because  more  power  was  not  allowed 
him,  would  merely  have  ruined  his  own  career  without  improving 
the  service.  The  trouble  was  that  he  got  no  consistent  support  from 
home.  One  party  among  the  directors  were  genuinely  desirous  of  a 
reform,  but  there  was  always  another  party  from  time  to  time  in  the 
ascendant,  who  were  prepared  to  connive  at  misconduct  in  their 
servants,  provided  that  the  value  of  their  own  patronage  was  not 
diminished.  The  plunder  was  to  be  had,  and,  as  Cornwallis  said,  they 
hoped  in  their  struggle  with  Hastings  to  secure  the  greater  part  of  it.1 
Hastings  in  1772  gives  as  one  reason  for  abandoning  his  desire  to 

remove  the  collectors  altogether,  that, 

> 

there  were  amongst  them  so  many  sons,  cousins,  or  dttves  oi  Directors,  and  intimates 
of  the  members  of  the  Council,  that  it  was  better  to  let  them  remain  than  provoke 
an  army  of  opponents  against  every  act  of  administration . . .  .They  continue,  but 
their  power  is  retrenched. 2 

In  the  end,  therefore,  Hastings  seems  to  have  compromised  to  a 
certain  extent  with  evil,  and  to  bind  men  to  his  interests,  he  freely 
used  the  means  of  patronage  at  his  disposal.  To  some  extent  he  gave 
up  the  struggle  for  reformation. 

"I  will  neither  be  responsible",  he  wrote  in  1772,  "for  the  acts  of  others,  nor 
stand  forth  as -the  general  reformer,  and  make  every  man  whose  friendship  and 
confidence  are  necessary  for  my  support  my  inveterate  enemy."8 

Again  we  find  him  writing  of  Wheler  in  1781 :  "I  have  made  it  a  rule 
to  give  him  the  first  option  in  most  vacant  appointments,  and  have 
provided  handsomely  for  all  his  friends".4  It  seems  likely,  too,  that 
having  been  obliged,  if  he  wished  to  retain  his  power,  in  the  days  of 
-Francis's  ascendancy  in  the  council,  to  use  questionable  means  to 
tvin  support,  his  finer  feelings  became  blunted.  His  carelessness  in 
money  matters  and  his  incapacity  to  keep  any  kind  of  accounts,  or 


1  Ross,  Correspondence  of. .  Marquis  Cornwallis,  i,  306* 
•  Gleig,  op.  at.  i,  369.  »  Idem,  p.  319. 


/6m,  n,  384, 


SALARIES  AND  ALLOWANCES  213 

to  recognise  the  need  of  doing  so,  were  proverbial,  and  amounted 
to  a  grave  fault.  His  own  regulations  had  strictly  forbidden  that 
the  banyan  (or  agent)  of  a  collector  should  "be  allowed  to  farm 
lands  or  directly  or  indirectly  hold  any  concern  in  any  farm".  Yet 
his  own  banyan  was  found,  with  his  knowledge  and  consent,  to  be 
farming  the  revenues  on  a  large  scale.  In  regard  to  contracts  and 
commissions,  Hastings  undoubtedly  entangled  himself  in  financial 
transactions  of  so  questionable  a  nature,  that  it  taxed  the  abilities  of 
his  counsel  to  the  utmost  to  defend  him  at  the  impeachment.  There 
can  be  no  doubt,  too,  that  by  the  end  of  his  administration  many 
of  his  supporters  among  the  Company's  servants  were  enjoying 
emoluments  entirely  disproportionate  to  the  services  they  rendered. 
Francis  pointed  out  in  parliament  in  1785  that  the  cost  of  the  civil 
establishment  of  Bengal  had  risen  from  £251,533  in  1776  to  £927,945 
eight  years  later.  There  can  be  no  possible  doubt  about  these  figures, 
for  Major  Scott,  who  rose  later  in  the  debate  to  answer  Francis,  was 
not  able  to  call  them  in  question,  and,  if  it  had  been  possible,  he  would 
surely  have  done  so.  The  rise  was  largely  due  to  the  enormous 
emoluments  of  many  of  the  Company's  servants.  The  chief  of  the 
board  that  controlled  the  salt  office  received  £18,480  a  year.  The 
salaries  of  five  other  members  ranged  from  £13,183  to  £6257. 
Again,  salaries  at  the  Board  of  Customs  amounted  to  £23,070  among 
three  persons,  and  at  the  Committee  of  Revenue  to  £47,300  among 
five  persons.1  These  statements  are  corroborated  by  a  later  speech 
of  Pitt  in  which  it  is  mentioned  that  among  the  offices  which  were  at 
that  time  open  to  the  servants  of  the  East  India  Company,  apart 
from  the  governor-generalship  and  the  office  of  councillor,  were  one 
place  of  £25,000  a  yvear,  one  of  £15,000,  five  of  £10,000  and  five  of 
£9000. 2  Now  Hasti^gs's  defence  in  the  case  of  the  salt  office  was 
that  down  to  1780  the  Company  had  gained  no  profit  from  its  salt 
monopolies,  but  that  after  he  had  hit  upon  the  expedient  of  allowing 
10  per  cent,  on  the  profits,  the  Company  in  spite  of  the  huge  com- 
missions paid  to  its  servants  acquired  a  net  revenue  of  £540,000.  It 
seemed  to  him  that  these  facts  were  a  complete  answer  to  Francis's 
charge,  but  there  was  surely  reason  in  the  latter's  contention  that 
before  the  commissions  had  risen  to  this  height  they  ought,  while  still 
being  fixed  at  a  generous  scale,  to  have  been  retrenched.  Apart  from 
this,  it  may  well  be  asked  at  what  cost  to  the  ryots  wore  these  enormous 
revenues  derived  from  one  of  the  prime  necessities  of  life. 

To  return  to  the  reforms  of  1772-4.  In  judging  them  it  is  not 
always  easy  to  specify  how  many  were  due  to  the  initiative  of  Hastings 
himself,  how  many  to  the  suggestions  of  others,  and  how  many 
direct  orders  of  the  court  of  directors.  It  is  certainly 
majority  of  them  were  enjoined  from  home.  "I  am 

1  Parliamintarv  History,  xxv,  146. 


2i4     EARLY  REFORMS  OF  HASTINGS  IN  BENGAL 

said  Hastings  on  one  occasion,  "than  the  compiler  of  other  men's 
opinions."1  But  what  is  also  clear  beyond  any  doubt,  is  the  immense 
ability,  the  tact,  the  urbanity  with  which  they  were  carried.  In  every 
period  of  history  any  notable  political  or  social  improvements,  if 
carefully  investigated,  will  be  found  to  be  largely  derived  from  a 
common  stock  of  enlightened  contemporary  opinion.  Many  of  them 
are  in  the  air  of  the  time.  But  to  argue  from  this  that  credit  must  be 
withheld  from  the  statesman  who  finally  carries  them  into  actuality 
is  extremely  unfair.  The  general  impression  forced  upon  any  enquirer 
by  a  perusal  of  the  innumerable  minutes,  letters,  consultations  and 
dispatches  of  these  two  years  is  that  Hastings  carried  along  parallel 
lines,  and  contemporaneously,  a  great  series  of  reforms,  economic, 
fiscal,  judicial  and  social.  They  form  a  fine  record  of  devoted  and 
laborious  work  and  reveal  in  their  author  administrative  capacities 
of  a  unique  kind.  He  is  master  of  every  branch  of  the  enquiry,  end- 
lessly fertile  in  resource,  convincing  in  argument,  reasonable  in 
discussion.  He  toiled  ceaselessly  and  encountered  all  opposition 
dauntlessly.  Yet  the  bitter  tragedy  of  the  whole  thing  was  that,  before 
the  work  could  be  completed,  power  and  authority  were  snatched 
away  from  him,  and  years  that  would  naturally  have  been  devoted 
to  the  further  development  of  his  great  task  were  spent  in  a  desperate 
and  sometimes  almost  a  despairing  effort  to  protect  his  position, 
career  and  honour  against  a  vindictive  and  cruel  assault.  He  speaks 
of  his  work  by  the  metaphor  of  an  unfinished  building,  "a  great  and 
weighty  fabric,  of  which  all  the  parts  were  yet  loose  and  destitute  of 
the  superior  weight,  which  was  to  give  them  their  mutual  support 
and  their. .  .collateral  strength".2 

1  Monckton  Jones,  Warren  Hastings  in  Bengal,  p.  151. 

1  Selections  from  the  State  Papers  of  the  Governors  General. . .  Warren  Hastings,  ed.  Forrest, 
II,  64. 


CHAPTER    XII 

EXTERNAL  RELATIONS  AND  THE 
ROHILLA  WAR 


abolished  the  dual  government  set  up  by  Olive, 
Hastings  had  next  to  overhaul  the  system  of  relations  established  with 
Indian  princes.  Olive's  policy  in  this  field  had  worked  well  for  five 
years,  but  changing  circumstances  had  made  revision  necessary.  At 
the  time  of  Olive's  settlement  northern  India  had  been  temporarily 
free  from  the  Maratha  terror.  It  was  the  imminent  renewal  of  that 
menace  which  entirely  altered  the  whole  situation.  The  Marathas, 
who  in  1761  had  been  driven  headlong  into  the  Deccan  after  their 
terrible  rout  at  Panipat  at  the  hands  of  Ahmad  Shah,  once  more 
recrossed  the  Narbada  in  1  769,  and  came  surging  northward  again 
to  occupy  Delhi  in  1771.  They  offered  to  restore  Shah  'Alam  to  his 
throne  and  make  his  imperial  title  a  reality.  The  emperor  consulted 
the  English,  who  implored  him  to  reject  so  dangerous  and  deceptive 
a  proposal.  In  spite  of  this,  he  agreed  to  the  Maratha  terms,  and  left 
Allahabad  in  May,  1771.  Though  the  English  had  protested,  they 
parted  with  him  amicably.  It  was  to  prove  a  momentous  and 
calamitous  decision,  and  the  misguided  emperor  was  never  again  to 
return  to  British  territory.  For  thirty-two  years  he  was  practically 
a  state  prisoner  in  the  hands  of  the  Marathas  or  the  Afghans.  A  year 
after  his  restoration,  the  Marathas  forced  upon  him  a  minister  of 
their  own  choice,  and  obliged  him  to  make  over  to  them  the  districts 
of  Kora  and  Allahabad.  A  new  and  delicate  problem  now  con- 
fronted the  Company's  servants.  To  continue  to  pay  the  tribute  was 
practically  to  subsidize  its  most  formidable  enemies.  The  Company 
was  bound  to  suffer  for  its  own  quixotic  generosity.  It  had 
bound  itself  to  pay  tribute,  as  Hastings  said,  to  an  idol  of  its 
own  creation,  "not  one  of  his  natural  subjects  offered  any  kind  of 
submission  to  his  authority,  when  we  first  fell  down  and  worshipped 
it".1  With  regard  to  the  districts  there  were  four  possible  courses; 
to  let  the  Marathas  occupy  them,  to  take  them  ourselves,  to  keep  them 
for  Shah  'Alam,  or  to  give  them  back  to  Oudh.  It  was  finally  decided 
to  discontinue  paying  the  tribute  of  twenty-six  lakhs  to  Shah  'Alam 
on  the  ground  that  "his  desertion  of  us,  and  union  with  our  enemies, 
leaves  us  without  a  pretence  to  throw  away  more  of  the  Company's 
property  upon  him",2  and  to  restore  Kora  and  Allahabad  to  the 
nawab  of  Oudh  (by  the  treaty  of  Benares)  for  fifty  lakhs  of  rupees. 

1  Strachey,  Hastings  and  the  Rohilla  War,  p.  59. 
8  Gleig,  op.  cit.  i,  360. 


216  EXTERNAL  RELATIONS  AND  THE  ROHILLA  WAR 

Hastings  had  no  doubts  and  no  reservations  as  to  the  desirability 
of  this  course:  "I  am  not  apt  to  attribute  a  large  share  of  merit  to  my 
own  actions,  but  I  own  that  this  is  one  of  the  few  to  which  I  can  with 
confidence  affix  my  own  approbation".1  He  thus  sums  up  the  ad- 
vantages of  his  policy: 

By  ceding  them  to  the  [Nawab  of  Oudh],  we  strengthen  our  alliance  with  him, 
we  make  him  more,  dependent  upon  us,  as  he  is  more  exposed  to  the  hostilities  of 
the  Marathas;  we  render  a  junction  between  him  and  them,  which  has  been 
sometimes  apprehended,  morally  impossible,  since  their  pretensions  to  Korah  will 
be  a  constant  source  of  animosity  between  them;  we  free  ourselves  from  the  expense 
and  all  the  dangers  attending  either  a  remote  property,  or  a  remote  connection; 
we  adhere  literally  to  the  limited  system  laid  down  by  the  Honourable  Court  of 
Directors. .  .we  provide  effectually  for  the  protection  of  our  frontier,  and  reduce 
the  expenses  of  our  army,  even  in  employing  it;  and  lastly  we  acquire  a  nett  sum 
of  50  lacs  of  rupees  most  seasonably  obtained  for  the  relief  of  the  Company's 
necessities. a 

This  solution  met  with  the  support  both  of  the  council  and  the 
directors,  and  it  is  difficult  to  see  what  other  course  was  possible. 
Yet  it  has  been  condemned,  and  was  opposed  by  Sir  Robert  Barker. 
Burke  described  it  as  a  "shocking,  horrible,  and  outrageous  breach 
of  faith".8  Mill  says: 

Generosity,  had  it  any  place  in  such  arrangements,  pleaded  with  almost  un- 
exampled strength  in  behalf  of  the  forlorn  Emperor, . . .  the  representative  of  so 
illustrious  a  race,  who  now  possessed  hardly  a  roof  to  cover  him.  Justice  too,  or 
something  not  easily  distinguished  from  justice,  spoke  on  the  same  side.  * 

But  Hastings  and  his  council  clearly  require  no  defence.  The  districts 
and  the  tribute,  which  was  purely  eleemosynary,  had  only  been 
granted  to  Shah  'Alam  to  support  his  imperial  dignity  while  under 
the  protection  of  the  British.  When  he  handed  them  over  to  the 
Marathas,  morally — if  not  legally — he  forfeited  his  right  to  retain 
them.  The  Company's  course  would  no  doubt  have  been  clearer,  and 
its  case  stronger,  if  it  had  definitely  warned  the  emperor,  as  it 
might  well  have  done,  when  he  marched  away  to  Delhi,  that  it 
would  not  continue  to  pay  tribute  or  allow  him  to  retain  the  districts, 
should  he  become  dependent  upon  its  enemies.  It  should  also  be 
remembered  that,  before  the  decision  to  withhold  the  revenues  was 
taken,  Shah  'Alam  was  asked  to  send  representatives  to  Benares  to 
state  his  case,  but  that  he  omitted  to  do  so. 

The  only  other  question  worth  consideration  is  whether  there  was 
any  possible  alternative.  Might  not  the  Company  have  retained 
Kora  and  Allahabad  for  itself?  To  this  Hastings  had  two 
objections;  in  the  first  place,  it  would  be  unwise  to  retain  in  our  own 
hands  the  administration  of  provinces  entirely  separated  from  the 
rest  of  our  territories.  Secondly,  as  he  afterwards  said  before  the 

1  Gleig,  op.  cit.  1,355. 

2  Forrest,  Selections  from  State  Papers  in  the  Foreign  Department  of  the  Government  of  India,  1, 50. 
*  Bond,  Speeches  in  the  Ttial  of  Warren  Hastings,  rv,  759. 

*4  Mill.  History  tf  India,  in,  397. 


THE  ROHILLAS  AND  OUDH  217 

House  of  Commons,  we  should  then  have  excited  the  jealousy  of  the 
nawab  of  Oudh,  to  whom  the  districts  had  formerly  belonged,  and 
so  have  endangered  our  alliance  with  him.  It  is  always  worth  while 
to  remember  that  the  central  pillar  of  Hastings's  foreign  policy  was 
the  alliance  with  Oudh. 

The  other  important  problem  of  foreign  affairs  before  the  arrival 
of  the  new  council  was  the  Rohilla  War.  Rohilkhand,  a  fertile  country 
lying  along  the  base  of  the  Himalayas,  marched  with  the  north-west 
frontier  of  Oudh.  Its  area  was  about  12,000  square  miles  and  its 
, population  about  6,000,000.  The  bulk  of  the  people  were  Hindus, 
but  the  ruling  race  were  Rohillas,  that  is  mountaineers,  or  Pathans, 
or  Afghans,  the  words  signifying  much  the  same  thing.  The  country 
was  governed  by  a  loose  confederacy  of  chiefs  under  the  headship  of 
Rahmat  Khan,  generally  known  as  Hafiz  Rahmat  Khan  because  he 
had  been  guardian  (hafiz)  of  the  sons  of  the  late  ruler  'Ali  Muhammad 
and  had  ultimately  usurped  their  rights.  The  Rohillas  had  established 
their  power  early  in  the  eighteenth  century. 

The  events  leading  up  to  the  war  must  be  briefly  summarised.  In 
1772  the  Marathas  invaded  and  ravaged  Rohilkhand.  The  Rohillas 
thereupon  appealed  to  the  nawab  of  Oudh.  They  did  so  reluctantly, 
for  there  was  no  cordiality  between  him  and  them.  The  nawab  had 
long  notoriously  coveted  their  territory.  They  knew  that  if  it  paid 
him  to  do  so,  he  would  not  hesitate  to  combine  with  the  Marathas 
against  them,  just  as  they  in  their  turn  had  considered  the  possibility 
of  making  peace  with  the  invaders,  by  giving  them  a  free  passage 
through  their  territory  into  Oudh.  But  both  parties  for  the  moment 
dreaded  a  Maratha  invasion  more  than  anything  in  the  world,  and 
this  drove  them  into  an  uneasy  alliance.  In  reality,  as  Sir  John 
Strachey  observes,  "The  Vizier,  the  Rohillas  and  the  Marathas  were 
all  utterly  unscrupulous  and  each  knew  that  no  trust  could  be  placed 
in  either  of  the  others".1  We  find,  for  instance,  that  the  nawab  asked 
Hastings  "whether  he  should  persuade  the  Rohillas  to  attack  the 
Marathas . . .  and  take  his  advantage  of  both  when  they  should  have 
weakened  each  other  by  mutual  hostilities".  British  officers  of  a  later 
date  would  probably  have  improved  the  occasion  by  a  homily  on 
political  rectitude,  and  it  is  rather  typical  of  Hastings — both  of  his 
cynicism  and  his  frankness — that,  in  his  own  words,  "I  commended 
the  project,  but  expressed  my  apprehension  of  the  consequences".2 

Finally,  after  the  usual  interval  of  intrigue  and  finesse,  during  which 
the  advice  of  Sir  Robert  Barker  just  availed  to  prevent  the  nawab 
from  joining  the  Marathas,  a  treaty  of  alliance  was  made  1 7  June, 
1772,  between  the  Rohillas  and  Shuja-ud-daula.  The  Rohillas  agreed 
to  pay  him  forty  lakhs  on  his  obliging  the  Marathas  to  retire  from 
their  country  "either  by  peace  or  war".  The  treaty  was  really  due 
to  the  initiative  and  intervention  of  Sir  Robert  Barker,  the  British 

1  Strachey,  Hastings  and  the  Rohilla  War,  p.  49.  a  Idem,  p.  1 13. 


2i8  EXTERNAL  RELATIONS  AND  THE  ROHILLA  WAR 

commander-in-chief,  an  intervention  not  at  first  welcomed  by 
Hastings  and  the  Select  Committee,  and  was  signed  in  his  presence. 
Almost  before  the  signatures  were  appended,  the  Marathas  evacuated 
Rohilkhand,  and  the  Rohillas  reoccupied  the  country. 

The  casus  foederis  arose  in  1773.  In  the  spring  the  Marathas  re- 
entered  Rohilkhand  at  Ramghat.  The  nawab  of  Oudh,  with  a 
British  brigade  in  support  under  Sir  Robert  Barker,  advanced  to  repel 
the  invasion.  After  some  manoeuvring  and  counter-marching  the 
detachments  of  the  Marathas  which  had  crossed  the  Ganges  (the 
main  body  seem  to  have  remained  on  the  other  bank)  recrossed  the . 
river  on  28  March.  In  May  the  revolution  at  Poona,  which  broke 
out  on  the  death  of  the  Peshwa,  Madhu  Rao,  caused  the  Marathas 
to  return  to  the  Deccan,  leaving  only  a  few  small  garrisons  in  Northern 
India.  The  nawab  of  Oudh  now  demanded  from  the  Rohillas  the  sum 
due  to  him,  but  they  refused  to  pay.  They  claimed  that  the  Marathas 
had  really  retired  of  their  own  accord,  and  that  there  had  been  no 
collision  with  the  allies. 

It  seems  clear  that  the  nawab  and  the  British  protected  Rohilkhand 
mainly  by  their  presence  on  the  spot,  for  Hastings  on  one  occasion 
acknowledged  that  "the  Marathas  (i.e.  the  main  body)  lay  during 
the  whole  campaign  of  1773  in  the  neighbourhood  of  our  army,  but 
without  daring  either  to  cross  the  river  or  to  approach  the  borders 
of  Kora".1  It  was  claimed — and  technically  no  doubt  the  claim 
was  indisputable — that  the  Rohillas  still  owed  the  forty  lakhs,  for  the 
treaty  stipulated  that  they  were  liable  if  the  Marathas  retreated 
"either  by  peace  or  war".  The  Rohillas,  however,  fell  back  upon  a 
second  line  of  defence  by  questioning  whether  the  Marathas  had 
really  been  driven  out  at  all:  "they  might  return  the  next  year,  when 
our  joint  forces  were  not  in  the  Rohilla  country  to  defend  them:  that 
we  had  done  little,  meaning  that  we  had  not  destroyed  the  Maratha 
armies".  Legally  no  doubt  the  Rohillas  were  in  the  wrong,  but  it 
must  be  admitted  that  European  nations  have  often  evaded  treaty 
obligations  on  no  better  grounds. 

Nothing  further  was  done  till  Hastings  held  his  conference  with 
the  nawab  of  Oudh  at  Benares  in  August  and  September,  1773.  There 
he  concluded  a  public  treaty  which  made  no  direct  mention  of  the 
Rohillas.  By  it  Kora  and  Allahabad,  as  already  mentioned,  were 
ceded  to  the  nawab  in  return  for  fifty  lakhs  of  rupees,  and  it  was 
stipulated  that,  whenever  he  employed  a  British  brigade,  he  should 
pay  a  subsidy  of  210,000  rupees  a  month.  At  the  same  time  a  secret 
agreement  was  made  by  which  the  British  were  to  furnish  a  brigade, 
to  help  the  nawab  punish  the  Rohillas  for  their  evasion,  and  conquer 
the  country  for  him.  In  return  the  nawab  was  to  bear  all  the  expenses 
of  the  campaign  and  to  pay  a  sum  of  forty  lakhs.  Almost  as  soon, 
however,  as  the  treaty  had  been  concluded,  the  nawab  began  to  doubt 

1  Selections  from  the  State  Papers  of  the  Governors  General. . .  Warren  Hastings,  cd.  Forrest,  n,  31 1 . 


THE  WAZIR  DEMANDS  HELP  219 

whether  he  could  bear  the  pecuniary  burden  involved,  and  since 
Hastings  had  some  heart-searchings  as  to  its  expediency,  they 
mutually  agreed  to  postpone  the  expedition.  The  thought  came  to 
the  governor-general,  as  he  said  years  afterwards  in  his  defence  before 
the  House  of  Commons  in  1786,  that: 

all  my  actions  were  to  be  viewed  through  a  very  remote  medium,  with  a  thousand 
refractions  of  private  interest,  secret  misrepresentation,  general  prejudice,  and  the 
precipitation  of  unformed  judgement.1 

In  November,  1773,  the  nawab  having,  with  his  usual  fickleness, 
changed  his  mind,  asked  for  the  aid  stipulated  in  the  treaty.  Hastings 
laid  a  minute  before  the  council  in  which  he  pointed  out  the  ad- 
vantages of  intervention  and  among  them  that  "our  ally  would 
obtain  by  this  acquisition  a  complete  state  shut  in  effectually  from 
foreign  invasions  by  the  Ganges,  all  the  way  from  the  frontiers  of 
Behar  to  the  mountains  of  Tibet".  On  the  other  hand  he  expressed 
doubts  as  to  its  expediency: 

arising  from  the  circumstances  of  the  Company  at  home,  exposed  to  popular 
clamour,  all  its  measures  liable  to  be  canvassed  in  Parliament,  their  charter 
drawing  to  a  close  and . . .  ministers  unquestionably  ready  to  take  advantage  of 
every  unfavourable  circumstance  in  the  negotiation  for  its  renewal.2 

Accordingly  he  proposed  to  agree  to  the  expedition  but  on  terms 
which  were  likely  to  make  the  nawab  relinquish  the  design.  The 
council,  which,  through  Hastings  and  his  Select  Committee,  had  been 
committed  to  the  whole  business  without  much  choice  on  their  part, 
declared:  "We  concur  heartily  in  wishing  to  avoid  the  expedition 
proposed,  without  entering  into  the  discussion  of  the  propriety  of  such 
an  enterprise  on  general  principles".3  They  added  rather  meaningly 
that  they  were  sensible  of  the  embarrassment  that  Hastings  was  under 
"from  what  passed  on  the  subject  between  him  and  the  Vizier  at 
Benares'5.3  The  upshot  was  that  the  nawab  on  10  January,  1774, 
declined  the  conditions  laid  down.  But  on  3  February,  1774,  a  letter 
arrived  from  the  vacillating  nawab  agreeing  to  everything  and  asking 
that  the  brigade  should  be  sent.  So  after  all  the  policy  of  bluff  had 
broken  down,  and  the  Bengal  government  found  themselves  committed 
to  the  expedition. 

The  British  army  under  Colonel  Champion  marched  into  Rohil- 
khand  supported  by  the  forces  of  Oudh  on  17  April.  Six  days  later 
a  battle  took  place  at  Miranpur  Katra,  called  by  the  victors  the  battle 
of  St  George  because  of  the  date  on  which  it  was  fought.  Hafiz 
Rahmat  Khan  was  killed  fighting  bravely  at  the  head  of  his  troops. 
The  valour  of  the  Rohillas  extorted  the  admiration  of  the  British 
commander.  They  showed,  he  said: 

great  bravery  and  resolution. .  .they  gave  proofs  of  a  good  share  of  military  know- 
ledge by  showing  inclinations  to  force  both  our  flanks  at  the  same  time  and 

1  Strachey,  Hastings  and  the  Rohilla  War,  p.  1 12. 
*  Idem,  p.  121.  *  Idem,  p.  123. 


220  EXTERNAL  RELATIONS  AND  THE  ROHILLA  WAR 

endeavouring  to  call  off  pur  attention  by  a  brisk  fire  on  our  centre ...  it  is  impossible 
to  describe  a  more  obstinate  firmness  of  resolution  than  the  enemy  displayed.1 

The  action  was  entirely  decisive.  About  20,000  Rohillas  were 
driven  out  of  the  country,  which  was  incorporated  in  the  dominions 
of  the  nawab  of  Oudh,  a  small  portion  only,  together  with  Rampur, 
was  left  in  the  possession  of  Faizulla.Khan,  son  of 'Ali  Muhammad, 
the  founder  of  the  Rohilla  power,  whose  sons  had  been  dispossessed 
by  their  guardian,  Hafiz  Rahmat  Khan,  and  a  treaty  was  made  with 
him  7  October,  1774,  before  the  campaign  was  over.  Champion 
brought  serious  charges  against  the  nawab  of  Oudh  and  his  troops 
for  cruelties  inflicted  on  the  peasantry  and  the  family  of  Hafiz  Rahmat 
Khan. 

The  Rohilla  War  was  the  subject  of  the  first  attack  on  Hastings  in 
Parliament  in  April,  1 786,  but  as  the  Commons  refused  to  accept  the 
charge,  it  was  not  made  one  of  the  articles  in  the  impeachment.  The 
war  has  earned  the  strong  condemnation  of  all  the  older  school  of 
Indian  historians.  Their  view,  in  its  extreme  presentment,  was  that 
Hastings  deliberately  sold  the  lives  and  liberties  of  a  free  people  and 
condoned  horrible  atrocities  on  the  part  of  the  armies  of  the  nawab 
of  Oudh.  Sir  John  Strachey  in  his  Hastings  and  the  Rohilla  War  has 
put  forward  a  complete  and  elaborate  defence.  He  contends  that  the 
Rohillas  were  a  plundering  Afghan  tribe  who  had  only  established 
their  power  over  the  Hindu  population  of  Rohilkhand  for  about  a 
quarter  of  a  century.  The  Rohillas,  he  says,  were  as  much  foreigners 
in  Rohilkhand  as  Frenchmen  in  Spain  or  Russians  in  Poland  in  the 
time  of  Napoleon;  that  the  aim  of  the  nawab  of  Oudh  and  the  English 
was  to  "exterminate"  the  Rohillas  only  in  the  liter^J  sense  of  the 
term,  that  is,  to  drive  them  over  the  frontier,  not  to  massacre  them; 
that  Champion  failed  to  substantiate  his  serious  charges  against  the 
conduct  of  the  allies  by  definite  details ;  that  he  began  the  campaign 
in  a  thoroughly  discontented  frame  of  mind,  and  that  he  was  extremely 
jealous  of  the  plunder  acquired  by  the  soldiers  of  his  ally;  that,  since 
the  Rohillas  declined  to  pay  the  forty  lakhs  they  had  promised  in  the 
treaty  of  1772,  the  nawab  of  Oudh  had  a  good  legal  and  moral  case 
against  them;  that  Hastings  can  be  entirely  defended  from  the  charge 
of  callousness  and  brutality,  for  he  took  prompt  measures  to  make  a 
serious  protest  to  the  nawab ;  that  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  campaign 
in  Rohilkhand  "had  been  carried  on  with  an  absence  of  violence  and 
bloodshed  and  generally  with  a  degree  of  humanity  altogether  un- 
usual in  Indian  warfare"  ;2  finally,  that  Hastings's  motives  in  the  war 
were  statesmanlike  and  defensible.  They  were  first,  to  punish  the 
Rohillas  for  a  serious  breach  of  a  treaty,  secondly  to  protect  Bengal 
by  giving  the  nawab,  the  Company's  ally,  a  scientific  and  natural 

1  Forrest,  Selections  from  the. .  .State  Papers  in  the  Foreign,  Department  of  the  Government  of 
India,  I,  97. 
*  Strachey,  Hastings  and  the  Rohilla  War,  p.  233. 


HASTINGS'S  DEFENCE  221 

frontier;  thirdly,  to  acquire  for  the  Company  the  valuable  pecuniary 
benefit  of  a  subsidy  for  the  maintenance  of  one-third  of  our  army. 
Summing  up  generally,  Strachey  asks  the  question: 

Is  a  British  Governor  justified  in  making  war  upon  a  confederacy  of  barbarous 
chiefs,  who,  not  long  before,  had  imposed  their  rule  on  a  population  foreign  to 
themselves  in  race  and  religion;  through  whose  country  the  only  road  lies  open  for 
attacks  by  savage  invaders  upon  a  British  ally,  whose  security  is  essential  to  the 
security  of  British  possessions;  who  are  too  weak  and  too  treacherous  to  be  relied 
on  to  close  this  road ;  and  who  have  injured  that  ally  by  breaking  a  treaty  with  him, 
negotiated  and  attested  by  the  British  general,  and  approved  by  the  British 
Government?1 

Clearly  he  assumes  an  answer  in  the  affirmative,  and  we  may  certainly 
admit  that  we  have  fought  many  wars  on  grounds  far  less  adequate. 

But  though  Sir  John  Strachey  makes  good  most  of  his  points,  it  is 
absurd  to  say  that  either  the  policy  leading  up  to  the  war  or  the  actual 
conduct  of  operations  was  beyond  temperate  criticism.  Hastings  was 
obviously  himself  doubtful  about  the  expediency  of  the  whole  trans- 
action, and  his  council  still  more  so.  He  seems  to  have  allowed 
himself  to  be  drawn  into  the  matter  without  having  carefully  thought 
it  out.  The  whole  question  in  its  initial  stages  was  weakly  handled. 
For  a  statesman  to  commit  himself  to  a  course  of  action  while  hoping 
that  the  need  for  it  may  not  arise,  is  not  the  happiest  or  the  most 
efficient  kind  of  political  expedient.  The  truth  is  Hastings  was  always 
tempted  by  novel  and  daring  schemes.  We  shall  frequently  encounter 
the  same  characteristic  in  his  later  history.  Sir  Alfred  Lyall  speaks 
truly  of  "the  hardy  and  self-reliant  spirit  of  political  enterprise  that 
is  so  strongly  diffused  through  his  whole  career  and  character".2 

It  is  no  less  true  that  Mill  and  Macaulay  wasted  a  good  deal  of 
sentiment,  and  falsified  a  good  deal  of  history,  in  painting  a  picture 
of  the  Rohillas  as  an  ancient  people  long  inhabiting  a  peaceful  and 
happy  valley,  but  the  fact  that  the  Rohillas  had  only  established 
themselves  for  about  twenty-five  years  has  really  nothing  to  do  with 
the  justice  or  injustice  of  the  war.  Their  rights  were  quite  as  good  as 
that  of  most  of  the  ruling  powers  of  India  at  this  time,  and  quite  as 
good  as  those  of  the  East  India  Company  itself.  The  more  important 
question  is  whether  the  rule  of  the  nawab  of  Oudh,  which  we  were 
now  imposing  over  the  peasantry  of  Rohilkhand,  was  better  or  worse 
than  that  of  the  chieftains  we  were  dispossessing.  The  evidence  as  to 
the  condition  of  the  country  under  Rohilla  sway  is  conflicting,  but 
the  weight  of  it  is  undoubtedly  in  their  favour. 

The  only  writer  hostile  to  them  is  Charles  Hamilton,  who  depends 
mainly  on  sources  inimical  to  Hafiz  Rahmat  Khan,  and  even  he  only 
condemns  their  regime  when  their  control  was  relaxing.  As  Hafiz 
Rahmat  Khan's  power  weakened,  he  says,  "the  Hindu  farmers,  and 

1  Strachey,  Hastings  and  the  Rohilla  War,  p.  260. 
8  Sir  Alfred  Lyall,  Warren  Hastings,  p.  1 74. 


222   EXTERNAL  RELATIONS  AND  THE  ROHILLA  WAR 

other  inhabitants  of  the  country,  groaned  under  the  worst  species  of 
military  vassalage".1  There  seems  to  be  no  other  corroboration  of 
this  view.  Hafiz  Rahmat  Khan  was  a  ruler  of  ability,  courage  and 
considerable  culture.  Sir  John  Strachey  himself  concludes  that  under 
his  strong  personal  rule  and  that  of  his  brother  chiefs,  "the  mass  of 
the  Hindu  population  were  treated  with  greater  consideration  and 
received  better  protection  than  was  the  case  in  any  of  the  neighbouring 
provinces,  excepting  those  in  the  possession  of  Najib-ud-daula"2 — 
himself,  be  it  noted,  a  Rohilla.  Elphinstone  declares  that  their  kind- 
ness to  their  Hindu  subjects  cannot  be  denied,  and  that  the  state  of 
improvement  to  which  they  had  brought  their  country  excited  the 
admiration  of  our  troops.  In  1781  the  British  Resident  at  Rampur 
described  that  district  as  "what  the  whole  of  Rohilkhand  was  under 
the  government  of  the  Rohillas,  a  garden  without  an  uncultivated 
spot".3  Major  Hannay  in  evidence  given  before  the  council  in  1774 
said  that  "the  country  appeared  to  be  in  good  cultivation.. .  .It  is 
in  general  one  of  the  best  cultivated  countries  I  have  seen  in  Hin- 
dostan".  In  any  case,  whatever  the  rule  of  the  Rohillas  had  been, 
it  was  better  than  that  of  the  nawabs  of  Oudh,  which,  especially  in 
the  time  of  Shuja-ud-daula's  successor,  was  unspeakably  bad  and  vile. 
As  regards  the  alleged  atrocities  perpetrated  by  the  nawab  and  his 
army,  there  is  little  doubt  that  Champion  greatly  exaggerated  them, 
partly  out  of  pique  that  he  was  not  allowed  to  control  the  political 
relations,  which  were  left  in  the  hands  of  Middleton,  partly  from  envy 
of  the  booty  that  fell  into  the  hands  of  his  allies.  At  the  same  time 
there  was  probably  a  modicum  of  truth  in  the  strong  statements  to 
which  he  committed  himself,  that  the  nawab  did  not  "cease  to 
overspread  the  country  with  flames  till  three  days  after  the  fate  of 
Hafiz  Rahmat  Khan  was  decided";4  that  "the  whole  army  were 
witnesses  of  scenes  that  cannot  be  described"  ;5  and  that "  I  have  been 
obliged  to  give  a  deaf  ear  to  the  lamentable  cries  of  the  widow  and 
fatherless,  and  to  shut  my  eyes  against  a  wanton  display  of  violence 
and  oppression,  of  inhumanity  and  cruelty".6  Middleton  too,  who 
was  friendly  to  the  nawab,  admitted  that  he  could  not  acquit  him  of 
severe  treatment  of  Hafiz  Rahmat  Khan's  family  or  of  wanton  ravages 
of  the  country.  But  Champion  was  curiously  loth  to  give  details  when 
Hastings  demanded  them,  and  when  twelve  years  later  he  was  in- 
terrogated on  the  matter  before  the  House  of  Commons,  though  he 
repeated  his  allegations,  he  declared  that  his  memory  was  too  much 
weakened  by  long  illness  to  recall  any  definite  instances  of  cruelty. 
In  any  case  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  as  soon  as  the  reports  and 
complaints  of  the  commander-in-chief  reached  him,  Hastings  took 

1  C.  Hamilton,  An  historical  relation  of  the  origint  progress  and  final  dissolution  of  the  Government 
of  the  Rohilla  Afghans,  p.  209. 
8  Strachey,  Hastings  and  the  Rohilla  War,  p.  30. 


8  Reports  from  Committees  of  the  House  of  Commons,  vi,  30. 
4  Strachey,  Hastings  and  the  Rohilla  War,  p.  196.        6  1 


Idem,  p.  203.         6  Idem,  p.  191. 


POLICY  OF  THE  WAR  223 

all  possible  measures  by  strong  representations  to  the  nawab  to  ensure 
that  this  conduct  should  cease.  Hastings  afterwards  was  inclined  to 
speak  of  the  Company's  honour  as  "pledged  implicitly  by  General 
Barker's  attestation",  but  this  is  not  accurate.  Barker  had  merely 
witnessed  the  signatures,  though  it  is  probably  true  enough,  as  Sir 
John  Strachey  says,  that  without  his  "active  interference  and  per- 
suasion"1 no  treaty  would  have  been  made.  But  even  supposing  that 
it  was  the  duty  of  the  British  to  coerce  the  Rohillas  into  payment, 
was  so  drastic  a  method  as  the  conquest  of  the  whole  country  necessary? 
Surely,  as  Fox  suggested,  a  lesser  penalty  might  have  sufficed. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  there  is  something  rather  repellent  about 
the  finance  of  the  whole  operation.  Hastings  himself  was  frank 
enough  to  avow  that  the  question  of  money  was  one  of  his  main 
motives. 

"The  absence  of  the  Marathas",  he  wrote,  "and  the  weak  state  of  the  Rohillas, 
promised  an  easy  conquest  of  them,  and  I  own  that  such  was  my  idea  of  the 
Company's  distress  at  home,  added  to  my  knowledge  of  their  wants  abroad,  that 
I  should  have  been  glad  of  any  occasion  to  employ  their  forces,  that  saves  so  much 
of  their  pay  and  expenses. "  2 

There  is  a  certain  truth  in  the  acrid  comment  of  the  majority  of  the 
council:  "The  expectation  in  sharing  in  the  spoils  of  a  people  who 
have  given  us  no  cause  of  quarrel  whatsoever,  is  plainly  avowed  to 
be  a  motive  for  invading  them". 

It  seems  unlikely  that  it  was  really  within  the  power  of  the  Rohillas 
to  produce  the  original  sum  of  forty  lakhs  for  the  nawab,  and  the 
weight  of  evidence  goes  to  show  that  in  the  end  Shuja-ud-daula  was 
demanding  two  crores,  or  five  times  that  sum.  Their  country  had 
recently  been  ravaged  by  the  Marathas.  The  Rohilla  War  was 
condemned  in  mild  terms  by  the  court  of  directors,  and  it  was  the 
one  occasion  on  which  Hastings  lost  the  support  of  the  proprietors. 
The  fact  that  even  they  felt  bound  to  record  a  reluctant  disapproval, 
testifies  clearly  that  disapproval  was  very  widespread : 

"Notwithstanding",  they  said,  "this  court  hath  the  highest  opinion  of  the 
service  and  integrity  of  Warren  Hastings,  and  cannot  admit  a  suspicion  of  corrupt 
motives  operating  on  his  conduct  without  proof;  yet  they  are  of  opinion  with  their 
Court  of  Directors,  that  the  agreement  made  with  Shuja-ud-daula  for  the  hire  of 
a  part  of  the  Company's  troops  for  the  reduction  of  the  Rohilla  country,  and  the 
subsequent  steps  taken  for  carrying  on  that  war,  were  founded  on  wrong  policy, 
were  contrary  to  the  general  orders  of  the  Company,  frequently  repeated,  for 
keeping  their  troops  within  the  bounds  of  the  provinces,  and  for  not  extending 
their  territories . . . ."  8 

Even  Sir  John  Strachey  admits  that  his  policy  was  somewhat 
cynical,  and  there  was  a  certain  substratum  of  truth  in  Francis's 
comment:  "we  do  not  enquire  into,  nor  think  ourselves  concerned  in, 

1  Strachey,  Hastings  and  the  Rohilla  War,  p.  55. 
1  Idem,  p.  113. 
8  Idem,  p.  273. 


224  EXTERNAL  RELATIONS  AND  THE  ROHILLA  WAR 

the  justice  of  the  cause  in  which  the  troops  are  to  act".1  Sir  Alfred 
Lyall  notes  that  the  war  was  the  last  occasion  upon  which  British 
troops  have  joined  in  a  campaign  with  Indian  allies  without  retaining 
control  of  the  operations,  and  his  final  verdict  seems  not  unreasonable 
that  "the  expedition  against  the  Rohillas  was  wrong  in  principle,  for 
they  had  not  provoked  us,  and  the  Vizier  could  only  be  relied  upon 
to  abuse  his  advantages'5.2  But  it  was  at  its  worst  an  error  in  judg- 
ment, which  could  only  be  proved  to  be  such  after  all  the  consequences 
had  developed. 

1  Forrest,  Selections  from  the. .  .State  Papers  in  Foreign  Department  of  the  Government  of  India, 
i,  127. 

2  Lyall,  Warren  Hastings,  p.  49. 


CHAPTER   XIII 

WARREN  HASTINGS  AND  HIS  COLLEAGUES 

A  HE  Rohilla  War  was  the  last  important  event  in  Hastings's  first 
period  of  office  prior  to  the  Regulating  Act.  The  judges  of  the  Supreme 
Court  arrived  on  17  October,  1774,  the  councillors  two  days  later. 
The  new  council  began  badly  by  quarrelling  with  the  governor- 
general  on  some  petty  detail  of  their  reception,  which  merely  ex- 
emplified the  spirit  with  which  they  approached  their  work.  They 
embarked  from  the  very  outset,  in  BarwelPs  words,  upon  "a  pre- 
determined, pre-concerted  system  of  opposition".1 

The  six  years'  struggle  which  now  ensued  between  Hastings  and 
the  majority  of  the  council  can  hardly  be  paralleled  in  history.  There 
was  room,  no  doubt,  for  reasonable  criticism  of  the  administration; 
there  should  have  been  no  room  for  the  personal  vindictiveness  which 
was  designed  to  hound  the  governor-general  from  office.  "Every 
page  of  our  public  records",  wrote  Harwell,  "teems  with  matter  of 
private  and  personal  discussion  which  neither  directly  nor  remotely 
bear  relation  to  the  interests  of  the  country."2  Such  was  the  lament- 
able result  of  the  policy  embodied  in  the  Regulating  Act  of  sending 
out  as  councillors  men  without  Indian  experience.  It  should  be 
remembered  that  Hastings  was  the  only  governor-general  who  was 
subjected  to  this  regulation.  It  need  not,  however,  be  supposed  that 
parliament  could  have  expected  that  such  dire  results  necessarily 
followed  from  such  a  policy.  Had  the  councillors  been  men  of  reason- 
able goodwill  and  of  reasonable  modesty — had,  we  might  almost  say, 
Philip  Francis  not  been  one  of  them — they  would  have  found  a  way 
either  of  agreeing  with  Hastings,  or  at  least  of  disagreeing  with  him 
with  sanity  and  moderation.  They  came  out  imbued  with  a  self- 
righteous  conceit  and  a  fixed  determination  to  overthrow  the 
government,  which  they  had  condemned  before  examination.  Some- 
thing must  now  be  said  about  their  individual  characters.  Philip 
Francis  has  been  described  once  and  for  all  by  Lord  Macaulay  as 

a  man  clearly  not  destitute  of  real  patriotism  and  magnanimity,  a  man  whose 
vices  were  not  of  a  sordid  kind.  But  he  must  also  have  been  a  man  in  the  highest 
degree  arrogant  and  insolent;  a  man  prone  to  malevolence  and  prone  to  the  error 
of  mistaking  his  malevolence  for  public  virtue. 

The  first  part  of  this  verdict  may  appear  to  some  to  err  on  the  side 
of  generosity.  Sir  James  Stephen,  while  he  quotes  it  with  approval, 

1  Bengal  y  Past  and  Present,  xn,  74. 
1  Idem,  xra,  78. 

cm  v  *  15 


226      WARREN  HASTINGS' AND  HIS  COLLEAGUES 

adds  that  Francis  was  capable  "not  only  of  the  faults  of  undying 
malignity  and  ferocious  cruelty,  but  also  of  falsehood,  treachery,  and 
calumny".1  Francis  himself,  it  may  be  added,  soon  after  his  arrival 
in  Bengal,  acknowledged  to  a  friend  that  his  aims  were  flagrantly 
personal  "I  am  now",  he  wrote,  "I  think,  on  the  road  to  be 
Governor  of  Bengal,  which  I  believe  is  the  first  situation  in  the 
world  attainable  by  a  subject."2 

Sir  John  Clavering  has  been  described  as  "an  honest,  straight- 
forward man  of  passionate  disposition  and  mediocre  abilities". 
Hastings'  first  impression  of  him  was  that  he  was  honourable,  but 
brought  strong  prejudices  with  him.  His  opinion,  however,  gradually 
changed  for  the  worse,  and  after  his  death  he  could  only  write:  "May 
God  forgive  him  all  the  injuries  which  he  has  heaped  upon  me,  and 
me,  as  I  forgive  him".3 

Monson  had  served  in  southern  India  from  1758  to  1763.  Impey 
described  him  as  "a  proud,  rash,  self-willed  man,  though  easily 
misled  and  very  greedy  for  patronage  and  power".4  Again,  in  this 
case  also,  Hastings  had  to  modify  unfavourably  his  first  impression. 
At  first  he  wrote,  "Colonel  Monson  is  a  sensible  man",5  but  after- 
wards he  came  to  believe  that  Monson  was  almost  his  worst  enemy. 
In  March,  1775,  he  says  of  him:  "Colonel  Monson,  with  a  more 
guarded  temper,  and  a  more  regular  conduct,  now  appears  to  be 
the  most  determined  of  the  three".6 

Richard  Barwell,  the  only  one  of  the  new  councillors  already 
resident  in  India,  was  the  regular  type  of  the  Indian  official  of  those 
days.  His  family  had  been  connected  with  the  East  for  some  genera- 
tions. His  father  had  been  governor  of  Bengal  and  a  director  of  the 
Company.  He  himself  had  been  in  India  since  1 758.  He  was  a  man 
of  many  merits  and  considerable,  though  not  pre-eminent,  ability. 
He  made  a  great  fortune  in  India,  and,  as  Sir  James  Stephen  says, 
this  fact  of  itself  raises  a  presumption  against  his  official  purity.  His 
letters  show  that  in  the  year  1775  alone  he  remitted  £40,000  to 
England.  Barwell  probably  acted  up  to  his  lights,  but  his  standard 
was  low.  We  find  him,  for  instance,  writing  to  his  sister  in  1769: 
"I  would  spend  £5,000  to  secure  to  myself  the  chiefship  of  Dacca, 
and  to  supervise. the  collection  of  the  revenues  of  that  province".7 
In  another  letter  he  states  that  he  considers  himself  justified  in  evading 
the  law  which  prohibited  the  Company's  servants  from  trading,  by 
engaging  in  salt  contracts  under  the  names  of  native  Indians.  Barwell, 
as  we  know,  became  Hastings's  staunch  supporter,  but  at  first  they 

1  Stephen,  The  Story  of  Nuncomar  and  the  Impeachment  of  Sir  Elijah  Impey,  I,  30-31. 

2  Dictionary  of  National  Biography. 
8  Gleig,  op.  cit.  n,  179. 

*  Parkes,  and  H.  Merivale,  Memoirs  of  Sir  Philip  Francis,  i,  376. 
5  Gleig,  op.  cit.  i,  477. 

•  Idem,  p.  517. 

7  Bengal ,  Past  and  Present,  x,  233. 


HARWELL  227 

were  by  no  means  in  sympathy.  Hastings  found  him  tedious  and 
punctilious.  He  wrote  in  1 772 : 

There  is  a  gentleman  of  our  Council  who  seems  to  think  that  every  subject  that 
comes  before  the  Board,  or  that  he  can  obtrude  upon,  ought  to  go  through  a  long 
discussion.1 

And  again: 

Mr  Barwell  has  made  it  necessary  to  declare  that  although  I  have  the  justest 
deference  for  his  abilities,  I  have  not  yet  had  an  opportunity  of  experiencing  their 
effects  but  in  points  of  controversy  or  opposition,  nor  derived  any  benefit  from  his 
assistance.2 

The  distrust  was  reciprocated.  Barwell  wrote  in  1773: 

I  think  there  is  a  probability  of  our  continuing  friends,  or  more  properly  speaking 
upon  good  terms,  for  it  certainly  is  prostituting  a  name  for  the  most  sacred  tie  to 
say  Mr.  Hastings  is  my  friend,  which  he  never  was,  and  I  verily  believe,  never  will 
be.  A  duplicity  of  character  once  detected  and  known,  as  his  is  by  me,  proves  an 
insuperable  bar  to  any  cordial  intimacy  ever  taking  place.3 

Gradually,  however,  the  two  men  drew  together  and  Barwell  was 
entirely  won  over  by  the  tact,  and  impressed  by  the  capacity,  of  his 
chief.  We  find  Hastings  writing  in  1777:  "Francis. .  .must  be  grossly 
misinformed  indeed  if  he  entertains  any  hope  of  change  in  BarwelPs 
conduct,  after  the  proofs  which  he  has  given  of  his  steadiness  and 
fidelity".4  Again  he  writes  in  1778:  "I  owe  much  to  Barwell,  and 
to  his  steady  friendship",5  and  a  little  later  he  pays  him  a  generous 
tribute  by  saying:  "He  possesses  much  experience,  a  solid  judgment, 
much  greater  fertility  of  official  resources  than  I  have,  and  his  manners 
are  easy  and  pleasant".6 

Before  dealing  in  detail  with  the  disputes  between  Hastings  and 
the  council  after  1774,  it  may  be  useful  to  sketch  in  outline  his  rela- 
tions with  his  councils  generally  till  the  end  of  his  period  of  office. 
For  two  years,  1774-6,  he  was  steadily  outvoted  and  overruled,  and 
for  all  practicable  purposes  he  had  ceased  to  be  governor-general. 
His  position  is  best  described  in  his  own  vivid  words : 

My  situation  is  truly  painful  and  mortifying,  deprived  of  the  powers  with  which 
I  have  been  invested  by  a  solemn  Act  of  the  Legislature,. .  .denied  the  respect 
which  is  due  to  my  station  and  character,  denied  even  the  rights  of  personal  civility 
by  men  with  whom  I  am  compelled  to  associate  in  the  daily  course  of  official 
business,  and  condemned  to  bear  my  share  in  the  responsibility  of  measures  which 
I  do  not  approve,  I  should  long  since  have  yielded  up  my  place  in  this  disgraceful 
scene,  did  not  my  ideas  of  my  duty  to  you  and  a  confidence  in  your  justice  animate 
me  to  persevere;  and  if  your  records  must  be  dishonoured  and  your  interests 
suspended  by  the  continuance  of  such  contests  as  have  hitherto  composed  the 
business  of  your  present  Council,  it  shall  be  my  care  to  bear  as  small  a  part  in  them 
as  possible.7 

1  Monckton  Jones,  Warren  Hastings  in  Bengal,  p.  201. 

1  Forrest,  Selections  from. .  .State  Papers  in  the  Foreign  Department  of  the  Government  of  India, 

i>39* 

»  Bengal,  Past  and  Present,  xi,  51.  4  Gleig,  op.  cit.  u,  185. 

*  Idem,  p.  224.  6  Idem,  p.  243. 

7  Forrest,  Selections  from. .  .State  Papers  in  the  Foreign  Department  of  the  Government  of  India, 
n>  279- 


228      WARREN  HASTINGS  AND  HIS  COLLEAGUES 

Yet  he  held  on  his  way  with  marvellous  fortitude  and  tenacity,  and 
at  last  came  relief.  In  September,  1776,  Monson  died,  and  Hastings 
now  held  the  mastery  though  only  by  his  casting  vote,  he  and  Harwell 
opposing  Clavering  and  Francis.  In  1777  came  the  curious  and 
confused  incident  of  Hastings's  conditional  resignation.  The  facts  were 
as  follows:  Hastings  had  first  given,  on  27  March,  1775,  and  then  on 
1 8  May  withdrawn,  discretionary  powers  to  his  agent  in  England, 
Colonel  McLeane,  to  signify  to  the  directors  his  intention  to  resign. 
McLeane  came  to  the  conclusion  that  Hastings  could  not  long  hope 
to  withstand  the  opposition  growing  up  against  him  at  home,  and, 
having  obtained  the  promise  of  certain  conditions  from  Lord  North, 
signified  to  the  court  of  directors  the  intention  of  his  chief  to  resign. 
The  court  accepted  the  resignation.  By  the  terms  of  the  Regulating 
Act,  Clavering,  as  senior  councillor,  would  normally  succeed  till  the 
five  years  of  the  original  appointment  were  over.  Wheler  was 
appointed  to  fill  the  place  in  council  that  would  be  vacated  by 
Clavering's  succession,  but  before  he  sailed  the  news  came  of  Monson's 
death  and  he  was  now  appointed  to  fill  that  vacancy.  Soon  after 
these  events,  McLeane,  owing  to  the  granting  of  a  knighthood  of  the 
Bath  to  Clavering  without  any  corresponding  honour  to  the  governor- 
general,  came  to  the  conclusion  that  Lord  North  did  not  really  intend 
to  fulfil  the  conditions  of  the  agreement,  and  he  therefore  wrote  to 
Hastings  advising  him  not  to  resign.  The  position  apparently  was 
that  Hastings,  through  the  action  of  his  agent,  and  though  he  himself 
had  recalled  his  original  instructions  two  months  after  they  were  sent, 
had  signified  his  intention  to  resign,  but  had  fixed  no  date.  When 
the  news  came  to  Bengal  in  June,  1777,  Francis  and  Clavering  at 
once  assumed  that  Hastings  had  resigned;  Clavering  claimed  the 
governor-generalship,  took  his  seat  in  council  at  the  head  of  the  table, 
demanded  the  keys  of  the  fortress  and  the  treasuries,  and  in  general 
acted  with  the  greatest  precipitation  and  violence.  Hastings  was 
stung  into  a  flat  resistance,  and  declined  to  vacate  the  seat  of  authority, 
though  he  declared  that,  but  for  Clavering's  presumptuous  and  absurd 
haste,  he  would  have  held  himself  bound  by  his  agent's  action.  The 
deadlock  was  so  hopeless  that  both  sides  agreed  to  refer  the  question 
to  the  Supreme* Court,  who  decided  "that  Mr,  Hastings  had  not 
resigned".  Not  content  with  this  decision,  which  saved  him  from 
ruin,  Hastings  next  contended  that  Clavering  by  his  action  had 
forfeited  even  his  seat  in  council,  but  here  the  Supreme  Court  decided 
against  him.  Thus  ended  what  Hastings  himself  called  the  "convulsion 
of  four  days,  which  might  have  shaken  the  very  foundation  of  the 
national  power  and  interests  in  India".1 

Clavering  died  on  30  August,  1777,  and  Hastings's  control  over  the 
council  was  greatly  strengthened,  though  Wheler  at  first  was  inclined 
to  act  with  Francis,  the  usual  division  being  Hastings,  Barwell  and 

1  Glcig,  op.  cit.  n,  159. 


COMPACT  WITH  FRANCIS  229 

the  casting  vote  against  Francis  and  Wheler.  Clavering  was  succeeded 
in  1779  as  commander-in-chief  by  Sir  Eyre  Coote,  who,  though  often 
intractable  and  difficult,  acted  quite  independently  of  Francis. 
Hastings,  therefore,  was  still  able  by  the  exercise  of  his  casting  vote 
to  make  his  views  prevail,  and  it  is  at  this  period  that  he  writes  of  his 
rival:  "Francis  is  miserable,  and  is  weak  enough  to  declare  it  in  a 
manner  much  resembling  the  impatience  of  a  passionate  woman, 
whose  hands  are  held  to  prevent  her  from  doing  mischief".1  In  1779 
Harwell  retired.  Hastings  had  prevailed  upon  him  to  stay  till  he  had 
made,  as  he  supposed,  an  accommodation  with  Francis  that  the  latter 
would  not  oppose  measures  for  the  prosecution  of  the  Maratha  War 
or  for  the  general  support  of  the  present  political  system  of  govern- 
ment. In  July,  1780,  he  accused  Francis  of  violating  this  compact, 
and  in  a  minute  laid  before  the  council,  said:  "I  judge  of  his  public 
conduct  by  my  experience  of  his  private,  which  I  have  found  to  be 
void  of  truth  and  honour":2  he  accepted  the  inevitable  challenge 
from  Francis  to  a  duel,  and  wounded  him  rather  severely.  Though 
Hastings  spoke  of  this  incident  with  a  certain  compunction,  writing: 
"I  hope  Mr.  Francis  does  not  think  of  assuming  any  merit  from  this 
silly  affair.  I  have  been  ashamed  that  I  have  been  made  an  actor 
in  it",8  yet  he  had  forced  on  the  meeting  with  great  deliberation 
and  most  clearly  intended  to  disable  his  adversary.  As  regards 
the  accommodation  a  few  words  must  be  said.  Francis,  as  we 
have  seen,  was  not  over-scrupulous,  but  he  always  hotly  declared 
that  he  had  never  been  party  to  any  such  engagement  as  Hastings 
pretended. 

The  agreement  I  meant  to  enter  into,  with  respect  to  the  Maratha  War,  was 
to  prosecute  the  operations  actually  existing  on  the  Malabar  coast,  which,  since 
the  campaign  was  begun,  and  General  Goddard  had  already  taken  the  field,  I 
thought  should  be  pushed  as  vigorously  as  possible.4 

He  flatly  denied  that  he  had  ever  promised  any  general  support.  It 
is  probable  that  Francis's  account  of  the  matter  is  mainly  correct. 
Hastings  seems  to  have  been  far  too  easily  content  with  a  vague 
acceptance  of  his  proposal,  and  it  was  surely  the  height  of  folly,  if  he 
really  wished  for  a  compact,  after  his  experience  of  Francis's  character, 
not  to  get  a  definitely  signed  agreement  from  him.  It  almost  appears 
as  though  Hastings,  despairing  of  any  other  method  of  freeing  himself 
from  his  opponent,  was  purposely  content  with  a  mere  verbal  promise, 
intending  afterwards  to  force  a  quarrel  upon  Francis  for  not  fulfilling 
it.  Whether  this  were  true  or  not,  he  had  at  last  attained  his  object. 

1  Idem,  p.  263. 

1  Forrest,  Selections  from. .  .State  Papers  in  the  Foreign  Department  of  the  Government  of  India, 
n,  712. 

»  Gleig,  o/>.  cit.  n,  310. 

4  Forrest,  Selections  from. .  .State  Papers  in  the  Foreign  Department  of  the  Government  oflndiat 
n,  715- 


230      WARREN  HASTINGS  AND  HIS  COLLEAGUES 

Francis  left  India  in  November,  1 780,  and  Hastings  wrote  in  exultation : 

In  a  word,  I  have  power,  and  I  will  employ  it,  during  the  interval  in  which  the 
credit  of  it  shall  last,  to  retrieve  past  misfortunes,  to  remove  present  dangers,  and 
to  re-establish  the  power  of  the  Company,  and  the  safety  of  its  possessions.1 

Hastings' s  position  was  now  indeed  much  easier  and  his  chief  tribu- 
lations were  over;  for  some  time  the  council  was  reduced  to  three, 
and  as  Sir  Eyre  Coote  was  generally  absent  from  Calcutta  on  military 
expeditions,  Wheler  was  practically  the  governor-general's  only 
colleague,  and  he  found  him  very  amenable  to  guidance.  At  first, 
as  we  have  seen,  Hastings  had  formed  a  poor  opinion  of  him.  He 
wrote  in  1777:  "He  is  now,  and  must  be,  a  mere  cipher  and  the  echo 
of  Francis,  a  vox  et  praeterea  nihil,  a  mere  vote".2  But  his  opinion  of 
him  gradually  improved:  "I  treat  him",  he  writes  to  a  friend,  "with 
an  unreserved  confidence,  and  he  in  turn  yields  me  as  steady  a 
support  as  I  could  wish",8  and  again:  "I  cannot  desire  an  easier 
associate,  or  a  man  whose  temper  is  better  suited  to  my  own".4  It 
is  clear  that  Wheler  was  gradually  won  over  by  the  dominant  per- 
sonality of  the  governor-general;  and  it  is  during  this  time  that 
Hastings,  uncontrolled  by  opposition,  enters  upon  those  proceedings 
in  regard  to  Chait  Singh  and  the  begams  of  Oudh  which  have  done 
so  much  to  blemish,  fairly  or  unfairly,  his  reputation.  The  truth  seems 
to  be  that  Wheler  was  an  honest  and  conscientious  man,  who  tried 
to  view  each  question  on  its  merits.  As  Sir  Alfred  Lyall  says :  "Wheler 
feebly  tried  to  do  his  duty,  and  was  rewarded  by  a  sentence  in  one 
of  Burke's  philippics  against  Hastings,  where  he  stands  as  'his  supple, 
worn-down,  cowed,  and,  I  am  afraid,  bribed  colleague,  Mr.  Wheler 5  ".5 
Two  new  councillors  appeared  in  djie  coiy^Jghn  Macpherson  in 
September,  1781,  and  Stables  in  Nov^jj^j.  Qa^e^tacpherson  first 
came  to  India  nominally  as  purser  of  Council  at  the  han  an(*  entered 
the  service  of  the  nawab  of  the  Carn^  tjie  treasuri'"liec*  to  England 
on  a  secret  mission  and  was  sent  out  tct  an(j  vioie,n,  this  time  in  the 
East  India  Company's  service,  in  J  7 7\to  vacate  years  later  he  was 
dismissed  the  service,  and  returned  to  E^'g  prPeHe  sat  in  parliament 
from  1 779  to  1 782  for  Cricklade,  and  he  \|[  j  supposed  to  be  in  receipt 
of  a  salary  from  the  nawab  of  the  Carnauc.  In  January,  1781,  the 
Company  reinstated  him  in  its  service — an  appointment  which  was 
severely  criticised.  Macpherson  was  a  shrewd  and  worldly  man, 
endowed  by  nature  with  extreme  good  looks  and  with  pleasant 
manners.  At  first  Hastings  found  in  him  "every  aid  and  support 
that  I  expected,  and  an  ease  with  a  benevolence  of  disposition 
. .  .far  exceeding  my  expectations".6  With  Stables  he  was  far  less 
pleased,  and  he  complains  of  "his  coarse  and  surly  style".7  For  a 
time  Hastings  found  his  relations  with  his  later  council  easy  and 
pleasant,  but  we  cannot  but  see  that  his  approval  or  disapproval  of 

*  Gleig,  op.  cit.  n,  330-1 .     •  Idem,  p.  186.    8  Idem,  p.  384.  *  Idem,  p.  387. 

5  Lyall,  Warren  Hastings,  p.  168.  •  Gleig,  op.  cit.  n,  450.    7  Idem,  m,  151. 


OPPOSITION  231 

his  colleagues  varied  accordingly  as  they  were  prepared,  or  refused, 
to  sink  their  individuality  in  his.  Towards  the  end  of  his  administration 
he  found  them  inclined  to  oppose  him  on  certain  questions,  as  for 
instance — and  it  must  be  added  most  properly — when  he  proposed 
in  1784  to  intervene  in  the  troubled  affairs  of  the  Moghul  Empire. 
"You  will  wonder",  he  writes,  "that  all  my  Council  should  oppose 
me.  So  do  I.  But  the  fact  is  this:  Macpherson  and  Stables  have 
intimidated  Wheler,  whom  they  hate,  and  he  them  most  cordially."1 
Hastings  acknowledged  at  this  time  that  "I  have  not  that  collected 
firmness  of  mind  which  I  once  possessed,  and  which  gave  me  such 
a  superiority  in  my  contests  with  Clavering  and  his  associates."2  As 
time  went  on  he  railed  against  them  more  and  more  bitterly:  "I  in 
my  heart  forgive  General  Clavering  for  all  the  injuries  he  did  me. 
He  was  my  avowed  enemy.  These  are  my  dear  friends,  whom 
Mr  Sulivan  pronounced  incapable  of  being  moved  from  me  by  any 
consideration  on  earth".3  Again  he  complains  that  the  councillors 
have  received  a  hint  from  their  friends  not  to  attach  themselves  to 
a  fallen  interest.  Even  Wheler  for  a  time  fell  into  disfavour. 

These  unfortunate  dissensions  led  Francis  in  a  speech  in  the  House 
of  Commons  to  claim  with  a  certain  amount  of  superficial  justification 
that  "the  opposition  to  Mr.  Hastings  has  not  been  confined  to  General 
Clavering,  Colonel  Monson,  and  myself.  His  present  colleagues . . . 
have  exactly  the  same  opinion  that  we  had  of  him  and  of  his  measures ". 4 
But  this  of  course  is  untrue.  The  opposition  now  was  at  times  vexatious, 
but  it  was  occasionally  justified,  and  it  was  very  different  from  the 
persistent,  unremitting  and  bitter  hostility  of  the  old  regime.  The  truth 
is  that,  as  Sir  Alfred  Lyall  said:  "It  would  have  puzzled  any  set  of 
Councillors  to  hit  off  the  precise  degree  and  kind  of  opposition  that 
Hastings  was  disposed  to  tolerate".5  Like  all  men  of  pre-eminent 
ability  and  dominating  personality,  he  could  not  bear  to  have  his 
purposes  thwarted;  and  there  is  probably  a  substratum  of  truth  in  the 
verdict  of  Barwell — friend  of  Hastings  though  he  was — written  in  1 774 : 

The  occasions  of  difference  between  us  that  did  exist  were  not  sought  for  by  me, 
but  proceeded  wholly  from  the  jealousy  of  his  own  temper,  which  cannot  yield 
to  another  the  least  share  of  reputation  that  might  be  derived  in  the  conduct  of  his 
Government.  Unreasonable  as  it  may  be,  he  expects  the  abilities  of  all  shall  be 
subservient  to  his  views  and  [that  all  shall]  implicitly  rely  upon  him  for  the  degree 
of  merit,  if  any,  he  may  be  pleased  to  allow  them  in  the  administration  of  Govern- 
ment.6 

It  must  be  remembered  of  course  that  none  of  the  councillors  appointed 
under  the  Regulating  Act  were  in  any  sense  men  of  first-rate  ability 
except  Philip  Francis.  Barwell  probably  stood  next  to  him  in  capacity ; 
Clavering,  Monson,  Wheler,  Macpherson  and  Stables  were  all 
thoroughly  mediocre  men.  But  the  fact  remains  that,  while  Hastings 

1  Idem,  p.  121.  *  Idem,  p.  122. 

8  Idem,  p.  1 29.  4  Parliamentary  History,  xxrv,  1 1 75. 

5  Lyall,  Warren  Hastings,  p.  164.  *  Bengal,  Past  and  Present,  XH,  71, 


WARREN  HASTINGS  AND  HIS  COLLEAGUES 

was  capable  of  inspiring  the  most  intense  affection  and  fidelity  from 
some  with  whom  he  came  into  close  personal  contact,  it  is  also  true 
that  he  had  a  certain  propensity  to  fall  foul  of  men — and  they  were 
sometimes  men  of  ability  and  repute — with  whom  he  was  called  upon 
to  work  in  public  life.  Sir  Robert  Barker,  Sir  Eyre  Coote,  Charles 
Grant,  Lord  Macartney,  and  even  Sir  Elijah  Impey  all  were  at  times 
seriously  at  variance  with  him.  Hastings  himself  never  doubted  that 
he  was  in  the  right  and  his  contemporaries  in  the  wrong,  and  through 
every  disappointment  and  defeat  he  still  clung  with  characteristic 
tenacity  to  a  defiant  approval — generally,  it  must  be  added,  entirely 
justified — of  his  own  actions. 

I  have  now  held  the  first  nominal  place  in  this  Government  almost  twelve  years. 
In  all  this  long  period  I  have  almost  unremittedly  wanted  the  support,  which  all 
my  predecessors  have  enjoyed  from  their  constituents.  From  mine  I  have  received 
nothing  but  reproach,  hard  epithets  and  indignities,  instead  of  rewards  and  en- 
couragement  Yet  under  all  the  difficulties  which  I  have  described,  such  have 

been  the  exertions  of  this  Government,  since  I  was  first  placed  at  the  head  of  it, 
that  in  no  part  of  the  Company's  annals  has  it  known  an  equal  state,  either  of 
wealth,  strength,  or  prosperity,  nor,  let  it  not  be  imputed  to  me  as  a  crime  if  I  add, 
of  splendid  reputation.1 

The  points  upon  which  the  new  council  at  once  came  to  grips  with 
the  governor-general  were  the  Rohilla  War  and  the  measures  to  be 
taken  for  terminating  it,  the  conclusion  of  the  Treaty  of  Faizabad, 
and  the  charges  brought  against  Hastings  by  Nandakumar. 

"  Upon  our  arrival ",  they  wrote,  "  the  first  material  intelligence  that  came  before 
us,  concerning  the  state  of  the  Company's  affairs,  was,  that  one  third  of  their 
military  force  was  actually  employed,  under  the  command  of  Sujah  Dowlah,  not 
in  defending  his  territories  against  invasion,  but  in  assisting  him  to  subdue  an 
independent  state." 

Without  waiting  for  any  reasonable  investigation,  they  condemned 
the  war  as 

carrying,  upon  the  face  of  it,  a  manifest  violation  of  all  those  principles  of  policy 
which  we  know  have  been  established  by  the  highest  authority,  and  till  now  uni- 
versally admitted. .  .as  the  basis  of  the  Company's  counsels  in  the  administration 
of  their  affairs  in  India. 2 

They  inflicted  upon  Hastings,  in  his  own  words,  "a  personal  and 
direct  indignity"3  by  recalling  Middleton  from  Lucknow,  and 
demanding  that  the  whole  of  his  correspondence,  some  of  which  was 
confidential,  should  be  laid  before  the  council.  They  ordered  Champion 
to  demand  at  once  the  forty  lakhs,  which  the  nawab  had  promised, 
and  to  withdraw  from  Rohilkhand.  "They  denounced",  it  has  been 
well  said,  "the  Rohilla  War  as  an  abomination;  and  yet  their  great 
anxiety  now  was  to  pocket  the  wages  of  it."4  Hastings  in  vain 

1  Forrest,  Selections  from. .  .State  Papers  of  the  Foreign  Department  of  the  Government  of 
India,  in,  902-3. 

8  Idem,  i,  1 20-1 .  «  Gleig,  op.  cit.  i,  474. 

4  Bcvcridge,  A  Comprehensive  History  of  India ,  n,  365. 


THE  ATTACK  ON  HASTINGS  233 

endeavoured  to  set  up  some  kind  of  barrier  against  this  wild  flood  of 
censure  and  criticism.  He  claimed  with  good  reason  that,  whatever 
the  rights  or  wrongs  of  the  matter,  since  the  Rohilla  War  was  begun 
and  all  but  concluded  by  the  past  administration,  the  new  councillors 
should  have  been  satisfied  with  recording  their  formal  disapproval  of 
it,  and  should  not  have  attempted  to  prevent  its  conclusion.  He 
declined  to  produce  the  correspondence  between  himself  and  Middle- 
ton,  though  he  offered  to  submit  all  passages  dealing  with  public 
policy  to  the  council,  and  to  send  the  whole  of  it  for  inspection  to 
Lord  North,  the  Prime  Minister. 

If  the  conduct  of  the  majority  seemed  unreasonable  on  the  question 
of  the  Rohilla  War,  it  appeared  still  more  perverse  on  the  occasion 
of  the  death  of  the  nawab  of  Oudh,  which  took  place  on  26  January, 
1775,  Their  one  aim  seemed  to  be  to  press  hard  upon  the  Company's 
ally.  They  decided  that  the  existing  treaty  was  personal  to  the  late 
ruler,  and  they  took  the  opportunity  to  conclude  a  new  treaty — the 
Treaty  of  Faizabad — by  which  all  his  successor's  liabilities  were  in- 
creased. He  had  to  pay  a  heavier  subsidy  for  the  use  of  British  troops; 
the  tribute  paid  by  the  zamindar  of  Ghazipur  passed  to  the  Company; 
and  the  sovereignty  of  Benares  was  also  ceded  to  it.  Hastings  op- 
posed the  treaty,  but  was  outvoted.  In  view  of  what  was  to  follow 
it  is  interesting  to  note  that  on  his  suggestion  it  was  made  a  condition 
of  the  treaty  that  the  raja  of  Benares  should  exercise  a  free  and  inde- 
pendent authority  in  his  own  dominions  subject  only  to  the  payment 
of  his  tribute.  On  11  March,  1775,  Nandakumar  brought  against 
Hastings  his  charge  of  having  received  from  the  begam  a  bribe  of 
354,105  rupees  for  appointing  her  guardian  of  the  young  prince. 
There  followed  the  famous  scene,  in  which  the  majority  of  the  council 
welcomed  the  accusation,  and  Hastings  withdrew  in  fierce  anger, 
refusing  to  be  arraigned  at  his  own  council  board  uin  the  presence 
of  a  wretch,  whom  you  all  know  to  be  one  of  the  basest  of  mankind".1 

What  are  the  facts  of  the  allegations  against  Hastings?  It  is  best 
perhaps  to  begin  with  everything  that  can  possibly  be  said  in  his 
disfavour.  Hastings  at  once  drew  up  a  long  minute,  which  according 
to  Burke  and  Gilbert  Elliot  bore  every  sign  of  conscious  guilt.  Even 
Sir  James  Stephen  admits  that  it  suggests  that  there  was  something 
to  explain.  Hastings  never  at  any  time  actually  denied  in  so  many 
words  the  truth  of  Nandakumar's  statement.  In  his  written  defence, 
read  to  the  House  of  Commons,  he  "entered  upon  a  kind  of  wrangle 
equally  ill-conceived  and  injudicious".2  In  a  letter  to  Lord  North 
he  uses  the  curious  expression:  " These  accusations,  true  or  false,  have 
no  relation  to  the  measures  which  are  the  ground  and  subject  of  our 
original  differences".8  We  must  assent  to  Sir  James  Stephen's  com- 
ment that  "Hastings's  character  would  no  doubt  have  stood  better, 


1  Stephen,  Nuncomar  and  Impey,  i,  53. 
»  Gleig,  op.  cit.  i,  518. 


2  Idem,  p.  72. 


234      WARREN  HASTINGS  AND  HIS  COLLEAGUES 

if  he  had  boldly  taxed  Nandakumar  with  falsehood".  The  begam 
acknowledged  that  she  had  given  150,000  rupees,  and  Hastings 
admitted  that  he  had  received  the  sum  as  entertainment  money,  but 
it  is  not  clear  why  so  much  mystery  was  made  about  the  transaction. 

On  the  other  hand,  for  Hastings,  it  must  be  said  that  he  had  every 
right  to  object  to  the  whole  procedure  of  the  majority:  "I  could  not 
yield  [to  their  claim  to  investigate  the  charge  at  the  council  board] 
without  submitting  to  a  degradation  to  which  no  power  or  considera- 
tion on  earth  could  have  impelled  me".1  He  saw  with  bitter  scorn 
that  his  enemies  were  hot  upon  the  despicable  trail,  and  he  had  no 
doubt  as  to  the  master  hand. 

At  the  impeachment,  the  Lord  Chancellor,  who  was  not  favourable 
to  Hastings,  commenting  upon  the  whole  of  the  evidence,  admitted 
that  the  managers  had  failed  to  prove  that  Hastings  had  ever  received 
any  part  of  the  354,105  rupees  except  the  150,000.  There  is  no 
question  that  he  had  accepted  that  sum,  but  there  is  no  ground  for 
holding  that  it  was  a  bribe  for  the  appointment  of  the  begam.  He 
contended  that,  when  he  received  the  money,  the  act  prohibiting 
presents  was  not  yet  passed;  the  allowance  was  customary,  and  he 
could  show  that  it  had  been  received  by  Clive  and  Verelst  when  they 
visited  Murshidabad.  This  was  in  reality  the  weak  part  of  Hastings's 
case.  The  Company  had  forbidden  presents  long  before  the  Regu- 
lating Act.  It  was  really  a  monstrous  abuse  that,  when  the  governor 
of  Bengal,  whose  salary  and  allowances  amounted  to  between  £20,000 
and  £30,000,  visited  Murshidabad,  he  should  receive  from  the  nawab 
an  allowance  amounting  to  £225  a  day.  That  it  had  been  taken  by 
Clive  and  Verelst  was  very  little  justification,  and  in  any  case  it  must 
be  noted  that  at  least  in  their  day  the  nawab  received  a  revenue  of 
fifty-three  lakhs,  while  it  had  now  been  reduced  to  sixteen.  There 
can  be  little  doubt  that  we  have  here  the  reason  for  Hastings's  failure 
to  deny  the  charge;  he  could  not  deny  that  he  had  received  part,  and 
therefore  preferred  to  deny  nothing.  Even  Sir  James  Stephen  admits 
that  the  transaction,  "  if  not  positively  illegal  was  at  least  question- 
able",2 and  we  cannot  wonder  that  in  the  impeachment  the  Lord 
Chancellor,  while  acquitting  Hastings  of  corruption,  said:  "He  hoped 
that  this  practice,. which  however  custom  might  have  justified  in  some 
degree,  no  longer  obtained  in  India".3  The  whole  incident  illustrates 
the  exactions  made  upon  Indian  powers  at  this  time  by  the  Company's 
servants,  whenever  opportunity  offered. 

When  Hastings  had  withdrawn  from  the  council,  the  majority 
resolved  that  "there  is  no  species  of  peculation  from  which  the 
Governor-General  has  thought  it  reasonable  to  abstain".  They  de- 
clared that  he  had  received  the  sums  specified,  and  ordered  him  to 

1  Gltig,  op.  cit.  i,  515-16. 

1  Stephen,  Nuncomar  and  Impey,  i,  72. 

8  Debates  gfthe  Lords  on  the  Evidence. . . ,  p.  147. 


NANDAKUMAR'S  TRIAL  235 

refund  the  money  into  the  Company's  treasury.  Owing  to  the  dramatic 
series  of  events  that  followed,  and  the  fall  of  Nandakumar,  the  charges 
were  never  proceeded  with.  Ultimately  the  information  and  papers 
of  Nandakumar  were  submitted  to  the  Company's  legal  adviser  in 
Calcutta.  He  did  not  advise  a  prosecution  in  India,  but  gave  it  as  his 
opinion  that  the  evidence  should  be  sent  home.  There  the  Company's 
law  officers  declared  that  the  statements  could  not  possibly  be  true. 

We  must  now  return  to  the  events  that  brought  about  the  ruin  of 
Nandakumar  and  the  stay  of  all  proceedings  against  Hastings.  On 
23  April,  Hastings,  Barwell  and  Vansittart  prosecuted  Fowke, 
Nandakumar  and  another  Indian  on  a  charge  of  conspiracy.  The 
charge  was  that  they  had  endeavoured  to  coerce  a  certain  Indian, 
named  Kamal-ud-din,  to  accuse  Hastings  and  Barwell  of  having 
received  other  bribes.  At  the  assizes  in  July  all  the  defendants  were 
acquitted  of  conspiracy  against  Hastings;  Fowke  and  Nandakumar 
were  convicted  as  against  Barwell,  Fowke  was  fined;  no  sentence  was 
passed  on  Nandakumar  since  he  was  by  that  time  lying  under  sentence 
of  death  for  forgery.  Meantime,  on  6  May,  before  Justices  Lemaistre 
and  Hyde,  sitting  as  magistrates,  Nandakumar  was  committed  for 
trial  on  a  charge  of  forgery  brought  against  him  by  the  executor  of 
an  Indian  banker.  His  trial  took  place  8  to  1 6  June;  he  was  found 
guilty,  sentenced  to  death,  and  executed  5  August,  1 775.  The  sequence 
of  events  was  curious,  and  it  was  long  believed  that  the  unhappy  man 
was  put  to  death,  nominally  for  forgery,  but  really  for  having  dared 
to  accuse  the  governor-general.  Burke  epigrammatically  summed  up 
the  popular  view  when  he  said  in  his  speech  on  Fox's  India  Bill : 

The  Raja  Nandakumar  was,  by  an  insult  on  everything  which  India  holds 
respectable  and  sacred,  hanged  in  the  face  of  all  his  nation,  by  the  judges  you 
sent  to  protect  that  people,  hanged  for  a  pretended  crime,  upon  an  ex  post  facto 
Act  of  Parliament,  in  the  midst  of  his  evidence  against  Mr.  Hastings.1 

In  considering  the  question,  it  is  important  to  remember  that  there 
were  two  distinct  charges  against  Nandakumar;  the  charge  of  con- 
spiracy in  which  Hastings  and  Barwell  were  the  avowed  prosecutors; 
the  charge  of  forgery,  in  which  the  prosecutor  was  an  Indian,  Mohan 
Prasad,  though  it  was  alleged  that  the  real  initiative  came  from 
Hastings. 

The  whole  question  has  been  examined  by  Sir  James  Stephen  in 
his  Nuncomar  andlmpey,  and  he  claims  to  have  shown  that  Nandakumar 
had  a  perfectly  fair  trial,  and  that  in  his  summing  up  Sir  Elijah  Impey 
gave  full  weight  to  any  point  that  could  possibly  tell  in  favour  of  the 
accused.  This  is  certainly  corroborated  by  the  statements  of  Fairer, 
Nandakumar' s  counsel  in  the  famous  trial,  who  was  called  to  give 
evidence  at  Impey's  impeachment.  He  was  examined  at  great  length, 
'and,  though  during  the  trial  he  had  sometimes  come  into  collision 
.with  the  Chief  Justice,  he  declared  that  all  the  favour  in  the  power  of 

1  Parliamentary  History,  xxra,  1369. 


236      WARREN  HASTINGS  AND  HIS  COLLEAGUES 

the  court  had  been  extended  towards  his  client,  and  particularly  from 
Sir  Elijah  Impey.  Stephen  points  out  that  all  four  judges  were  upon 
the  bench,  and  therefore,  if  there  was  a  conspiracy  between  the 
Supreme  Court  and  the  governor-general,  we  have  to  assume,  either 
that  the  whole  bench  was  privy  to  it,  or  that  they  were  entirely 
dominated  by  Impey's  personality.  The  jury  consisted  of  twelve 
European  or  Eurasian  inhabitants  of  Calcutta,  and  the  prisoner  had, 
and  exercised,  the  right  to  challenge.  Stephen  maintains  that  the 
charge  of  forgery  developed  in  a  natural  way  out  of  long-standing 
litigation  which  had  begun  in  December,  1772.  A  civil  suit  against 
Nandakumar  having  failed,  his  adversary  had  determined  to  prosecute 
him  criminally,  and  the  first  steps  in  this  process  had  been  taken  six 
weeks  before  Nandakumar  produced  his  charges  against  Hastings  at 
the  council  board.  As  it  has  been  said,  "that  charge  would,  in  the 
natural  course  of  law,  have  been  made  at  the  very  time  when  it  was 
made,  though  Nandakumar  had  never  become  a  willing  tool  in  the 
hands  of  Messrs  Clavering,  Monson  and  Francis".1  Against  this  it 
must  be  mentioned  that  Mr  H.  Beveridge,  in  his  Trial  of  Maharaja 
Nanda  Kumar,  denies  that  there  was  any  r^al  attempt  at  a  criminal 
prosecution  till  May,  1775,  and  he  gives  S9me  shrewd  reasons  for  his 
conclusion.  Stephen  rightly  contends  ^hat  Hastings'  subsequent 
reference  to  Impey  as  one  "to  whose  support  I  was  at  one  time 
indebted  for  the  safety  of  my  fortune,  honour  and  reputation",2 
which  Macaulay  supposed  to  refer  to  the  trial  of  Nandakumar,  almost 
certainly  refers  to  the  incident  of  the  resignation  of  1 777.  Quite  apart 
from  every  other  reason,  it  is  of  course  inconceivable  that,  if  Macaulay's 
supposition  had  been  true,  Hastings  would  have  been  indiscreet 
enough  to  use  the  words  quoted. 

There  seems,  on  a  careful  review,  to  have  been  only  two  incidents 
in  the  trial  to  which  exception  may  be  taken.  First,  the  judges  cross- 
examined — and  cross-examined  rather  severely — the  prisoner's  wit- 
nesses. Their  reason  was  that  this  was  done  to  prevent  the  ends  of 
justice  from  being  defeated,  counsel  for  the  prosecution  being 
incompetent.  The  reason  seems  strangely  inadequate;  it  can  never 
be  proper  for  judges  to  act  the  part  of  advocate.  When  Farrer 
protested,  Justice  Chambers  was  obviously  uneasy  on  the  point,  but 
the  protest  did  not  stop  the  practice.  Secondly,  Impey,  from  lack  of 
Indian  experience,  told  the  jury  that  if  Nandakumar's  defence  was 
overthrown,  the  fact  condemned  him;  but,  as  Stephen  points  out, 
this  rule  cannot  be  applied  in  the  East,  where  a  perfectly  good  case, 
should  proof  be  otherwise  lacking,  is  often  bolstered  up  by  flagrant 
perjury. 

It  is  certain  that  there  was  no  conspiracy  between  Hastings  and 
*  Impey  to  murder  Nandakumar.  It  is  possible,  as  Sir  Alfred  Lyall  hints, 

1  Beveridge,  A  Comprehensive  History  of  India,  11,  378. 
1  Gleig,  op.  cit.  n,  255. 


NANDAKUMAR'S  TRIAL  237 

that  Hastings,  knowing  that  Nandakumar  was  liable  to  a  serious  charge 
and  was  probably  guilty,  conveyed  to  Mohun  Prasad  the  intimation 
that  it  was  a  favourable  opportunity  to  bring  forward  the  case,  and 
"the  fact  that  Impey  tried  the  man  with  great  patience,  forbearance, 
and  exact  formality,  might  prove  nothing  against  an  intention  to 
hang  him,  but  only  that  he  was  too  wise  to  strain  the  law  super- 
fluously".1 There  is,  however,  absolutely  no  evidence  for  such  a 
supposition.  If  it  is  entertained,  it  must  depend  for  its  justification 
upon  certain  evidences  of  implacable  enmity,  which  it  may  appear 
to  some  that  the  conduct  of  Hastings  displayed  after  the  trial. 

The  question  of  Nandakumar's  guilt  is  a  different  one  from  the 
fairness  of  the  trial,  and  it  is  probably  impossible  at  this  distance 
of  time  to  come  to  any  definite  conclusion.  Sir  James  Stephen  is 
extremely  cautious  here.  He  says  that,  if  he  had  to  depend  upon  the 
evidence  called  for  the  prosecution,  he  would  not  have  convicted  the 
prisoner — a  notable  admission  on  his  part.  It  was  the  mass  of  perjury 
on  the  other  side  and  the  statements  of  Nandakumar's  own  witnesses 
that  tipped  the  scale  against  him.  There  is  a  further  doubt  whether 
the  English  law  making  forgery  a  capital  crime  ought  to  have  been 
considered  at  this  time  as  applicable  to  India.  The  question  is  very 
technical  and  abstruse.  Impey  held  that  the  act  under  which 
Nandakumar  was  tried,  and  which  was  passed  in  1 729,  was  extended 
to  India  in  1753,  and  that  therefore  a  forgery  committed,  as  his  was, 
in  1770,  fell  under  it,  for  which  he  had  the  precedent  of  Govinda 
Chand  Mitra;  but  Stephen  admits  that  the  rule  afterwards  universally 
accepted  by  the  courts  was  that  the  English  criminal  law  as  it  existed 
in  1 726  was  what  was  in  force  in  India  at  the  time.  On  that  reasoning 
the  act  of  1729  could  not  have  applied. 

There  is  a  further  question  apart  from  those  of  the  fairness  of  the 
trial,  the  guilt  of  the  prisoner  and  the  question  of  jurisdiction.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  infliction  of  the  death  penalty  was  so 
excessively  severe  that  it  amounted  to  a  miscarriage  of  justice,  and 
for  this  at  any  rate  the  court,  and  possibly  other  persons,  may  justly 
be  condemned.  Stephen  himself  admits  that  fine  and  imprisonment 
would  have  met  the  case,2  and  Impey  and  Hastings  have  only  them- 
selves to  blame  if  their  conduct  in  the  matter  suggested  to  the  world 
that  they  were  determined  to  put  Nandakumar  out  of  the  way.  The 
Supreme  Court  by  their  charter  had  authority  "to  reprieve  and 
suspend  the  execution  of  any  capital  sentence,  wherein  there  shall 
appear,  in  their  judgment,  a  proper  occasion  for  mercy".8  They 
could  have  hardly  had  a  more  convincing  case  for  the  exercise  of  this 
discretionary  power.  Forgery  was  universally  regarded  by  Indians 
as  a  mere  misdemeanour,  carrying  with  it  hardly  any  moral  con- 
demnation. Hastings  himself  had  written  a  few  years  before — and 

1  Lyall,  Warren  Hastings,  p.  71. 

1  Stephen,  Nwcomar  and  Impey,  n,  35.  »  Idem,  i,  19. 


238      WARREN  HASTINGS  AND  HIS  COLLEAGUES 

the  words  sound  almost  prophetic — "there  may  be  a  great  degree  of 
injustice  in  making  men  liable  at  once  to  punishments  with  which 
they  have  been  unacquainted,  and  which  their  customs  and  manners 
have  not  taught  them  to  associate  with  their  idea  of  offence".1  There 
was  the  additional  reason  that  the  execution  of  a  man  who  was  the 
accuser  of  the  governor-general  might  be  misunderstood  by  the  Indian 
population.  Impey  afterwards  declared  that,  if  this  ground  had  been 
put  forward  in  any  petition,  he  would  have  reprieved  the  prisoner, 
and  Stephen  agrees  that  he  could  have  taken  no  other  course.  To 
this  we  may  perhaps  reply  by  the  question :  Was  it  really  necessary, 
or  ought  it  to  have  been  necessary,  to  call  the  attention  of  the  Chief 
Justice  to  the  fact? 

The  judges  therefore  were  responsible  for  the  harsh  decision  to  carry 
out  the  death  penalty.  Yet  we  must  not  necessarily  assume  that 
their  motives  were  corrupt.  They  were  very  jealous  of  their  preroga- 
tive, pedantic  in  their  legal  interpretations,  and  too  self-opinionated 
to  recognise  that  they  had  not  been  long  enough  in  India  to  under- 
stand the  necessity  of  adapting  the  jurisprudence  of  the  West  to  the 
environment  of  the  East.  "I  had",  said  Impey  afterwards,  "the 
dignity,  integrity,  independence  and  utility  of  that  Court  to  main- 
tain."2 He  held  that  the  prevalence  of  forgery  in  Bctagal  required 
that  very  strong  measures  should  be  taken  to  suppress  it,  and  that  to 
have  reprieved  a  man  of  such  wealth  and  influence  as  Nandakumar 
would  have  created  a  suspicion  that  the  Supreme  Court  was  sub- 
servient to  the  executive.  "Had  this  criminal  escaped,  no  force  of 
argument,  no  future  experience,  would  have  prevailed  on  a  single 
native  to  believe  that  the  judges  had  not  weighed  gold  against 
justice."8 

As  for  Hastings,  he  had  constitutionally  no  power  to  reprieve  the 
prisoner.  He  had  therefore  a  perfect  right  to  leave  the  matter  to  the 
judges,  but  he  could  undoubtedly  have  exerted  himself  in  the  cause 
of  mercy,  and  perhaps  it  may  be  said  that  his  character  would  have 
stood  far  higher  if  he  had  done  so.  He  here  showed  that  streak  of 
relentlessness  in  his  otherwise  kindly  nature  which  appeared  on  one 
or  two  other  occasions.  He  was  without  pity,  and  glad  that  Nanda- 
kumar was  being  removed  from  his  path.  "I  was  never",  he  wrote, 
"the  personal  enemy  of  any  man  but  Nandakumar,  whom  from  my 
soul  I  detested,  even  when  I  was  compelled  to  countenance  him/*4 
Hastings,  we  have  said,  failed  to  exert  himself  to  procure  a  reprieve, 
but  it  must  be  added  that  there  is  some  reason  for  thinking  that  one 
of  his  dependents,  an  Italian  named  Belli,  exerted  himself  to  prevent 
Fairer  from  presenting  a  petition  for  a  reprieve. 

1  Monckton  Jones,  Warren  Hastings  in  Bengal,  p.  158. 

*  Stephen,  Nuncomar  anflmpey,  i,  260. 

8  Idem,  p.  257. 

4  Gleig,  op.  at.  m,  337-8. 


THE  MAJORITY  AND  NANDAKUMAR  239 

Fairer  persisted  in  his  efforts  to  procure  petitions.  One  was  to  be 
signed  by  the  jury,  but  only  a  single  juryman  would  lend  his  name. 
The  second  was  to  come  from  the  council.  Only  Francis  approved 
of  it;  Monson  and  Clavering  declined  to  have  anything  to  do  with  it, 
on  the  ground  that  it  "had  no  relation  whatever  to  the  public 
concerns  of  the  country" — a  reason  that  did  not  usually  influence 
them — and  that  they  "would  not  make  any  application  in  favour  of 
a  man  who  had  been  found  guilty  of  forgery".1  It  is  difficult  to 
understand  why  the  majority  of  the  council  did  not  petition  for  a 
reprieve.  They  owed  it  to  their  wretched  dupe  Nandakumar,  and  they 
might  have  seriously  embarrassed  Hastings  and  the  court.  The  theory 
of  Hastings's  enemies  afterwards  was  that  the  execution  had  struck 
such  terror  into  the  hearts  of  all  men,  that  no  one  dared  henceforward 
to  cross  his  path;  but  it  seems  impossible  to  believe  that  such  motives 
could  affect  men  in  the  position  of  Monson  and  Clavering.  There  is 
the  less  reason  for  the  supposition,  since  the  contemptuous  and 
heartless  way  in  which  they  answered  Farrer  seems  to  show  that  they 
had  given  up  believing  in  Nandakumar,  if  they  had  ever  done  so,  and 
were  ashamed  of  their  connection  with  him.  What  of  Francis? 
Although  he  had  given  a  perfunctory  approval  of  the  proposed 
petition,  he  made  no  other  effort.  He  entirely  disregarded  the  piteous 
letter  written  to  him  by  Nandakumar  from  prison,  and,  as  Stephen 
says,  "left  him  to  die,  when  he  could  have  saved  him  with  a  word".2 
However  much  the  death  of  Nandakumar  reflects  upon  the  mercy  of 
Hastings  and  the  judges,  it  casts  the  darkest  and  most  sinister  shadow 
over  the  reputation  of  the  men  who  used  him  for  their  own  purpose 
and  then  callously  and  contemptuously  flung  him  to  the  wolves.  To 
Francis  no  doubt  came  the  dastardly  consolation  that  Nandakumar 
dead  would  be  an  even  more  potent  weapon  than  Nandakumar  living, 
for  his  future  campaign  of  persecution  against  the  governor-general. 

Nine  days  after  the  execution,  Clavering  laid  before  the  council  a 
petition  from  Nandakumar,  which  he  had  received  the  day  before  that 
event,  in  which  for  the  first  time  the  doomed  man  suggested  that  he 
was  the  victim  of  a  conspiracy  between  the  judges  and  the  governor- 
general.  Francis  seems  to  have  seen  the  use  that  might  be  made  of 
this  document,  but  for  the  moment  he  took  the  lead  in  reprobating 
it.  He  described  it  as  "wholly  unsupported  and. .  .libellous",8  and 
proposed  and  carried  his  resolution  that  it  should  be  burnt  by  the 
common  hangman.  When,  in  after  years,  he  was  confronted  with  his 
action  at  the  time,  he  declared  that  it  was  due  to  the  fact  that  he 
"feared  for  Clavering's  safety,  not  knowing  to  what  length  those 
judges,  who  had  dipped  their  hands  in  blood  to  answer  a  political 
purpose,  might  proceed  on  the  same  principle". 

1  Stephen,  Nuncomtor  and  Impey,  i,  233. 
*  Idem,  p.  235. 
8  Idem,  n,  94. 


240      WARREN  HASTINGS  AND  HIS  COLLEAGUES 

All  the  circumstances  in  regard  to  this  document  are  somewhat 
mysterious.  When  it  was  presented,  Hastings  proposed  that  it  should 
be  sent  to  the  judges,  but  the  majority  opposed  him  and  accepted 
Francis's  resolution  that  it  should  be  destroyed  with  all  copies.  All 
this  took  place  in  the  secret  department  of  the  council  on  14  August. 
On  28  August  the  judges  asked  to  be  furnished  with  a  copy  of  the 
libel.  The  council  declined  their  request,  and  on  the  motion  of  Francis 
a  letter  was  sent  to  them  asking  them  to  say  "from  whom  you  receive 
the  imputed  information,  which  appears  to  have  been  conveyed  to 
you  on  this  and  other  occasions,  of  the  proceedings  of  this  Board  in 
our  secret  department".1  The  judges  were  also  informed  that  the 
petition  and  all  copies  had  been  destroyed.  In  spite  of  this,  Hastings 
gave  a  copy  of  the  document  to  Impey  under  an  oath  of  secrecy  that 
he  should  not  disclose  it  except  to  his  fellow-judges.  This  fact  was 
revealed  twelve  years  later,  when  Impey  produced  a  copy  at  the  time 
of  his  impeachment.  Three  deductions  follow  from  this  incident.  In 
the  first  place,  it  is  clear  that  Hastings  went  behind  the  decision  of  the 
council,  a  highly  unconstitutional  act,  and  also  violated  his  oath  of 
office.  In  regard  to  this  his  staunch  defender  Stephen  can  only  say: 

Oaths  of  such  a  nature  never  bind  closely,  and  it  is  one  of  the  great  objections 
to  their  use  that,  if  they  are  rigidly  enforced  they  often  do  cruel  injustice,  and  that, 
if  tacit  exceptions  to  them  are  admitted,  they  not  only  become  useless  for  the 
immediate  purposes  for  which  they  are  imposed,  but  are  also  snares  to  the  honesty 
of  those  who  take  them.  Whether  in  the  particular  case  there  was  any  moral  guilt 
in  the  breach  of  the  oath  of  secrecy,  and  whether  its  terms  were,  or  were  not, 
subject  to  exceptions  express  or  implied,  are  points  on  which  I  express  no  opinion. 2 

Secondly,  the  facts  reveal  a  certain  lack  of  straightforwardness,  which, 
however  much  we  may  excuse  it,  owing  to  the  fiendish  persecution  to 
which  he  was  often  subject,  sometimes  characterises  Hastings's  conduct. 
As  Stephen  admits,  he  was  "a  curiously  cautious  secret  man" — "of 
his  conduct  to  his  colleagues  I  will  only  say  that,  if  he  had  acted  openly, 
he  would  have  done  better  than  he  did".3  Lastly,  we  cannot  shut 
our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  the  incident  implies,  as  Francis  noted  and 
Stephen  agrees,  a  very  strong  intimacy  between  Hastings  and  the 
Chief  Justice,  and  "it  greatly  weakens  Impey 's  argument  that  he  had 
no  means  of  knowing  the  particulars  of  Nandakumar's  accusations 
against  Hastings,  because  they  were  made  in  the  secret  department 
under  an  oath  of  secrecy".4 

No  part  of  Lord  Macaulay's  essay  is  so  prejudiced  as  the  famous 
passage  on  the  terror  in  Bengal  caused  by  the  action  of  the  Supreme 
Court,  and  the  corrupt  nature  of  the  bargain  or  sale  by  which  in  the 
end  Hastings  is  alleged  to  have  bought  or  bribed  the  Chief  Justice. 
The  question  is  a  very  difficult  one  and  much  of  the  evidence  is 

1  Stephen,  Nuncomar  and  Impey 1 1,  251 .  f  Idem,  n,  115. 

8  Idem,  p.  116.  4  Idem,  p.  115. 


THE  SUPREME  COURT  241 

contradictory.   Before  considering  it  in  detail,  we  may  perhaps  lay 
down  the  following  points: 

(i)  A  conflict  of  jurisdiction  was  inevitable;  it  was  inherent  in  the 
charter  establishing  the  court  and  in  the  clauses  of  the  Regulating 
Act.  The  framers  of  that  act  shrank  from  the  logical  course  of  pro- 
claiming the  king  of  England  sovereign  in  Bengal,  but  that  sovereignty 
was  really  implied  in  the  very  constitution  of  the  court.  And,  as 
Macaulay  said,  they  "had  established  two  independent  powers,  the 
one  judicial,  and  the  other  political;  and  with  the  carelessness 
scandalously  common  in  English  legislation,  had  omitted  to  define 
the  limits  of  either". 

(ii)  It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  court  caused  much  disturbance 
and  discontent  by  exercising  its  powers  too  rigidly  and  too  pedantically. 
But  the  point  is,  what  classes  were  aggrieved  and  ohended?  If  it 
can  be  shown  that  the  zamindar  class  and  the  European  inhabitants 
of  Bengal  objected  to  the  court  because  it  restrained  oppressive 
practices  against  Indians,  then  the  agitation  is  highly  honourable  to 
the  judges,  and  this  is  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  claim  put  forward  by 
Impey's  son  and  largely  accepted  by  so  impartial  and  exact  an 
enquirer  as  Sir  James  Stephen. 

(iii)  We  must  in  any  case  entirely  discard  the  overcharged  and 
overheated  language  of  Macaulay.  All  we  know  of  Sir  Elijah  Impey' s 
life  makes  it  impossible  that  he  could  ever  have  been  the  monster  of 
iniquity  described  by  Macaulay.  We  must  remember  that  the  worst 
charge  against  Impey — and  it  may  not  be  true — is  that  he  harried 
and  distressed  the  population  by  exercising  too  meticulously  the  legal 
powers  given  him,  and  that,  in  accepting  the  new  office  offered  him 
by  Hastings,  he  was  not  careful  enough  to  think  out  all  the  conse- 
quences, or  to  visualise  the  manner  in  which  the  affair  would  strike 
hostile  observers.  The  whole  incident  casts  a  serious  slur  on  the 
literary  and  historical  integrity  of  Macaulay. 

There  were  many  points  in  dispute  as  between  the  council  and  the 
court;  for  instance,  the  court  admittedly  had  jurisdiction  over  British 
subjects  but  the  words  had  not  been  carefully  defined. 

"In  one  sense",  sayrs  Stephen,  "the  whole  population  of  Bengal,  Behar,  and 
Orissa  were  British  subjects.  In  another  sense,  no  one  was  a  British  subject  who  was 
not  an  Englishman  born.  In  a  third  sense,  inhabitants  of  Calcutta  might  be 
regarded  as  British  subjects,  though  the  general  population  of  Bengal  were  not."1 

Secondly,  had  the  court  jurisdiction  over  the  provincial  councils? 
Thirdly,  had  it  jurisdiction  over  the  zamindars? 

Something  must  now  be  said  of  the  progress  and  gradual  growth 
of  the  dispute.  Hastings  obviously  looked  forward  to  the  advent  of 
the  court  with  dread,  but  hoped  that  his  friendship  with  Impey  might 
prevent  the  worst  consequences.  In  1774  he  wrote  to  a  friend:  "The 
court  of  justice  is  a  dreadful  clog  on  the  government,  but  I  thank 

1  Idem,  p.  126. 

cmv  16 


242      WARREN  HASTINGS  AND  HIS  COLLEAGUES 

God,  the  head  of  it  is  a  man  of  sense  and  moderation95.1  Clearly,  if 
the  question  had  only  lain  between  the  governor-general  and  the 
Chief  Justice,  a  modus  vivendi  would  have  been  arrived  at. 

Hastings,  therefore,  did  everything  in  his  power  to  smooth  the  path 
for  the  judges,  and  was  determined  if  possible  to  put  the  best  con- 
struction on  all  their  actions.  He  would,  of  course,  in  writing  to 
Lord  North,  naturally  avoid  speaking  ill  of  the  court,  but  we  find 
him  definitely  committing  himself  to  the  statement  that  the  protection 
which  it  affords  to  the  weak  against  oppression  had  already  been  felt 
by  many.  In  1776  he  wrote: 

The  conduct  of  all  the  judges  has  been  directed  by  the  principles  of  moderation, 
and  a  scrupulous  attention  to  the  just  authority  of  government,  and  to  the  laws 
and  customs  of  the  people.  I  am  afraid  that  to  this  prudent  caution  alone  it  must 
be  ascribed,  that  the  undefined  state  of  the  powers  of  the  Governor-General  and 
Council  and  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  Judicature  have  not  been  productive  of  ill 
consequences  both  to  the  company  and  to  the  country.2 

He  foresees  difficulties,  because  it  will  scarcely  be  found  possible  in 
practice  "to  make  the  distinction  intended  by  the  Act  and  Charter, 
between  such  persons  as  arc  employed  in  the  service  of  the  Company, 
or  of  British  subjects  and  other  native  inhabitants".  He  suggests,  to 
further  a  good  understanding  between  court  and  council,  that  the 
Chief  Justice  should  have  "a  fixed  or  occasional  seat"  at  the  council 
board,  and  that  the  Company's  courts  should  subsist  by  delegated 
powers  from  the  Supreme  Court  and  be  dependent  upon  it.3 

In  1776  he  worked  out  and  sent  home  a  plan  for  amalgamating 
the  Supreme  and  the  Company's  courts — a  scheme  which  would  have 
in  part  anticipated  that  which  he  effected  less  constitutionally  on  his 
own  initiative  in  1780.  His  plan  was,  first,  to  extend  the  Supreme 
Court's  jurisdiction  to  all  parts  of  the  province,  that  is,  to  do  away 
with  the  nawab's  shadowy  authority  and  ensure  "that  the  British 
sovereignty,  through  whatever  channels  it  may  pass  into  these  pro- 
vinces, should  be  all  in  all".4  Secondly,  to  unite  the  judges  of  the 
Supreme  Court  with  members  of  the  council  in  control  of  the  Sadr 
diwanni  adalat,  or  the  Company's  chief  civil  court  of  appeal.  Thirdly, 
to  give  the  provincial  councils  a  legal  authority  in  the  internal  govern- 
ment of  the  country  and  in  the  collection  of  revenue.  Of  this  plan 
Hastings  writes:  "All  the  judges  approve  of  it,  and  I  like  it  myself, 
which  is  not  always  the  case  with  my  own  productions".6  The  plan 
was  of  course  opposed  by  the  majority  of  the  council,  who  showed 
their  usual  controversial  ability  and  lack  of  real  statesmanship  (for 
it  was  impossible  to  act  as  though  a  tabula  rasa  lay  before  them),  saying : 

It  is  proposed  to  give  the  Supreme  Court  a  complete  control  over  every  part  of 
the  country. .  ..The  complaint  is  that  they  have  assumed  more  than  they  have  a 
right  to;  the  redress  proposed  is  to  set  no  limits  to  their  power.* 

1  Gleig,  op.  at.  i,  471.  2  Idem,  n,  16.  8  Idem,  i,  541-2. 

4  Idem,  H,  14,  50.  6  Idem,  p.  35. 

6  Forrest,  Selections  from. .  .State  Papers  in  the  Foreign  Department  of  the  Government  of 
India,  n,  540. 


DISPUTES  WITH  THE  COURT  243 

At  first  Hastings  attributed  the  disputes,  when  they  came,  mainly 
to  the  majority  on  the  council:  "It  seems  to  have  been  a  maxim  of 
the  Board  to  force  the  court  into  extremities  for  the  purpose  of  finding 
fault  with  them",  and  he  admits  that  there  have  been  "glaring  acts 
of  oppression  committed  by  the  Board,  which  would  have  produced 
the  ruin  of  the  parties  over  whom  they  were  exercised,  but  for  the 
protection  of  the  court".  At  this  time,  too,  Hastings  agreed  that  it 
was  necessary  to  bring  before  the  court  persons  who  were  eventually 
excluded  from  its  jurisdiction  in  order  to  establish  their  exemption: 
"their  right  to  this  exemption  must  be  tried  to  be  known".1  Of 
himself  he  says  with  truth:  "On  every  occasion  which  was  likely  to 
involve  the  Board  in  contests  with  the  court,  I  have  taken  a  moderate 
and  conciliating  part".2  But  the  plan  of  1776  not  having  been 
accepted,  the  position  gradually  became  worse  and  Hastings  and 
Impey  drifted  apart. 

The  trouble  centred  round  two  famous  cases.  The  first  was  the 
Patna  case,  1777—9.  The  question  at  issue  was  the  right  of  the  Supreme 
Court  to  try  actions  brought  against  the  Indian  judicial  servants  of 
the  Company  for  acts  done  in  their  official  capacity.  The  Supreme 
Court  cast  in  heavy  damages  the  Muhammadan  law  officers  of  the 
Patna  council.  Sir  James  Stephen  has  exhaustively  analysed  the  whole 
case,  and  shows  pretty  conclusively  that  the  Supreme  Court  was 
mainly  in  the  right.  The  provincial  councils  were  worthless  bodies 
and  had  allowed  their  Indian  officials  far  too  much  power: 

If  the  Patna  council  was  a  fair  specimen  of  the  rest,  the  provincial  councils, 
considered  as  courts  of  justice,  were  absolutely  worthless,  and  no  system  for  the 
administration  of  justice,  which  deserved  the  name,  existed  at  that  time  out  of 
Calcutta.3 

The  second  case  was  the  Kasijora  case,  1779-80.  The  question  at 
issue  here  was  whether  the  Supreme  Court  had  the  right  to  exercise 
jurisdiction  over  everyone  in  Bengal,  Behar  and  Orissa,  and  especially 
over  the  zamindars.  Hyde  had  issued  a  writ  against  the  raja  of 
Kasijora,  a  zamindar  of  the  Company.  The  council  told  the  raja  he 
was  not  subject  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Supreme  Court,  and,  when 
the  Supreme  Court  sent  sheriff's  officers  to  apprehend  him,  the  council 
sent  some  companies  of  sepoys  to  arrest  the  sheriff's  officers  and  bring 
them  back  to  Calcutta.  Hastings  might  well  say:  "We  are  upon  the 
eve  of  an  open  war  with  the  court".4  Even  now  he  did  his  best  to 
look  at  the  question  fairly.  He  still  felt  doubtful  about  the  legal  point, 
though  he  was  convinced  of  the  practical  inconveniences  arising  from 
the  court's  action.  Referring  to  the  danger  to  the  public  revenues 
and  to  the  quiet  of  the  provinces,  and  to  the  irregular  and  illegal 
nature  of  the  writ,  he  says:  "God  knows  how  far  we  are  right  on  the 
last  conclusion.  I  am  sure  of  the  former".6  But  he  now  came  to  agree 

1  Gleig,  op.  cit.  n,  36.  *  Idem,  p.  248.  8  Stephen,  Nuncomar  and  Impey,  n,  178. 

4  Gleig,  op.  cit.  11,  244.  «  Idem,  p.  245. 

1 6-2 


244      WARREN  HASTINGS  AND  HIS  COLLEAGUES, 

with  the  majority  of  his  council,  that  zamindars  were  neither  British 
subjects  nor  the  servants  of  British  subjects,  and  that  the  court  could 
not  be  allowed  to  drag  "the  descendants  of  men  who  once  held  the 
rights  of  sovereignty  in  this  country,  like  felons,  to  Calcutta  on  the 
affidavit  of  a  Calcutta  banyan  or  the  complaint  of  a  court  Serjeant".1 

The  justice  of  the  whole  matter  is  very  difficult  to  decide.  It  has 
generally  been  assumed  that  Hastings  was  in  the  right,  especially 
as  he  was  normally  so  loth  to  infringe  the  powers  of  the  court.  But 
Sir  James  Stephen  declares  that  in  the  Kasijora  case  "the  council 
acted  haughtily,  quite  illegally,  and  most  violently".2  There  could, 
at  any  rate,  be  no  doubt  that  Impey  was  acting  in  good  faith  and  he 
felt  bitterly  the  burden  of  taking  on  his  shoulders  all  the  unpopularity. 
He  felt  bound  to  protect,  as  he  thought,  the  peasant  and  the  poorer 
classes  against  the  European  magistrates,  "who  never  appeared 
themselves"  but  oppressed  the  ryots  through  native  agents.8  We 
find  him  saying  in  a  private  letter  at  this  time:  "We  are  beginning 
to  make  the  vultures  of  Bengal  to  disgorge  their  prey".4 

At  the  same  time  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  position  in  Bengal 
was  rapidly  becoming  deplorable.  The  proceedings  of  the  cour$  were 
extremely  vexatious  to  a  large  class  of  people,  and  there  was  no  uoubt 
that  the  judges  were  becoming  very  unpopular.  The  memory  of  this 
long  lingered  in  Bengal.  Cornwallis,  who  was  one  of  the  most  tolerant 
of  men  and  who  could  never  be  induced  to  speak  against  his  colleagues 
or  predecessors  unless  it  were  necessary,  wrote  in  1786:  "I  trust  you 
will  not  send  out  Sir  Elijah  Impey.  All  parties  and  descriptions  of 
men  agree  about  him".5  Further,  though  the  evidence  from  this 
source  is  probably  largely  vitiated  by  partiality,  the  ninth  report  of 
the  select  committee  of  1781  declared  that  they  had  been  able  to 
discover  very  few  instances  of  relief  given  to  the  natives  against  the 
corruptions  or  oppressions  of  British  subjects.  "  So  far  as  your  com- 
mittee has  been  able  to  discover,"  they  wrote,  "the  court  has  been 
generally  terrible  to  the  natives,  and  has  distracted  the  government 
of  the  company  without  substantially  reforming  any  one  of  its 
abuses."6 

In  any  case  Hastings  naturally  and  rightly  desired  to  put  an  end 
to  'the  deadlock,  and  in  1780  he  hit  upon  the  ingenious  scheme  of 
offering  Impey  the  presidency  of  the  Sadr  diwanni  adalat.  It  is 
important  to  realise  exactly  what  this  meant.  Impey  was  already  at 
the  head  of  the  Supreme  Court,  sent  out  in  the  name  of  the  king  to 
exercise  jurisdiction  over  all  British  subjects,  and  especially  to  deal 
with  complaints  against  the  Company's  servants.  He  was  now  placed 
at  the  head  of  the  judicial  system  of  the  Company,  which  was  largely 

1  Gleig,  o/».  cit.  n,  248.  *  Stephen,  Nuncomar  and  Impey,  n,  220. 

8  E.  B.  Impey,  Memoirs  of  Sir  Elijah  Impey,  p.  134.  *  Idem,  p.  148. 

8  Ross,  Correspondence  of. . .  Cornwallis,  i,  238. 
8  Report  from  Committees  of  the  House  of  Commons,  \i,  48. 


IMPEY  AND  THE  SADR  COURT  245 

staffed  by  those  very  servants.  Macaulay's  accusation  is  that  Impey 
accepted  a  bribe,  compromised  the  independence  of  the  Supreme 
Court  and  finally  became  "rich,  quiet,  and  infamous".1  Con- 
temporajy  opinion  in  England,  especially  after  Francis  had  returned 
home  to  fan  the  flame,  was  not  much  more  favourable.  In  May,  1 782, 
the  court  of  directors  and  the  House  of  Commons  petitioned  the  crown 
for  Impey's  recall.  He  left  India  in  1783  to  answer  the  charge 

of  having  accepted  an  office  granted  by,  and  tenable  at  the  pleasure  of,  the  servants 
of  the  East  India  Company,  which  has  a  tendency  to  create  a  dependence  in  the 
said  Supreme  Court  upon  those  over  whose  actions  the  said  court  was  intended 
as  a  control.2 

It  is  difficult  to  understand  the  warmth  of  feeling  aroused.  The 
practical  advantages  of  the  plan  were  great.  A  real  control  was  now 
exercised  by  a  trained  and  expert  judge,  through  an  appeal  court 
which  was  at  last  a  reality,  over  weak  provincial  courts  which  badly 
needed  guidance.  The  old  Sadr  diwanni  adalat  had  been  a  shadowy 
body,  and,  in  practice,  says  Sir  James  Stephen,  never  sat  at  all  because 
the  governor-general,  its  nominal  president,  had  no  time  to  under- 
take judicial  duties.  Hastings  himself  could  describe  it  in  1776  as 
"having  been  long  since  formally  abolished".3  The  plan  also  did 
away  with  the  friction  between  the  judicature  and  the  executive.  It 
enabled  Impey  to  introduce  his  code  of  procedure  at  the  cost  of  eight 
months'  severe  labour — that  code  of  which  Sir  James  Stephen  writes: 
"It  is  not  a  work  of  genius  like  Macaulay's  penal  code. .  .but  it  is 
written  in  vigorous,  manly  English,  and  is  well  arranged".4 

At  the  same  time  some  tactical  mistakes  were  undoubtedly  made. 
It  was  an  unfortunate  circumstance  that  the  salary  attached  to  the 
new  office  was  revocable  at  the  will  of  the  governor-general  and 
council,  but  it  was  almost  certainly  inevitable  in  the  conditions.  The 
Company's  government  had  no  power  to  create  an  office  indepen- 
dent of  itself.  Still,  it  enabled  the  East  India  Company's  legal 
adviser  to  say:  "Impey  is  found  one  day  summoning  the  Governor- 
General  and  the  council  before  his  tribunal  for  acts  done  as  council, 
and  the  next  accepting  emoluments  nearly  equal  to  his  original 
appointment  to  be  held  during  the  pleasure  of  the  same  council".6 
All  this,  unhappily,  gave  the  impression  that  Impey  was  compro- 
mising his  dispute  with  the  council  for  a  money  consideration. 
Secondly,  since  the  Supreme  Court  had  been  especially  created  to 
be  independent  of  the  council,  it  looked  as  though  the  spirit  of  the 
Regulating  Act  was  being  violated.  Sir  James  Stephen  himself, 

Lord  Macaulay,  Essays,  p.  624. 

Parliamentary  History,  xxii,  141 1 . 

Gleig,  op.  at.  n,  29. 

Stephen,  Nuncomar  and  Impey,  n,  24^. 

Reports  from  Committees  of  the  House  of  Commons,  v,  422. 


246      WARREN  HASTINGS  AND  HIS  COLLEAGUES 

Impey's  strenuous  champion,  thinks  that  the  Chief  Justice  had  put 
himself  in  an  invidious  position. 

He  did  undoubtedly  weaken,  if  it  is  too  much  to  say  that  he  forfeited,  his  judicial 
independence. .  ..He  exposed  himself  to  a  temptation  to  which  no  judge  ought 

to  expose  himself [His  action]  was  wrong,  though  I  do  not  think  it  was  actually 

corrupt.1 

Thirdly,  it  is  perhaps  reasonable  to  ask  whether  such  sweeping 
changes  ought  to  have  been  made  without  approval  first  gained  from 
home. 

We  have,  however,  to  remember  certain  further  circumstances  in 
Impey's  favour.  He  wrote  at  once  to  the  Attorney-General  in  London, 
offering  to  refund  the  salary,  if  ministers  thought  the  acceptance  of 
it  improper;  and  apparently  he  did  afterwards  refund  it.  He  claims 
to  have  told  Hastings  that  his  assumption  of  the  office  would  not  in 
the  least  affect  his  conduct  in  regard  to  the  question  at  issue  between 
the  council  and  the  court.  He  wrote  in  1 782  with  some  truth : 

I  have  undergone  great  fatigue,  compiled  a  laborious  code,  restored  confidence 
to  the  suitors  and  justice  and  regularity  to  the  courts  of  justice,  and  settled  the 
internal  quiet  of  a  great  empire. .  .and  for  my  recompense  shall  have  lost  my  office, 
reputation,  and  peace  of  mind  for  ever.2 

Finally,  to  some  extent,  as  Impey  declared  in  his  speech  at  the  bar 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  the  judges  reaped  all  the  odium  of  the 
violent  struggle  of  parties.  One  faction  bitterly  attacked  the  judges 

as  being  partisans  of  the  opposite  faction.  That  opposite  faction,  cautious  to  avoid 
the  imputation  of  undue  connection  with  the  judges,  found  it  in  their  interests  not 
to  defend  them.  Neutral  men  (if  such  there  were)  took  no  part,  and  the  judges, 
who  really  were  (as  they  ought  to  have  been)  of  no  party,  were  left  undefended. 3 

Impey  on  his  return  to  England  was  left  undisturbed  for  four  years, 
but  in  1787  he  was  impeached  by  Sir  Gilbert  Elliot,  afterwards 
Governor-General  of  India  and  Earl  of  Minto.  Six  charges  were 
brought  against  him,  namely  Nandakumar's  case,  the  Patna  case, 
the  illegal  extension  of  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Supreme  Court,  the 
Kasijora  case,  the  acceptance  of  the  office  of  judge  of  the  Sadr  diwanni 
adalat,  and  the  taking  of  the  affidavits  in  Oudh  in  relation  to  the 
Chait  Singh  business.  The  impeachment  was  frankly  made  a  party 
affair.  Almost  all  the  prominent  Whig  leaders  were  associated  with 
it.  It  broke  down  completely  and  humiliatingly.  Only  the  first 
charge  was  proceeded  with.  Summoned  to  the  bar  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  Impey  made  an  eloquent  and  triumphant  defence.  He 
spoke  extemporaneously  and  without  the  aid  of  notes.  His  speech, 
which  lasted  two  days,  gives  a  striking  impression  of  his  ability. 
No  one  can  read  it  without  feeling  that  it  is  the  work  of  a 
capable  and  sincere  man.  It  is  far  franker  and  more  spontaneous 

1  Stephen,  Nuncomar  and  Impey ,  11,  238.  *  Idem,  p.  245. 

8  Parliamentary  History,  xxvi,  1347. 


REFORM  OF  THE  SUPREME  COURT  247 

than  the  laboured  and  confused  paper  read  as  an  apologia  by 
Hastings. 

The  thorough  unfairness  of  the  Whig  attitude  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  Burke  and  Fox  made  it  a  matter  of  complaint  that  Impey  had 
delivered  an  unprepared  speech  and  had  not  submitted  a  written 
document,  whereas,  when  Hastings  presented  a  written  defence,  it 
was  alluded  to  contemptuously  by  Burke  as  that  "indecent  and  un- 
becoming paper  which  lies  on  our  table".1  Impey's  masterly  speech 
really  shattered  the  case.  Pitt  declared  that,  after  hearing  it,  he  could 
say  that  he  never  gave  any  vote  with  less  hesitation  than  the  one  he 
was  going  to  give  against  the  impeachment.  The  division  on  the  first 
charge  was  73-55  against  the  impeachment.  A  half-hearted  attempt 
was  made  later  to  raise  the  second  charge,  the  Patna  case,  but  it  was 
negatived  without  a  division.  It  would  seem  that  few  men  have  met 
with  less  justice  from  history  and  the  verdict  of  their  own  contem- 
poraries than  Sir  Elijah  Impey. 

In  the  meantime  the  question  between  the  council  and  the  court 
had  been  definitely  settled  by  statute,  and,  as  Sir  Courtney  Ilbert 
says,  the  decision  of  parliament  was  substantially  in  favour  of  the 
council  and  against  the  court  on  all  points.  Two  petitions  had  been 
sent  home,  one  by  the  governor-general  and  council,  and  the  other 
by  648  British  subjects  resident  in  Bengal.  The  first  dealt  mainly  with 
the  Kasijora  case.  The  council  claimed  that  it  was  bound  to  protect 
the  people  against  "the  control  of  a  foreign  law,  and  the  terrors  of  a 
new  and  usurped  dominion".2  If  the  court  prevailed, "  these  provinces, 
and  the  British  dominion  in  India,  must  fall  a  certain  sacrifice  to 
the  ultimate  effects  of  the  exercise  of  an  impolitic,  unnatural  and  law- 
less authority".3  Finally,  they  declared  that  they  had  no  alternative 
but  public  ruin,  if  they  submitted  to  the  jurisdiction  assumed  by  the 
Supreme  Court,  or  personal  ruin,  if  they  opposed  it.4  The  second 
petition  protested  against  the  danger  of  "giving  to  the  voluminous 
and  intricate  laws  of  England  a  boundless  retrospective  power  in  the 
midst  of  Asia".5 

These  petitions  were  the  real  cause  of  the  appointment  of  the 
Select  Committee  of  1 781 ,  to  which  reference  has  been  already  made, 
and  the  result  was  the  act  of  that  year  amending  the  constitution  of 
the  Supreme  Court.  The  most  important  of  its  provisions  was  that 
the  governor-general  and  council  were  not  to  be  subject  to  the  court 
for  anything  committed,  ordered,  or  done  by  them  in  their  public 
capacity,  but  this  exemption  did  not  apply  to  orders  affecting  British 
subjects.  The  Supreme  Court  was  to  have  no  jurisdiction  in  matters 
of  revenue  or  its  collection.  No  Indian  was  to  be  liable  to  the  court's 
jurisdiction  by  reason  of  being  a  landholder  or  a  farmer  of  rents.  The 

1  Bond,  Speeches  in  the  Trial  of  Warren  Hastings,  I,  6. 

1  Parliamentary  History,  xxi,  1 1 70.  *  Idem,  p.  1 1 73. 

*  Idem,  p.  1 1 74.  6  Idemt  p.  1 1 78. 


248      WARREN  HASTINGS  AND  HIS  COLLEAGUES 

court  was  again  definitely  given  jurisdiction  over  all  inhabitants  of 
Calcutta,  but  Hindu  or  Muhammadan  laws  were  to  be  administered 
in  cases  of  inheritance,  contract  and  successions. 

We  must  on  the  whole  then  conclude  that  the  verdict  of  the  British 
in  India,  of  Lord  Cornwallis  and  of  parliament,  was  a  triumph  for 
the  council's  view  of  the  controversy  as  against  the  court,  on  the 
question  of  fact,  and  by  fact  is  meant  the  vexatious  and  harassing 
nature  of  the  court's  procedure.  But,  turning  from  the  objective  to 
the  subjective  aspect  of  the  case,  and  considering  the  motives  of  the 
parties  concerned,  we  can  only  conclude  that  hard  measure  was 
dealt  out  both  to  Impey  and  his  colleagues. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  FIRST  CONFLICT  OF  THE  COMPANY 
WITH  THE  MARATHAS,   1761-82 

JT  ROM  1750  to  1761  it  was  an  open  question  whether  the  Marathas 
or  the  Afghans  would  become  the  masters  of  India.  The  answer  was 
given  by  the  battle  of  Panipat  fought  in  January,  1761,  between  the 
Marathas  and  the  Durani,  Ahmad  Shah,  which  resulted  in  the  total 
defeat  of  the  Hindu  confederacy,  and  the  end  of  the  Moghul  Empire, 
save  as  a  mere  name.  It  is  worthy  of  note,  that  contrary  to  the 
ordinary  sequence  of  events  in  Asiatic  countries,  no  change  of  dynasty 
occurred  at  Delhi,  where  the  effete  descendant  of  the  house  of  Timur 
remained  seated  on  the  throne.  Had  Ahmad  Shah  retained  his  hold 
on  Northern  India,  the  consolidation  of  the  English  power  would 
have  been  far  less  easy  of  accomplishment.  For  the  Maratha  con- 
federacy, although  it  had  the  great  binding  force  of  a  common  racial 
origin  as  its  foundation,  was  rent  by  internal  jealousies,  while  it 
depended  for  its  aggrandisement  on  a  system  of  brigandage,  which 
ultimately  drove  many  other  Indian  states  into  the  arms  of  the 
English. 

The  very  growth  of  its  power,  indeed,  carried  in  it  the  seeds  of 
dissolution.  As  the  area  in  which  the  confederacy  operated  expanded, 
its  military  commanders,  prosecuting  campaigns  far  from  head- 
quarters, rapidly  lost  much  of  their  respect  for  the  central  power  at 
Poona,  a  respect  which  the  characters  of  the  Peshwas  who  succeeded 
Madhu  Rao  did  nothing  to  maintain.  Holkar,  Sindhia,  the  Gaekwad, 
the  Bhonsle  and  others,  in  consequence,  worked  more  and  more  in 
their  own  private  interests  to  the  neglect  of  those  of  the  Peshwa  and 
of  the  Marathas  as  a  whole. 

The  Peshwa,  Baji  Rao,  his  spirit  broken  by  the  defeat  at  Panipat, 
died  in  June,  1761,  his  son  Madhu  Rao  being  installed  Peshwa  in 
September  by  the  raja  at  Satara,  whither  he  proceeded  for  the 
ceremony  accompanied  by  his  uncle  Raghunath  Rao.  For  the 
transfer  of  power  from  the  descendants  of  Sivaji  to  the  family  of  one 
of  the  ministers  did  not  displace  the  occupant  of  the  throne  at  Satara 
or  abolish  his  nominal  rule.  Madhu  Rao  was,  however,  only  seven- 
teen years  of  age  and  his  uncle  kept  the  reins  of  the  administration 
in  his  own  hands. 

The  Nizam  of  Hyderabad,  who  saw  the  chance  of  profiting  by  the 
changes  at  Poona,  prepared  to  attack  the  Marathas,  upon  which 
Raghunath  Rao  made  overtures  to  Crommelin,  then  governor  at 
Bombay.  The  Bombay  Council  were  most  anxious  to  strengthen  the 
defences  of  their  harbour  by  securing  possession  of  Bassein  Fort, 


250      FIRST  CONFLICT  WITH  MARATHAS,  1761-82 

Salsette  and  the  islands  in  that  neighbourhood,  and  were  quite  ready 
to  negotiate.  Raghunath  Rao,  however,  anxious  as  he  was  to  obtain 
military  assistance,  was  not  as  yet  prepared  to  surrender  such  im- 
portant places.  At  this  juncture  the  Nizam's  Maratha  troops  deserted 
him  and  obliged  him  to  come  to  terms,  whereupon  Raghunath  Rao 
promptly  broke  off  his  negotiations  with  Bombay.  The  incident  is 
important.  It  deliberately  introduced  the  English  as  arbiters  in 
Maratha  affairs,  and,  as  later  events  will  show,  brought  them  into 
that  personal  association  with  Raghunath  Rao  which  was  to  become 
a  deciding  factor  in  the  consolidation  of  the  British  power  in  Western 
India. 

So  far  Raghunath  Rao  had  kept  all  the  power  in  his  own  hands. 
But  his  nephew  was  not  of  the  metal  long  to  brook  control,  and  early 
in  1762  insisted  on  asserting  his  independence.  His  uncle  and  his 
diwan  Sakharam  Bapu  thereupon  resigned  and  the  young  Peshwa 
appointed  his  own  officers.  Among  them  was  one  who  played  a 
conspicuous  part  in  the  history  of  Western  India,  Balaji  Janardhan, 
better  known  as  Nana  Phadnavis,  from  the  office  of  phadnavis  or 
chief  accountant  which  he  held  from  1763.  His  family  came  from 
the  Ratnagiri  district.  His  grandfather  had  been  employed  by  the 
Peshwa  Balaji  Vishvanath,  whose  son,  Nana's  father,  was  appointed 
phadnavis^  a  post  that  became  hereditary  in  the  family. 

The  changes  at  Poona  did  not  make  for  peace.  Raghunath  Rao 
and  his  officials  were  annoyed  at  the  loss  of  power,  and  this  jealousy 
was  fanned  by  the  strong  personal  animosity  which  existed  between 
Gopika  Bai,  the  Peshwa's  mother,  and  Anandi  Bai,  the  wife  of 
Raghunath  Rao.  Anandi  Bai,  to  whom  Raghunath  Rao  was  devoted, 
was  a  woman  of  very  violent  character,  and  exercised  absolute  control 
over  her  husband,  much  of  whose  subsequent  misfortunes  were  due 
to  the  sinister  influence  of  his  wife. 

At  her  instigation  Raghunath  Rao  now  proceeded  to  make  over- 
tures to  the  Nizam,  who  readily  responded,  and,  rapidly  gathering 
a  body  of  Maratha  and  Moghul  troops,  they  advanced  together  on 
Poona,  an  unfortified  city,  defeating  a  force  sent  to  oppose  them. 
Madhu  Rao,  driven  into  a  corner,  in  order  to  save  the  situation  and 
preserve  the  integrity  of  the  Maratha  state,  went  personally  to  his 
uncle  and  submitted.  He  was  placed  in  confinement  but  was  treated 
with  all  respect. 

Assumption  of  control  by  Raghunath  Rao  inevitably  led  to  a  spread 
of  discontent.  The  Nizam,  ever  on  the  watch  for  such  opportunities 
in  hope  of  reducing  the  Maratha  power,  in  1 763  adopted  the  cause 
of  Janoji  Bhonsle  of  Berar  who  claimed  to  act  as  regent  for  the  young 
Peshwa.  Raghunath  Rao  was  wholly  unprepared,  but  his  nephew, 
by  using  his  great  personal  influence,  induced  Holkar  andjfcthe 
Gaekwad  to  assist  his  uncle.  The  Maratha  army,  avoiding  an  en- 
counter with  the  Nizam,  ravaged  the  Bhonsle's  districts  in  Berar  and 


ENGLISH  VIEWS  251 

then  entered  Hyderabad  territory.  The  Nizam,  finding  he  could  not 
stop  the  Marathas,  marched  to  Poona,  which  he  plundered.  Raghu- 
nath  Rao  in  the  meantime  had  contrived  to  buy  off  Janoji  Bhonsle, 
who  agreed  to  desert  the  Moghuls  when  occasion  offered.  At 
Rakshasbhavan,  on  the  Godavari  river,  the  two  armies  met;  the 
Bhonsle  quietly  withdrew  and  the  Nizam  was  defeated  with  severe 
loss.  But  the  Nizam,  always  a  consummate  actor,  went  personally 
to  Raghunath  Rao,  and  by  working  on  his  feelings  and  appealing  to 
their  old  friendship,  induced  his  conqueror  to  pay  him  ten  lakhs  of 
rupees.  This  curious  arrangement  was  characteristic  of  Raghunath 
Rao's  vacillating  disposition. 

Madhu  Rao  again  offended  his  uncle  by  insisting  in  commanding 
the  army  which  was  sent,  in  r  764,  against  Hyder  'Ali  of  Mysore,  but 
the  offence  was  to  some  extent  mitigated  by  the  completion  of  the 
campaign  being  left  to  Raghunath  Rao.  Nephew  and  uncle  were  now 
on  friendly  terms  and  possibly  might  have  continued  so,  for  some  time 
at  least,  but  for  Anandi  Bai's  violent  conduct  which  induced  Gopika 
Bai  to  advise  her  son  to  place  his  uncle  under  some  restraint,  a  step 
which  Madhu  Rao,  who  could  easily  control  his  uncle  when  away 
from  his  wife's  influence,  was  most  averse  to  taking. 

The  English,  although  not  as  yet  definitely  drawn  into  the  in- 
trigues and  squabbles  of  Maharashtra,  were  fully  aware  of  the  trend 
of  events.  Lord  Clive  had,  in  1765,  restored  to  Shuja-ud-daula,  the 
nawab  of  Oudh,  the  territories  taken  from  him  after  the  battle  of 
Baksar  (October,  1764)  except  the  two  districts  of  Kora  and 
Allahabad  assigned  to  the  emperor  Shah  'Alam,  who  was  at  that  time 
dependent  on  British  charity.  His  reason  for  adopting  this  policy  was 
his  aversion  to  adding  to  the  Company's  territory,  as  he  clearly  fore- 
saw that  the  Company  must  either  confine  its  activities  to  the  area 
it  already  possessed,  or  go  forward  as  a  conqueror,  which,  in  his 
opinion,  was  a  scheme  so  extravagantly  ambitious  and  absurd  that 
it  could  not  be  considered  for  a  moment,  unless  the  whole  system  of 
the  Company's  interest  was  entirely  remodelled.1  It  was,  therefore, 
not  because  the  directors  and  administrators  of  the  Company  failed 
to  see  whither  events  were  leading  them,  that  constant  attempts  were 
made  to  limit  the  area  of  activities,  but  because  the  inevitable  results 
of  such  expansion  were  only  too  fully  appreciated.  The  collapse  of 
the  house  of  Timur  had  opened  the  road  of  conquest  to  any  strong 
integral  power,  a  position  the  English  alone  could  claim,  but  it  meant 
exchanging  the  role  of  a  merchant  for  that  of  a  military  adventurer. 

Clive,  writing  in  1 765,  summed  up  the  situation  in  these  words : 

We  have  at  last  arrived  at  that  critical  conjuncture,  which  I  have  long  foreseen, 
I  mean  that  conjuncture  which  renders  it  necessary  for  us  to  determine  whether  we 
can,  or  shall,  take  the  whole  to  ourselves. .  .it  is  scarcely  hyperbole  to  say,  that  the 
whole  Mogul  empire  is  in  our  hands.  The  inhabitants  of  the  country . . .  have  no 

1  Forrest,  Clive,  n,  1 76. 


252      FIRST  CONFLICT  WITH  MARATHAS,  1761-82 

attachment  to  any  Nabob  whatever,  their  troops  are  neither  disciplined  nor 
commanded  nor  paid  as  ours  are.  Can  it  then  be  doubted  that  a  large  army  of 
Europeans  would  effectually  preserve  to  us  the  sovereignty  not  only  by  keeping 
in  awe  the  ambitions  of  any  country  prince,  but  rendering  us  so  truly  formidable 
that  no  French,  Dutch  or  other  enemy  will  presume  to  molest  us?1 

Although  the  English  had  in  1 766  made  a  treaty  with  the  Nizam 
against  Hyder '  Ali  they  had  not  yet  definitely  entered  into  the  struggle 
in  Maharashtra,  but  the  events  which  took  place  there  between  1765 
and  1772  paved  the  way  for  the  denouement  of  1782. 

The  Peshwa  in  1 766  decided  to  punish  Janoji  Bhonsle  of  Berar, 
who  was  intriguing  against  him,  and  in  order  to  do  so  formed  an 
alliance  with  the  Nizam,  an  instance  of  the  kaleidoscopic  interchanges 
between  friends  and  foes  which  is  so  characteristic  of  the  history  of 
Western  India. 

It  must  be  mentioned  that  Malharji  Holkar,  the  founder  of  the 
present  Indore  ruling  family,  who  had  accompanied  the  force  under 
Raghunath  Rao,  died  on  his  way  home  at  'Alampur  on  20  May,  1766. 
He  had  been  one  of  the  Peshwa's  foremost  adherents,  and  his  death, 
which  left  Indore  under  the  rule  of  his  daughter-in-law  Ahalya  Bai, 
with  Tukoji  Holkar  as  her  military  commander,  considerably  weak- 
ened the  support  obtainable  from  the  house  of  Holkar,  while  it 
finally  gave  Sindhia  an  ascendancy  which  his  house  has  retained -ever 
since. 

In  1767  Madhu  Rao,  fearing  the  rapidly  rising  power  of  Hyder 
'Ali  in  Mysore,  attacked  and  defeated  him.  The  growing  power  of 
Madhu  Rao,  whose  strong  personality  had  now  fully  asserted  itself, 
soon  engaged  the  attention  of  the  Bombay  Council  and  they  began 
to  court  the  Peshwa  officially,  Mostyn  being  sent  to  Poona  to  ascertain 
and  report  on  the  actual  state  of  affairs  there,  and  to  endeavour, 
without  committing  himself  to  a  treaty,  to  prevent  the  Peshwa  from 
contracting  an  alliance  with  the  rulers  of  Mysore  or  Hyderabad.  This 
increasing  power  of  the  Marathas  under  Madhu  Rao's  direction  was 
indeed  a  matter  of  so  much  concern  to  the  council  that  in  their  orders 
to  Mostyn  they  laid  stress  on  the  fact  that  no  means  should  be 
omitted  to  check  it.  But  nothing  resulted  from  this  embassy. 

Raghunath  Rao  had,  in  pursuit  of  his  own  ends,  for  some  time 
been  gathering  a  force  together  with  the  assistance  of  the  Gaekwad 
and  Holkar.  He  now  marched  to  the  Tapti  river  where  he  hoped 
to  be  joined  by  Janoji  Bhonsle.  But  Madhu  Rao  gave  him  no  time, 
attacking  him  and  making  him  prisoner.  The  Peshwa  then  advanced 
against  Janoji  (1769),  forced  him  to  come  to  terms,  and  also  made 
overtures  of  friendship  to  the  Nizam. 

A  force  was  this  year  sent  into  Hindustan  under  the  command  of 
Visaji  Kishan,  accompanied  by  Sindhia  and  Holkar,  to  operate 
against  the  Rajputs,  Rohillas  and  Jats. 

1  Forrest,  Clivt,  n,  256. 


DEATH  OF  MADHU  RAO  253 

In  1770  the  Peshwa's  health  began  to  fail.  He  was  consumptive, 
and  the  severe  strain  of  the  last  few  years  had  told  upon  him.  He 
was  unable  to  take  command  in  a  campaign  against  Hyder  'Ali,  who 
was  attacked  and  defeated  by  Trimbak  Rao.  This  defeat  was  viewed 
with  alarm  by  the  councils  of  both  Bombay  and  Madras,  as  the 
territory  of  Mysore  formed  a  barrier  against  Maratha  aggression  into 
the  southern  presidency,  but  Hyder  would  not  listen  to  any  overtures 
from  Bombay,  while  the  Madras  authorities  were  prevented  from 
acting  by  the  ill-advised  interference  of  Sir  John  Lindsay.1 

The  Peshwa's  illness  increased  and  he  died  on  18  November,  1772, 
at  the  age  of  twenty-eight.  His  death  had  long  been  expected  and 
caused  no  immediate  upheaval;  but  the  ultimate  effect  was  tre- 
mendous, and  it  has  been  truly  said  that  the  battle  of  Panipat  was 
scarcely  more  fatal  to  the  solidarity  of  the  Maratha  Empire  than  the 
early  death  of  Madhu  Rao.  He  was  a  man  of  unusually  fine  character, 
an  invariable  supporter  of  the  weak  against  the  strong,  of  the  poor 
against  the  tyranny  of  the  rich;  he  stood  for  justice  and  equity  in  all 
things,  and  fought  vigorously,  if  with  but  little  result,  against  the 
rampant  corruption  of  his  day.  His  death  swept  away  the  only  barrier 
which  restrained  the  floods  of  political  intrigue,  and  they  now  rushed 
forward  to  undermine  what  was  left  of  the  foundations  of  Maratha 
ascendancy  laid  by  the  great  Sivaji. 

Mention  was  made  of  the  expedition  sent  into  Hindustan,  under 
Visaji  Kishan,  in  1769.  After  exacting  tribute  from  the  Rajput 
princes,  the  Rohillas  and  the  Jats,  the  Marathas  removed  the  aged 
emperor  from  Allahabad,  where  he  had  been  residing  since  1764 
under  British  protection,  and  installed  him  once  more  at  Delhi,  at 
the  end  of  December,  1771.  Further  exploits  were  prevented  by 
Madhu  Rao's  death,  and  the  force  returned  to  the  Dcccan. 

From  1772  onwards  the  English  began  to  find  themselves  drawn 
more  immediately  into  Maratha  affairs,  and  rapidly  assumed  the  role 
of  a  protagonist. 

The  events  from  1772  to  1782  are  apt  to  be  rendered  confusing  by 
the  number  of  actors  who  appear  upon  the  scene,  and  by  the  kaleido- 
scopic interchanges  between  friend  and  foe.  It  is,  however,  possible  to 
grasp  the  trend  of  events  if  attention  is  concentrated  on  the  protagon- 
ists, and  upon  the  central  figure  in  the  drama,  that  of  Raghunath  Rao. 

Raghunath  Rao,  more  familiarly  known  by  the  shortened  form  of 
his  name  as  Raghoba,  or,  as  he  is  almost  invariably  styled  by  Indian 
writers,  Dada  Sahib,  was  the  second  son  of  the  Peshwa  Baji  Rao  Balal 
( 1 720-40) ,  and  was  thus  brother  of  Balaji  Baji  Rao  ( 1 740-6 1 ) ;  uncle  of 
the  two  Peshwas  Madhu  Rao  and  Narayan  Rao;  great  uncle  of  Madhu 
Rao  Narayan;  and  father  of  the  last  of  the  Peshwas,  Baji  Rao. 

Round  Raghunath  Rao,  a  man  of  great  personal  bravery  but 
of  weak  vacillating  character,  the  events  of  this  period  revolve. 

1  Gf.  p.  297,  infra. 


254      FIRST  CONFLICT  WITH  MARATHAS,  1761-82 

Occupying  at  the  outset  a  position  of  some  importance  as  a  claimant 
to  the  Peshwaship,  he  at  length  became  a  mere  puppet,  to  be  used 
for  political  ends,  and  he  finally  passes,  almost  unheeded,  off  the 
stage,  before  the  conclusion  of  the  Treaty  of  Salbai,  stricken  by  disease 
and  disappointment,  to  die  a  few  months  later. 

The  two  protagonists  were  the  English  and  the  ministers  at  Poona, 
for  after  Madhu  Rao's  death,  the  succeeding  Peshwas  counted  for 
little.  The  dominating  personality  at  Poona  was  Nana  Phadnavis. 

The  directing  hand  in  the  case  of  the  English  was  that  of  Warren 
Hastings,  who,  in  spite  of  the  continuous  opposition  in  his  council, 
the  imbecility  of  the  local  authorities  in  Bombay  and  Madras,  serious 
complications  in  Oudh,  and  continuous  financial  straits,  guided 
events  with  a  consummate  courage  and  skill  that  placed  the  English 
ten  years  later  in  a  position  to  dominate  the  situation  throughout  the 
future.  Others  who  played  important  but  subordinate  parts,  sometimes 
on  one  side  and  sometimes  on  another,  were  the  Nizam  of  Hyderabad, 
Hyder  'Ali  of  Mysore,  the  Gaekwad  of  Baroda,  the  Bhonsle  of  Berar 
and  the  great  Maratha  sardars,  Tukoji  Holkar  and  especially 
Mahadji  Sindhia,  whose  rivalry  with  Holkar  became  a  deciding 
factor  in  Maratha  party  squabbles.  The  last  by  his  astute  manoeuvring 
emerged,  after  the  Treaty  of  Salbai,  as  the  leader  in  Indian  politics, 
a  position  he  retained  until  his  death  in  1 794. 

This  period  from  17712  to  1782  is  one  of  the  most  important  in 
history  of  the  British  in  India.  The  defeat  of  the  nawab  of  Oudh  at 
the  battle  of  Baksar  (1764)  had  brought  peace  to  Bengal,  and  the 
Deccan  became  the  new  theatre  for  the  struggle.  The  Marathas  were 
at  this  time  the  most  important  power  in  India,  having  practically 
displaced  the  Moghul  emperor  in  all  but  name. 

To  return  to  events  at  Poona,  the  restraint  to  which  Raghunath 
Rao  had  been  subjected  by  his  nephew  was  not  very  rigorous,  and 
no  sooner  did  he  perceive  that  the  Peshwa's  days  were  numbered  than 
he  commenced  to  intrigue  with  the  Nizam  and  Hyder  'Ali  for  support 
in  his  claims  to  the  Peshwaship.  But  Madhu  Rao,  fully  alive  to  the 
weak  character  of  his  younger  brother,  just  before  his  death,  sum- 
moned his  uncle  to  his  bedside  and  confided  his  successor  to  his  care. 
Narayan  Rao,  a  weak  man  given  over  to  sensuality,  was  duly  invested 
as  Peshwa  at  Satara,  and  Sakharam  Bapu  became  minister,  with 
Nana  Phadnavis  in  his  hereditary  position.  The  implacable  enmity 
that  existed  between  the  Peshwa's  mother,  Gopika  Bai,  and  Anandi 
Bai  soon  led  to  a  rupture  between  nephew  and  uncle,  and  Raghunath 
Rao  was  again  placed  under  restraint  and  confined  in  the  Peshwa's 
palace  at  Poona. 

On  30  August,  1773,  symptoms  of  discontent  manifested  themselves 
amongst  the  Peshwa's  infantry,  and  Hari  Pant  Phadke,  the  army 
commander,  was  warned  to  take  precautions,  which  unfortunately 
he  omitted  to  do.  While  the  Peshwa  was  resting  at  mid-day  a  com- 


MURDER  OF  NARAYAN  RAO  255 

motion  arose  and  a  body  of  men  from  the  regiment  burst  into  the 
palace  led  by  one  of  the  officers,  Sumer  Singh.  Narayan  Rao  fled 
to  his  uncle's  apartments  for  safety,  where  Raghunath  Rao  appears 
indeed  to  have  interceded  for  his  life,  but  Sumer  Singh  then  threatened 
Raghunath  Rao  also,  and  he  withdrew,  while  the  conspirators 
murdered  the  young  Peshwa  with  their  swords. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Raghunath  Rao  was  fully  cognisant  of  the 
rebellion,  but  he  was  attached  to  his  nephew,  as  far  as  so  egotistical 
a  nature  was  capable  of  affection,  and  it  is  probable  that  the  confine- 
ment of  Narayan  Rao  was  all  he  had  intended,  the  tragic  ending 
being  due  to  the  sinister  intervention  of  Anandi  Bai. 

It  was  agreed  that  Raghunath  Rao's  claim  to  the  Peshwaship  must 
now  be  recognised,  and  he  was  duly  invested.  But  it  was  fated  that 
whenever  Raghunath  Rao  was  placed  in  a  position  of  command 
troubles  should  at  once  commence.  He  proceeded  to  appoint  as  his 
ministers  new  men  who  were  lacking  in  the  necessary  qualities,  while 
his  own  excessively  suspicious  nature  made  him  distrust  even  his  own 
nominees. 

His  first  troubles  arose  with  the  Nizam  who,  always  ready  to  profit 
by  events  at  Poona,  prepared  to  attack  the  Marathas.  Raghunath 
Rao,  however,  defeated  him,  but  once  more  surrendered  any  ad- 
vantages he  might  have  obtained,  and  characteristically  yielding  to 
the  Nizam's  flattery  and  cajolery  restored  all  that  was  to  have  been 
taken  from  him. 

Raghunath  Rao  was  turning  his  attention  to  Hyder  'Ali  and  the 
nawab  of  the  Carnatic,  when  the  dislike  with  which  he  was  universally 
regarded  developed  into  concerted  opposition,  conducted  by  Sakharam 
Bapu  and  Nana  Phadnavis,  and  he  hastened  back  to  Poona.  At 
length  the  plan  was  made  public.  A  trump  card  had  been  placed  in 
his  opponents'  hands,  for  it  was  found  that  Ganga  Bai,  the  Peshwa's 
widow,  was  pregnant.  On  her  husband's  death  she  had  proposed  to 
become  sati,  but  Anandi  Bai,  knowing  her  own  part  in  the  tragedy 
of  Narayan  Rao's  death,  contrived  to  confine  her  until  her  husband's 
cremation  was  complete,  as  she  feared  a  sati's  curse.  Now  Nemesis 
was  satisfied.  The  confederates  removed  Ganga  Bai  to  safety  in 
Purandhar  Fort  where  she  was  placed  in  charge  of  Parvati  Bai,  the 
widow  of  Sadashiv  Rao  Bhao,  who  had  been  killed  at  Panipat.  On 
1 8  April,  1774,  a  son  was  born  to  Ganga  Bai,  and  Raghunath  Rao's 
claims  to  the  Peshwaship  were  finally  extinguished.  The  confederates 
at  once  formed  a  council  of  regency. 

Raghunath  Rao  was  in  the  middle  of  the  campaign  against  Hyder 
*Ali  when  he  received  news  of  the  imminent  birth  of  a  child  to  the 
late  Peshwa,  and  hastened  back  to  Poona,  defeating  a  force  under 
Trimbak  Rao  Mama  sent  out  by  the  regency  to  oppose  him.  In 
consequence  of  this  victory  troops,  as  usual,  flocked  to  his  standard, 
and  consternation  reigned  in  Poona,  when,  with  typical  indecision, 


256      FIRST  CONFLICT  WITH  MARATHAS,  1761-^82 

he  suddenly  abandoned  his  advance  on  the  capital  and  turned  in 
the  direction  of  Burhanpur.  It  was  at  this  moment  that  the  birth  of 
Ganga  Bai's  son  was  publicly  announced.  The  child  was  at  once 
formally  invested  as  Peshwa.  From  this  time  Raghunath  Rao 
becomes,  in  fact,  a  mere  pawn  in  the  complicated  intrigues  and 
consequent  struggles,  in  which  the  Maratha  leaders  gradually  played 
more  and  more  for  their  own  individual  aggrandisement  and  but 
little  for  the  cause  of  the  Maratha  state,  thus  facilitating  the  ultimate 
supremacy  of  the  English. 

Raghunath  Rao,  finding  himself  in  this  desperate  case,  turned  once 
more  to  the  English,  with  whom  he  had  coquetted  in  1761.  The 
Bombay  Council  had  never  lost  sight  of  the  necessity  for  acquiring 
Bassein,  Salsette  and  the  islands  in  Bombay  harbour.  Indeed  the 
directors  in  London,  in  their  dispatch  of  April,  1772,  had  instructed 
the  council  to  appoint  a  regular  envoy  at  Poona,  who  would  en- 
deavour to  secure  such  rights  and  privileges  as  might  be  beneficial 
to  their  commerce  and  the  safety  of  their  possessions,  and  in  particular 
these  coveted  places. 

On  receiving  overtures  from  Raghunath  Rao,  therefore,  although 
averse  from  an  alliance  with  the  Marathas,  they  seized  this  opening 
to  renew  their  demands  for  Bassein,  Salsette  and  the  islands.  Raghu- 
nath Rao,  however,  marched  away  to  Indore  soon  after,  in  the  hope 
of  enlisting  Holkar  and  Sindhia  on  his  side,  but  finding  that,  if  not 
actually  hostile,  they  were  at  any  rate  indifferent  to  his  cause,  he 
returned.  On  his  return,  Gambier,  the  Company's  agent  at  Surat, 
was  asked  by  Raghunath  Rao  if  the  English  would  provide  him  with 
a  force  sufficient  to  carry  him  to  Poona  and  establish  him  in  the 
government,  in  return  for  which  he  would  defray  all  costs  and  make 
substantial  grants  to  the  Company. 

The  Bombay  Council  were  uncertain,  in  view  of  the  passing  of  the 
Regulating  Act,  whether  they  had  powers  to  make  a  treaty  without 
sanction  from  Bengal,  but,  as  they  had  not  been  notified  of  the  arrival 
of  the  new  councillors  at  Calcutta,  they  decided  to  act.  Raghunath 
Rao,  however,  positively  refused  to  cede  Bassein  and  Salsette.  While 
this  matter  was  still  under  discussion  news  arrived  that  the  Portuguese 
were  about  to  endeavour  to  recover  Bassein,  taken  from  them  by 
Chimnaji  Appa  in  1739.  The  council,  faced  with  this  new  danger, 
decided  to  obtain  possession  of  Salsette  at  all  costs.  An  attack  was 
made  on  Thana  Fort,  the  key  to  the  district,  and  it  was  captured  on 
31  December,  I774.1 

The  council  defended  this  attack  in  a  letter  to  the  governor- 
general  on  the  grounds  that  it  would  have  been  fatal  to  allow  the 
Portuguese  to  acquire  Salsette,  as  they  would  have 

had  it  in  their  power  to  obstruct  our  trade,  by  being  in  possession  of  the  principal 
passes  to  the  inland  country. .  .which,  of  course,  would  have  been  of  infinite 

1  Forrest,  Bombay  Selections,  Maratha  Series,  i,  1 79-2208. 


TREATY  OF   SURAT  257 

prejudice  to  the  trade,  revenue  and  interests  of  the  Company  in  these  parts,  in  so 
much  that  we  should  in  great  measure  have  been  subject  to  the  caprice  of  the 
Portuguese. l 

The  council  at  Calcutta,  except  Warren  Hastings  himself,  expressed 
their  disapproval  of  the  capture  of  Salsette,  which  they  held  had 
seriously  damaged  the  Company's  reputation  for  good  faith.  The 
Poona  ministers  had  in  the  meantime  contrived  to  bribe  Holkar  and 
Sindhia  away  from  Raghunath  Rao,  who  retired  into  Gujarat  towards 
Baroda,  leaving  his  wife  Anandi  Bai,  who  was  enceinte,  in  Dhar  Fort, 
where  she  gave  birth  in  January,  1775,  to  Baji  Rao,  destined  to  be 
the  last  of  the  Peshwas.  Raghunath  Rao's  object  in  moving  into 
Gujarat  was  to  get  into  touch  with  the  English  and  also  to  obtain 
the  assistance  of  Govind  Rao  Gaekwad,  who  was  engaged  in  be- 
sieging his  brother  Fateh  Singh  in  Baroda. 

This  quarrel,  into  which  the  English  were  drawn,  arose  in  1768 
on  the  death  of  Damaji  Gaekwad.  Damaji  left  four  sons,  Sayaji  who 
was  imbecile,  Govind  Rao,  Manaji  and  Fateh  Singh.  Govind  Rao 
was  the  son  of  the  senior  wife  and  claimed  on  that  basis.  Fateh  Singh, 
who  was  manager  for  Sayaji,  supported  him.  After  the  murder  of 
Narayan  Rao  Peshwa,  Govind  Rao  obtained  the  support  of  the  Poona 
ministers  for  his  cause  and  was  granted  the  hereditary  family  title  of 
Sena  Khas  KheL 

Negotiations  continued  between  the  English  and  Raghunath  Rao 
and  finally  on  7  March,  1775,  the  Treaty  of  Surat,2  as  it  is  called, 
was  signed.  It  consisted  of  sixteen  articles  of  which  the  most  im- 
portant provisions  were  that  the  earlier  treaties  of  1 739  and  1 756  be 
confirmed;  that  the  English  would  assist  Raghunath  Rao  with  a  force 
of  2500  men,  he  defraying  the  cost,  and  undertaking  not  to  side  with 
enemies  of  the  Company;  Salsette,  Bassein  and  the  islands  were  to  be 
ceded  in  perpetuity  with  a  share  of  the  revenues  of  the  Broach  and 
Surat  districts ;  Maratha  raids  into  Bengal  and  the  Carnatic  were  to 
cease;  any  peace  made  with  Poona  was  to  include  the  English.  As 
security  Raghunath  Rao  deposited  six  lakhs.  Such  was  the  treaty 
which,  as  Grant  Duff  says,  occasioned  infinite  discussions  amongst 
the  English  in  India  and  in  Europe,  and  led  to  the  first  Maratha  war. 

Before  the  treaty  was  completed  the  Bombay  Council  had  as- 
sembled troops  under  Colonel  Keating  who  arrived  at  Surat,  by  sea, 
on  27  February,  I775.3 

Raghunath  Rao  had,  however,  been  forced  to  fly  from  Baroda 
owing  to  defection  amongst  his  own  troops,  and  the  arrival  of  an 
army  from  Poona  under  Hari  Pant.  He  first  made  his  way  to  Cambay 
where  he  was  assisted  by  Charles  Malet  to  reach  Surat.  Here  he  met 
Colonel  Keating,  who  describes  him  as  "a  man  of  sound  judgment 
and  of  quick  and  clear  conceptions",  an  estimate  of  Raghunath  Rao's 

1  Forrest,  op.  cit.  i,  205.  2  Idem,  pp.  211-15;  Ailchison,  Treaties,  vi,  21. 

8  Forrest,  op.  at.  i,  217. 
CHIV  I7 


258      FIRST  CONFLICT  WITH  MARATHAS,  1761-82 

character,  which Jt  may  be  safely  said,  was  not  generally  held.  The 
view  ordinarily  taken  of  Raghunath  Rao's  disposition  is  often  alluded 
to  by  Ahalya  Bai  Holkar  in  her  letters,  where  she  refers  to  his  entire 
lack  of  judgment,  which,  she  adds,  was  well  known  to  the  English, 
who  in  consequence  invariably  acted  without  consulting  him  and 
merely  used  him  in  furthering  their  own  designs.  It  is  clear  that  the 
Bombay  Council,  perhaps  influenced  by  events  in  Bengal,  imagined 
that  their  small  force  could  easily  account  for  the  whole  of  the 
Maratha  army,  and  Colonel  Keating  was,  therefore,  instructed  to 
assist  their  ally  against  all  his  enemies,  as  well  as  against  the  minis- 
terial party  and  their  adherents,  and  to  do  everything  to  bring  the 
war  to  a  speedy  and  happy  conclusion. 

The  first  difficulty  that  arose  was  Raghunath  Rao's  lack  of  funds 
and  the  consequent  disaffection  in  his  army.  Colonel  Keating  was 
obliged  to  advance  money  before  they  would  even  march.1  The  allies 
advanced  and  after  a  minor  engagement  or  two  encountered  on 
1 8  May,  1775,  the  ministerial  army  on  the  plain  of  Adas  [Arras], 
which  lies  between  the  town  of  Anand  and  the  Mahi  river.  This  was 
the  first  direct  encounter  between  the  Maratha  forces  and  the  English 
since  Sivaji's  attack  on  Surat  in  1664.  At  one  time  the  allies  were  in 
serious  trouble  but  the  steadiness  of  the  English  troops  and  the  cool- 
ness of  Colonel  Keating  secured  the  complete  discomfiture  of  the 
enemy.2  This  victory  decided  Fateh  Singh  Gaekwad  to  make  an 
alliance  with  the  English,  with  whom  he  had  for  some  time  been 
playing  fast  and  loose.  The  destruction  of  the  Maratha  fleet  by 
Commodore  John  Moore,  at  almost  the  same  time,  drove  the  ministers 
at  Poona  to  desperation.  Raghunath  Rao's  affairs  were  now  in  the 
ascendant,  and  important  members  of  the  Maratha  community  were 
preparing  to  join  him  when  the  whole  situation  was  suddenly  changed 
by  the  action  of  the  council  at  Calcutta. 

On  3  February,  1775,  the  governor-general  and  council  at  Calcutta 
wrote  to  Bombay  expressing  surprise  that  the  capture  of  Salsette  had 
never  been  reported  to  them,3  and  later,  on  8  March,  intimated  their 
alarm  at  the  support  offered  to  Raghunath  Rao,  which  was  wholly 
inconsistent  with  their  traditional  friendly  relations  with  Poona  and 
with  Sabaji  Bhonsle.  Divided  as  the  Calcutta  Council  were  in  most 
things,  they  were  united  in  condemning  this  act  of  the  Bombay 
government.  On  31  May,  1775,  the  Supreme  Government  again 
addressed4  the  Bombay  Council,  pointing  out  that  their  action  was 
not  merely  impolitic  but  directly  contrary  to  the  Act  of  Parliament; 
and  they  concluded,  "we. .  .peremptorily  require  you  to  withdraw 
the  Company's  forces  to  your  own  garrison,  in  whatsoever  state  your 
affairs  may  be  in,  unless  their  safety  may  be  endangered  by  an 
instant  retreat ". 

1  Forrest,  op.  tit.  i,  220-5.  a  Idem,  p.  226 ;  Forbes,  Oriental  Memoirs,  n,  95. 

8  Forrest,  op.  cit.  i,  232.  *  Idem,  p.  238. 


BOMBAY  VIEWS  259 

Warren  Hastings  was  not  in  favour  of  these  orders  but  was  outvoted 
by  his  council.  The  Bombay  Council,  convinced  that  they  had  acted 
for  the  best,  if  unconstitutionally,  fought  to  the  end  for  their  policy. 
They  pointed  out  the  immense  advantage  they  had  obtained  in 
securing  Salsette  and  the  fairness  of  the  terms  come  to  with  Raghu- 
nath  Rao,  who  was,  in  their  opinion,  the  rightful  heir  to  the  Peshwa- 
ship.  They  added,  with  some  reason,  that  if  at  that  distance  they  were 
always  to  await  confirmatory  orders  from  Calcutta  it  must  be  fatal 
to  any  policy,  a  fact,  it  may  be  remarked,  that  had  not  escaped 
Hastings,  who  in  a  minute  on  this  question  expresses  his  doubts  as  to 
the  action  which  should  be  taken  in  view  of  the  impossibility  of  their 
knowing  what  the  actual  state  of  affairs  at  Bombay  might  be  by  the 
time  their  orders  arrived.  So  eager  were  the  Bombay  Council,  how- 
ever, to  carry  their  point  that  they  sent  one  of  their  members,  Taylor, 
to  Calcutta.  He  submitted  a  very  able,  clear,  and  on  the  whole  fair 
and  accurate  report  on  Maratha  affairs,  past  and  present,  to  the 
governor-general,  explaining  the  methods  followed  in  Maratha 
politics.1  He  laid  stress  on  the  importance  to  the  very  existence  of 
Bombay,  in  having  control,  through  Salsette,  of  the  passes  by  which 
goods  travelled  inland,  and  of  Bassein  and  the  islands  for  the  pro- 
tection of  the  harbour.  By  supporting  Raghunath  Rao  these  safe- 
guards were  being  secured.  The  Bombay  Council,  he  said,  had  never 
intended  to  flout  the  authority  of  the  governor-general  and,  in  their 
opinion,  the  new  act  even  supported  their  position,  inasmuch  as  it 
exempted  them  from  referring  to  Calcutta  cases  in  which  they  had 
received  direct  orders  from  England,  and  they  had  received  repeated 
and  special  orders  regarding  the  safeguarding  of  Bombay.  Moreover, 
success  had  attended  Colonel  Kcating's  operations,  and  any  desertion 
of  Raghunath  Rao  at  this  juncture  would  throw  him  into  the  arms  of 
the  Nizam  and  Hyder ' Ali,  or  of  Holkar  and  Sindhia,  and  the  trouble 
would  recommence.  Indians  also  did  not  in  the  least  understand  this 
sudden  limiting  of  the  powers  of  the  Bombay  Council,  and  the 
abandonment  of  Raghunath  Rao  would  be  considered  a  deliberate 
breach  of  faith.  Parliament,  Taylor  said,  when  it  armed  the  Supreme 
Government  with  controlling  power  over  the  other  presidencies,  had 
never  intended,  "that  they  should  appear  so  degraded  and  so  con- 
temptible in  the  eyes  of  the  native  governments  as  the  Presidency  of 
Bombay  must  be,  unless  you  will  commit  the  treaty  of  peace  to  their 
management". 

But  the  Supreme  Government  was  adamant  and  sent  its  own  officer, 
Lt.-Colonel  Upton,  from  Calcutta  to  Poona  with  full  powers  to  ne- 
gotiate a  treaty.  The  dispatches  of  this  date  from  Calcutta  clearly 
show  the  Bengal  Council's  ignorance  of  conditions  in  Western  India, 
even  on  the  part  of  Hastings  himself,  who  frankly  expressed  his 
surprise  at  the  vigour  of  the  Maratha  confederacy.  Hastings  wrote 
1  Forrest,  op.  cit.  i,  247-68. 

17-2 


26o      FIRST  CONFLICT  WITH  MARATHAS,  1761-82 

personally,  at  the  same  time,  to  Sakharam  Bapu,  at  Poona,  explaining 
the  new  controlling  powers  vested  in  him  as  governor-general  and  the 
illegality  of  the  Bombay  Council's  action  in  supporting  Raghunath 
Rao  without  his  sanction,  and  intimating  the  dispatch  of  his  envoy; 
he  concluded,  "I  have  heard  of  your  wisdom  and  capacity  from 
everywhere,  therefore  trust  in  your  person  that  you  will  not  fail  to 
get  the  business  done  through  your  interest".1 

Although  the  Bombay  Council  were  not  free  from  blame,  this  action 
on  the  part  of  the  Supreme  Government  meant  playing  directly  into 
the  hands  of  the  Poona  ministers,  and  they  at  once  saw  the  advantage 
it  gave  them. 

As  Taylor  had  pointed  out,  the  first  effect  of  this  interference  was 
to  lower  the  prestige  of  the  Bombay  authorities  in  the  eyes  of  all 
Maharashtra,  while  it  simultaneously  exalted,  for  the  time  being,  the 
prestige  of  the  ministers. 

In  accordance  with  these  orders  irom  Calcutta,  Colonel  Keating 
was  at  once  made  to  withdraw  his  forces,  the  Bombay  Council  in 
conveying  these  orders  to  him  sincerely  lamenting  "that  these  gentle- 
men have  so  unluckily  taken  upon  themselves  to  interfere  as  they 
have  done,  at  this  juncture".  He  retired  to  the  neighbourhood  of 
Surat. 

Colonel  Upton  proceeded  to  Purandhar,  where  he  arrived  in 
December,  1775,  and  commenced  his  negotiations.  But  he  was  in  no 
sense  a  match  for  the  astute  Brahman  ministers,  who,  while  they 
loudly  extolled  the  far-sighted  statesmanship  of  the  governor-general, 
proceeded  to  seize  every  possible  advantage  of  the  new  turn  in  affairs. 
They  refused  to  consider  for  a  moment  the  cession  of  Salsette  or 
Bassein  or  of  the  revenues  of  Broach,  taking  their  stand  upon  the 
ground  that  the  governor-general  could  not  claim  to  draw  advantages 
from  a  war  which  he  had  condemned  as  unjust.  On  the  other  hand 
they  demanded  the  surrender  of  Raghunath  Rao  and  the  restoration 
of  all  territory  acquired  since  hostilities  commenced.  Colonel  Upton 
on  7  February,  I776,2  reported  the  deadlock  to  Calcutta  on  which 
the  governor-general  and  his  council  determined  to  resume  hostilities. 
Troops  were  prepared  and  Raghunath  Rao,  the  Nizam,  Hyder  'Ali, 
the  Bhonsle,  Holkar  and  Sindhia  were  all  addressed  and  desired  to 
join  the  English,  or  at  least  to  remain  neutral. 

This  unexpected  volte  face  brought  the  ministers  to  their  knees  and 
they  at  once  conceded  practically  all  that  Colonel  Upton  demanded, 
and  on  i  March,  1776,  the  Treaty  of  Purandhar  was  signed.8  The 
gist  of  the  treaty  was:  the  establishment  of  a  general  peace  with  the 
Marathas;  the  retention  of  Salsette,  if  the  governor-general  so  desired; 
the  cession  of  the  Broach  revenues;  twelve  lakhs  of  rupees  to  be  paid 
to  defray  expenses  incurred  in  the  war;  the  Treaty  of  Surat  to  be 

1  Forrest,  op.  cit.  i,  246.  *  Idem,  p.  274. 

8  Idem,  p.  277;  Gleig,  Warren  Hastings,  n,  194  ff.;  Aitchison,  Treaties,  vi,  28. 


TREATY  OF  PURANDHAR  261 

formally  annulled;  and  Raghunath  Rao's  army  to  be  disbanded 
within  a  month,  he  himself  retiring  to  Kopargaon  in  Gujarat  on  a 
pension  of  25,000  rupees  a  month,  with  a  retinue  consisting  of  a  body 
of  1000  horse  and  certain  domestic  servants.  The  Bombay  Council 
rightly  condemned  this  treaty  as  highly  injurious  to  the  interests  and 
reputation  of  the  Company. 

Raghunath  Rao  was  wholly  bewildered  by  these  transactions  and 
imagined  that  they  were  due  to  the  insufficient  liberality  of  the  terms 
he  had  offered,  and  he  at  once  proposed  others,  which  could  not  of 
course  be  considered.  He  then  decided  to  refuse  the  terms  agreed 
upon  and  to  continue  fighting,  an  attitude  in  which  he  was  encouraged 
by  the  friendly  overtures  of  Mahadaji  Sindhia,  who  was  now  com- 
mencing to  work  out  the  policy  which  was,  a  few  years  later,  to  make 
him  independent  of  Poona.  But  Raghunath  Rao,  whose  character 
invariably  alienated  those  who  might  have  assisted  him,  found  that 
none  of  the  Maratha  leaders  would  give  him  any  practical  help.  The 
Bombay  Government,  on  their  part,  would  not  lift  a  hand  in  support 
of  a  treaty  which  they  considered  grossly  unfair  to  themselves,  but 
they  readily  afforded  asylum  to  Raghunath  Rao  at  Surat,  in  spite 
of  the  protests  of  Colonel  Upton,  who  considered  it  as  a  direct  breach 
of  the  treaty.  But  they  held  that  they  were  well  within  their  rights 
in  protecting  their  late  ally  from  personal  danger  at  the  hands  of  his 
enemies.  Hastings,  although  he  felt  bound  to  ratify  the  Treaty  of 
Purandhar,  disapproved  of  it. 

While  affairs  were  in  this  uncertain  state  a  dispatch,  dated  5  April, 
1776,  came  from  the  directors  in  England  approving  the  Treaty 
of  Surat  and  directing  that  the  territory  obtained  from  Raghunath 
Rao  should  be  retained.  On  this  the  Bombay  Government  threw  the 
Treaty  of  Purandhar  to  the  winds  and  Raghunath  Rao  was  invited 
to  Bombay,  where  he  arrived  in  November  and  took  up  his  residence 
on  Malabar  Hill.  The  Peshwa  at  once  objected  to  the  asylum  thus 
given  to  the  ex-Peshwa. 

Colonel  Upton  was  recalled  to  Bengal  (1777)  and  Mostyn  was  then 
sent  to  Poona  to  superintend  the  carrying  out  of  the  treaty.  But 
nothing  resulted,  as  he  was  suspected  by  the  ministers,  who  believed 
that  he  was  the  person  responsible  for  the  capture  of  Salsette,  while 
dissensions  between  the  aged  Sakharam  Bapu  and  Nana  Phadnavis 
tended  to  complicate  matters  still  more. 

These  negotiations  were  dragging  on  when  an  entirely  fresh  turn 
was  given  to  events  by  the  unexpected  appearance  of  a  French 
adventurer,  called  St  Lubin.  He  landed  at  Chaul  from  a  French  ship 
and  stated  that  he  was  an  accredited  ambassador  from  the  French 
king  Louis.  He  was  in  fact,  as  Mr  Farmer  reported,1  "  a  most  per- 
fect adventurer"  who  had  previously  lived  at  Pondichery  and  had 
some  connection  with  the  Madras  authorities.  He  had  contrived  to 

1  Forrest,  nto.  cit.  i,  296. 


262      FIRST  CONFLICT  WITH  MARATHAS,  1761-82 

ingratiate  himself  with  Sartine,  the  French  minister  of  marine,  alleging 
that  he  was  an  intimate  friend  of  the  raja  at  Satara,  whose  children 
he  had  taught  to  ride.  He  soon  disgusted  his  colleagues  by  his  arro- 
gance, and  the  mission  came  to  nothing.  Nana  affected,  at  any  rate, 
to  credit  his  story,  as  he  was  not  prepared  to  lose  such  an  opportunity 
of  opposing  the  English,  and  St  Lubin  was  received  with  a  respect 
and  ceremony  never  shown  to  the  British  resident,  being  met  per- 
sonally, as  he  alighted  from  his  elephant,  by  Sakharam  Bapu  and 
Nana.  The  idea  of  a  French  intrigue  in  India  was  sufficient  to  stir  up 
the  resentment  of  every  Englishman  in  the  country.  At  the  same  time 
a  dispatch  dated  7  April  was  received  from  the  directors  regretting 
the  sacrifices  made  by  the  Treaty  of  Purandhar,  but  stating  that  it 
must  be  adhered  to  unless  any  attempts  were  made  by  the  ministers 
to  evade  its  conditions,  in  which  case  the  Bombay  Government  would 
be  at  liberty  to  form  a  fresh  alliance  with  Raghunath  Rao  on  the 
basis  of  the  Treaty  of  Surat.  As  the  ministers  had  never  carried  out 
the  stipulations  of  the  Treaty  of  Purandhar  the  Bombay  Government 
at  once  formed  a  fresh  alliance  with  Raghunath  Rao. 

In  1778  Sakharam  Bapu,  whose  quarrel  with  Nana  ha>$  reached 
an  acute  stage,  with  Holkar's  assistance  commenced  intriguing  to 
support  Raghunath  Rao,  and  enlisted  Moroba  Phadnavis,  a  cousin 
of  Nana,  on  his  side.  Moroba  appealed  to  the  Bombay  Council  who 
agreed  to  assist  him,  informing  Hastings  of  their  action,  which  met 
with  his  approval  and  that  of  Mr  Ban/veil,  though  strongly  opposed 
by  the  rest  of  the  council,  and  he  agreed  to  send  a  force  to  aid  them. 
The  force  assembled  at  Kalpi,  Colonel  Leslie  being  put  in  command 
with  orders  to  march  across  India  to  Bombay.1  This  feat  had  never 
before  been  attempted  and  was  stigmatised  by  Dundas  as  one  of 
Hastings'  "frantic  military  exploits",  exploits,  nevertheless,  which 
fully  justified  their  inception  and  proved  the  governor-general's 
courage  and  understanding  of  Indian  psychology.  Events  were 
becoming  insistent,  and  fully  established  the  truth  of  Hornby's 
opinion,  expressed  in  a  minute  written  at  the  time,  that  we  were  fast 
verging  on  a  period  which  must  compel  the  English  nation  either  to 
take  some  active  and  decisive  part  in  events  or  relinquish  for  ever  all 
hopes  of  bettering  their  situation  on  the  west  of  India. 

Moroba  Phadnavis  soon  proved  to  be  a  broken  reed,  while  Sakharam 
Bapu,  always  a  trimmer,  declined  specifically  to  announce  his  support 
of  Raghunath  Rao.  The  Bombay  Council  were  deliberating  how  to 
effect  a  change  in  the  control  at  Poona  when  Nana,  who  had  been 
driven  temporarily  to  take  refuge  in  Purandhar  Fort,  managed  to 
cajole  Moroba  into  desertinglRaghunath  Rao,  and  soon  after,  with 
the  connivance  of  Sindhia,  seized  his  cousin  and  imprisoned  him  at 
Ahmadnagar,  Holkar,  who  had  been  supporting  him,  being  easily 
bribed,  with  nine  lakhs,  to  stand  aside.  Nana  was  now  again  in 

1  Forrest,  op.  cit.  i,  327. 


RENEWAL  OF  WAR  263 

power,  but  he  had  miscalculated  the  effect  of  the  change  at  Poona  on 
the  English,  who  at  once  called  upon  him  to  state  whether  he  was 
prepared  to  carry  out  the  Treaty  of  Purandhar,  and  dismiss  St  Lubin, 
with  whom  he  was  still  coquetting,  and  to  whom  it  appears  he  had 
made  certain  promises,  though  probably  with  no  intention  of  ful- 
filling them.  Nana  was  in  a  dilemma.  It  was  impossible  for  him  to 
conciliate  the  ex-Peshwa,  towards  whom  his  enmity  was  too  well 
known,  while  on  the  other  hand  he  had  no  desire  to  fulfil  the  con- 
ditions of  the  Treaty  of  Purandhar  and  so  come  to  terms  with  the 
English. 

This  evasion  was  enough  for  the  Bombay  authorities  and  they  felt 
that  they  might  now  act  under  the  instructions  conveyed  to  them  by 
the  dispatch  of  23  March,  1778,  from  the  Supreme  Government, 
which  empowered  them  to  take  any  step  necessary  to  subvert  a  hostile 
party  in  the  Maratha  state.1  The  Bombay  Council  thereupon  de- 
cided that  Raghunath  Rao  should  be  installed  at  Poona  as  regent  for 
the  young  Peshwa,  Madhu  Rao  Nayaran,  since  he  could  no  longer 
claim  the  Peshwaship.2 

Nana,  fully  cognisant  of  their  intentions,  took  immediate  steps  to 
oppose  them.  He  removed  the  aged  Sakharam  Bapu  from  all  voice 
in  affairs  and  collected  troops.  Sindhia  and  Nana  held  complete 
control,  Holkar,  whose  leaning  towards  Raghunath  Rao  made  him 
suspect,  being  employed  at  a  distance.  Luckily  the  Bombay  Govern- 
ment had  a  most  able  agent,  Lewis,  at  Poona  who  kept  them  fully 
informed  of  Nana's  activities. 

The  Bombay  forces  were  weak,  and  Draper  urged  caution,  but  was 
outvoted  by  the  rest  of  the  council,  though  Colonel  Leslie's  force,  on 
which  they  relied  for  support,  was  still  far  distant  in  Bundelkhand. 
Hastings  remarked,  when  criticising  these  proceedings,  that  the 
passions  of  the  Council  were  enlisted  on  Raghunath  Rao's  side 
because  in  supporting  him  they  were  carrying  out  their  own  personal 
wishes. 

The  council  placed  their  forces  under  the  command  of  Colonel 
Egerton,  an  officer  whose  health  was  bad,  and  whose  purely  European 
training  and  entire  ignorance  of  Indian  conditions  wholly  unfitted 
him  for  the  post.  Thus,  with  a  mere  handful  of  troops  under  an 
inefficient  commander,  and  most  ill-considered  preparations  for 
hostilities,  the  Bombay  Council  set  out  to  defy  the  whole  strength  of 
the  Maratha  Empire;  that  they  in  fact  suffered  comparatively  lightly 
was  due  to  good  fortune  and  not  to  any  action  of  their  own. 

The  campaign  started  in  November,  1778,  the  force  consisting  of 
3900  men,  of  whom  592  were  Europeans.  Owing  to  jealousies  in  the 
Bombay  Council  a  curious  and  fatal  arrangement  was  adopted,  by 
which  the  control  of  the  troops  in  the  field  was  vested  in  a  committee  of 
three,  consisting  of  the  commanding  officer  and  two  civilians.  The 
1  Forrest,  op.  cit.  i,  314.  2  Idem,  p.  334. 


264      FIRST  CONFLICT  WITH  MARATHAS,  1761-82 

movements  of  the  troops  were  in  fact  controlled  by  Colonel  Carnac 
acting  as  civil  commissioner,  in  spite  of  Colonel  Egerton's  protests. 
He  was  by  profession  a  soldier,  who  had  distinguished  himself  in 
Bengal,  but  he  failed  lamentably  on  this  occasion.  Governor  Hornby 
afterwards  admitted  that  the  powers  granted  to  the  committee  were 
far  too  comprehensive  and  had  escaped  his  notice  when  they  were 
issued.  Raghunath  Rao,  in  his  usual  vacillating  way,  now  began  to 
raise  various  objections  and  insisted  on  being  granted  certain  con- 
cessions before  he  would  move.  The  force,  encumbered  with  an 
enormous  baggage-train  of  19,000  bullocks,  was  scarcely  able  to  march 
two  miles  a  day, 

Raghunath  Rao  at  length  appreciated  that  he  was  being  used  as 
a  mere  pawn  in  the  game.  In  December,  1778,  he  sent  an  envoy  to 
Dom  Jose  da  Camara,  the  captain-general  at  Goa,  asking  for  assistance 
in  troops  and  munitions  and  offering  in  return  to  cede  Bassein  and 
other  forts  as  well  as  territory  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Daman.  The 
envoy  said  that  Raghunath  Rao  had  become  suspicious  of  British 
intentions  in  regard  to  his  affairs  and  feared  that  their  real  object 
was  to  place  him  in  the  same  position  of  subjection  as  that  in  which 
they  had  placed  the  nawab  of  Bengal ;  hence  he  was  most  anxious  to 
become  an  ally  of  the  king  of  Portugal.  The  captain-general  com- 
mended the  proposal  to  his  superiors,  but  nothing  came  of  it.1 

In  January,  1779,  Colonel  Egerton  had  to  resign  the  command 
through  ill-health  and  Colonel  Cockburn  took  over  the  force. 
Raghunath  Rao  and  his  adopted  son  Amrit  Rao  now  joined  the  army 
which  proceeded  up  the  ghats.  On  9  January  the  army  reached  the 
village  of  Talegaon,  twenty  miles  north-west  of  Poona,  to  find  it 
destroyed  and  themselves  confronted  by  a  large  Maratha  army. 
Colonel  Carnac  was  seized  with  panic  and  instead  of  boldly  pushing 
on  to  Poona,  most  fatally  counselled  retreat,  his  panic  being  aug- 
mented by  Raghunath  Rao  who  assured  him  that  until  a  substantial 
victory  was  gained  no  influential  Maratha  would  join  his  standard. 
Colonel  Cockburn  considered  he  could  reach  Poona  with  the  troops, 
but  that  he  could  only  do  so  by  abandoning  the  enormous  baggage- 
train.  Raghunath  Rao  begged  them  not  to  retire,  but  in  vain,  and 
on  1 1  January  all  the  heavy  guns  were  thrown  into  a  tank,  the  stores 
were  burnt,  and  the  force  started  on  its  return  journey,  as  it  fondly 
believed  unbeknown  to  the  enemy,  some  50,000  strong. 

On  12  January,  1779,  the  force  encamped  at  Wadgaon,  twenty- 
three  miles  north-west  of  Poona.  The  retreat  was  at  once  known  to 
the  enemy  who  attacked  continuously.  On  the  I3th  further  retreat 
was  held  to  be  impossible,  and  Farmer,  secretary  to  the  committee, 
was  sent  to  negotiate  terms.  As  a  preliminary  Nana  demanded  the 
surrender  of  Raghunath  Rao,  and  this  would  have  been  perforce 

1  Letter  from  the  captain-general  to  Martinho  de  Mello  e  Castro  of  22  December,  1778 
(unpublished) . 


CONVENTION  OF  WADGAON  265 

agreed  to,  but  luckily  the  ex-Peshwa  decided  the  matter  for  himself 
by  taking  refuge  with  Sindhia.  The  action  taken  by  Colonel  Carnac 
was  inconsistent,  for  while  Farmer  was  instructed  to  point  out  that 
no  treaty  could  be  made  without  the  sanction  of  the  Supreme 
Government,  Holmes  was  at  the  same  time  deputed  with  full  powers 
to  negotiate  with  Mahadaji  Sindhia.  Sindhia  was  delighted  at  this 
mark  of  distinction  as  it  assisted  him  to  attain  the  position  he  had  so 
long  coveted,  that  of  acting  as  an  independent  arbiter  between  the 
two  Maratha  parties. 

Finally  terms  were  settled :  that  all  acquisitions  of  territory  made 
since  1773  should  be  restored;  that  the  force  advancing  from  Bengal 
should  be  stopped;  that  Sindhia  was  to  obtain  the  share  of  the  Broach 
revenues;  and  that  a  sum  of  41,000  rupees  and  two  hostages  were  to 
be  surrendered  as  security  for  performance.  Such  was  the  disgraceful 
Convention  of  Wadgaon,  fatal  alike  to  the  interests  and  good  name 
of  the  Company.  The  army  retired  but  the  order  countermanding 
the  advance  of  the  Bengal  force  was  suspended.1 

This  ill-starred  venture  of  the  Bombay  army  was  at  once  repudiated 
by  Hastings  who  felt  the  disgrace  acutely,  and  wrote:  "We  have 
already  disavowed  the  Convention  of  Wargaum.  Would  to  God  we 
could  as  easily  efface  the  infamy  which  our  national  character  has 
sustained".2  He  considered,  however,  that  the  promise  in  the  treaty 
made  to  Sindhia  should  be  carried  out,  in  return  for  his  support. 
The  directors,  on  receiving  the  report  of  the  convention,  ordered  the 
dismissal  of  Colonel  Carnac,  Colonel  Egerton  and  Colonel  Cockburn 
from  the  Company's  service.  The  scheme  deserved,  indeed,  no  better 
fate  in  view  of  the  impolitic  lines  on  which  it  was  conceived  and  the 
lack  of  care  devoted  to  its  execution.  It  was  in  fact  born  of  pique, 
pique  at  the  control  exercised  by  the  Supreme  Government,  and  of  the 
insane  desire  to  show  what  Bombay  could  do  on  their  own  initiative, 
combined  with  a  greater  consideration  for  private  interests  than  for 
the  general  good  of  the  Company,  the  limited  views  of  the  commercial 
adventurer  obscuring  the  wider  outlook  required  by  statesmanship. 

Hornby,  however,  rose  to  the  occasion.  He  also  disavowed  the 
convention,3  which  Carnac  had,  indeed,  no  power  to  make,  and  at 
once  took  steps  to  recruit  and  improve  his  army.  He  believed,  more- 
over, that  Sindhia,  who  was  known  to  be  inimical  to  the  French, 
would  be  open  to  an  alliance,  and  he  urged  the  payment  to  Mahadaji 
of  the  sum  of  41,000  rupees  settled  under  the  Convention  of  Wadgaon. 

Colonel  Leslie,  who  had  been  instructed  to  march  with  all  speed 
to  Bombay,  had  wasted  time  embroiling  himself  with  the  chiefs  in 
Bundelkhand.  When  the  detachment  started,  Nana  had  been  asked 
to  grant  passports  for  the  march.  He  objected,  on  the  ground  that 

1  Forrest,  op.  cit.  I,  333-6;  Aitchison,  Treaties,  vi,  39. 

2  Forrest,  Selections  from  the  State  Papers  in  the  Foreign  Department,  n,  672. 
8  Forrest,  Maratha  Series,  i,  385. 


266      FIRST  CONFLICT  WITH  MARATHAS,  1761-82 

as  the  force  was  sent  to  counteract  French  machinations,  its  advance 
was  now  unnecessary,  since  St  Lubin  had  gone.  But  Holkar  and 
Sindhia,  who  feared  that  their  possessions  in  Malwa  might  suffer, 
agreed  to  allow  the  detachment  a  passage.  Nana  ultimately  also 
granted  permission,  but  secretly  told  his  officers  and  the  Bundelkhand 
chiefs  to  oppose  the  advance.  Hastings,  in  view  of  Leslie's  incompetence, 
had  decided  to  replace  him  by  his  second-in-command,  Colonel 
Goddard,  and  letters  had  been  issued  to  the  Bundelkhand  chiefs, 
disavowing  Colonel  Leslie's  acts.  At  this  moment,  however,  news 
arrived  of  Leslie's  death  on  3  October,  1778.  Goddard  was  a  man  of 
very  different  calibre.  He  used  the  utmost  tact,  and  advanced  with 
great  rapidity  through  Bhopal,  where  Nawab  Hayat  Muhammad 
Khan  assisted  him  to  the  utmost  in  spite  of  Maratha  threats.1  On 
2  December  he  reached  the  Narbada  where,  in  accordance  with 
Hastings's  instructions,  he  awaited  a  communication  from  Mudaji 
Bhonsle,  with  whom  Hastings  hoped  to  form  an  alliance  thus  de- 
taching him  from  the  Peshwa's  party.  But  Mudaji  declined,  and 
informed  Colonel  Goddard  that  he  could  not  negotiate. 

The  Bombay  Council  now  sent  urgent  appeals  to  Colonel  Goddard 
to  expedite  his  march,  and  although,  by  Hastings's  express  orders, 
Goddard  was  independent  of  Bombay  control,  he  considered  it  was 
incumbent  on  him,  in  the  interests  of  his  country,  to  comply. 

He  reached  Burhanpur  on  30  January,  1779,  and  Surat  on  26 
February.  Thus  by  his  tact  and  skill  did  Goddard  bring  this  "frantic 
military  exploit"  of  Hastings  to  a  successful  conclusion,  and  as 
Hastings  had  foreseen,  immensely  increase  the  prestige  of  the  British 
arms  throughout  India.  Writing  to  Laurence  Sulivan2  ( 1 779)  Hastings 
says  that  the  precipitate  and  miserable  enterprise  of  the  Bombay 
Presidency  had  blasted  his  political  plans,  but  that  Goddard's  march 
had  gained  no  trivial  or  speculative  advantage  as  it  had  shown  the 
people  of  India  the  difference  between  the  powers  of  the  capital 
government  of  the  British  nation  and  the  feeble  efforts  of  an  inferior 
presidency,  and  had  done  far  more  than  military  victories  to  confirm 
our  ascendancy.  On  reaching  Bombay  Goddard  was  given  a  seat  on 
the  council  and  the  position  of  commander-in-chief.3 

Mahadaji  Siridhia  had  not  as  yet  responded,  as  Hornby  had  hoped 
he  would,  and  hence  nothing  remained  but  to  continue  the  war,  a 
somewhat  alarming  situation,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  Bombay 
Council  had  no  funds  for  the  purpose.  Hastings  had  instructed 
Goddard,  who  remained  directly  under  his  orders,4  to  endeavour  to 
make  peace  with  the  ministerial  party  at  Poona  on  the  lines  of  the 
Purandhar  Treaty,  adding  a  clause  specifically  excluding  the  French 
from  acquiring  any  settlements  in  Maratha  territory.  He  refused, 
however,  to  agree  to  Hornby's  proposal  to  intervene  and  settle  the 

1  Bhopal  State  Gazetteer,  p.  16.  *  Gleig,  Warren  Hastings,  n,  272. 

8  Forrest,  Horn  Series,  n,  368.  «  Forrest,  Maratha  Series,  i,  386. 


GODDARD'S  CAMPAIGN  267 

quarrel  between  Govind  Rao  and  Fateh  Singh  Gaekwad.  As  regarded 
Sindhia,  Goddard  was  to  wait  until  he  showed  a  desire  to  form  an 
alliance  before  approaching  him.  At  this  time,  however,  Sindhia  was 
secretly  instigating  hostilities  against  the  Company  while  simul- 
taneously sending  his  agents  to  talk  platitudes  at  Bombay. 

Sindhia  now  saw  that  nothing  was  to  be  gained  by  supporting 
Raghunath  Rao,  whereas  his  hold  over  Nana  would  be  strengthened 
if  the  ex-Peshwa  returned  to  the  English.  He  used  his  influence, 
therefore,  to  get  Nana  to  grant  the  ex-Peshwa  a  jagir  in  Bundelkhand, 
and  then  connived  at  his  escape  from  custody  while  proceeding  there.1 
Raghunath  Rao  at  once  fled  to  the  protection  of  Goddard,  who  made 
him  an  allowance  of  50,000  rupees  a  month,  which  Hastings  con- 
sidered excessive.  No  treaty  was,  however,  arranged  for  him,  and 
from  this  moment  he  drops  out  of  practical  politics,  the  support  of 
one  so  unpopular  with  the  whole  of  his  compatriots  being  too  obvious 
a  mistake  to  be  continued.  The  English  now  became  in  name,  as  well 
as  in  fact,  a  principal  in  the  struggle  which  ensued. 

Negotiations  continued  between  Nana  and  General  Goddard  with- 
out any  definite  result  until,  at  the  end  of  the  rains,  Goddard  learnt 
of  the  formation  of  a  confederacy  of  the  Marathas,  the  Nizam  and 
Hyder  'Ali,  which  was  to  make  a  series  of  simultaneous  attacks  on 
the  English  possessions.  A  final  request  to  Nana  for  a  definite  reply 
elicited  a  reiteration  of  the  demand  for  the  surrender  of  Raghunath 
Rao  and  the  restoration  of  Salsette,  as  preliminaries. 

Without  sending  an  answer  to  this  demand,  General  Goddard 
proceeded  to  Bombay,  where  he  expedited  the  dispatch  of  a  force 
under  Colonel  Hartley,  and  obtained  sanction  to  make  a  treaty  with 
Fateh  Singh  Gaekwad.  At  the  same  time  Hastings,  in  order  to  create 
a  diversion  in  the  north,  entered  into  a  treaty  with  the  rana  of  Gohad, 
who  had  always  been  a  thorn  in  the  side  of  the  Marathas. 

On  his  return  to  Surat  Goddard  dismissed  the  vakils  of  Nana 
Phadnavis  and  opened  negotiations  with  Fateh  Singh  who,  however, 
gave  no  definite  reply  until  Goddard,  crossing  the  Tapti  on  i  January, 
I78o,2  captured  Dhaboi,  on  which  he  signed  a  treaty  (26  January) 
agreeing  to  assist  General  Goddard  with  a  force  of  3000  horse  and 
cede  the  revenues  of  certain  districts  as  soon  as  he  was  put  in  possession 
of  Ahmadabad,  the  Peshwa's  possessions  north  of  the  Mahi  river 
being  also  made  over  to  him. 

Goddard  at  once  marched  on  Ahmadabad,  which  was  carried  by 
assault  by  Colonel  Hartley  on  15  February,  eighty-one  Europeans 
being  killed  and  wounded  including  ten  officers.3  Sindhia  and  Holkar 
now  advanced  in  support  of  the  Peshwa,  though  how  far  Sindhia  was 
in  earnest  seems  doubtful,  as  on  reaching  Baroda  he  released  Farmer 
and  Captain  Stewart,  the  hostages  for  the  Convention  of  Wadgaon, 

1  Forrest,  Maratha  Series^  i,  387.  2  Idem,  pp.  392-96. 

8  Idem,  pp.  397-99- 


268      FIRST  CONFLICT  WITH  MARATHAS,  1761-82 

and  also  sent  his  agent,  who  assured  General  Goddard  of  his  master's 
friendly  feelings  towards  the  English  and  of  Nana's  enmity.  Goddard 
made  no  overtures,  merely  replying  in  the  same  vein,  but  requiring 
Sindhia,  if  he  wished  to  treat,  to  send  definite  proposals  within  three 
days,  thus  defeating  any  intention  of  the  Maratha  leader  to  keep  him 
inactive  until  the  dry  season  was  over.  Nothing  came  of  these  pour- 
parlers, while  Sindhia  began  to  negotiate  with  Govind  Rao  Gaekwad, 
the  rival  of  Fateh  Singh. 

Goddard,  finding  negotiation  useless,  proceeded  to  attack.  He 
advanced  against  the  Marathas  and  drove  them  back  with  severe 
loss,  but  without  any  material  gain  as  the  enemy  following  their 
usual  tactics,  merely  encamped  at  a  short  distance,  in  an  endeavour 
to  lead  the  English  into  a  long  fruitless  pursuit. 

In  spite  of  protests  from  Bombay,  where  the  council  were  urging  the 
need  for  capturing  Bassein,  General  Goddard  refused  to  leave  Gujarat, 
as  it  would  have  meant  abandoning  his  ally  Fateh  Singh  Gaekwad. 

The  approaching  summer  found  the  fortunes  of  the  English  at  a 
somewhat  low  ebb.  Funds  were  exhausted,  in  all  three  presidencies; 
the  Nizam,  and  Hyder  'Ali,  who  had  swept  over  the  Carnatic  up  to 
the  gates  of  Madras,  were  supporting  the  Marathas;  and  fears  were 
entertained  of  the  co-operation  of  a  French  fleet  on  the  east  coast. 
But  numerous  successful  engagements  of  minor  importance  took  place, 
including  the  seizure  of  Kalyan  (October,  lySo).1 

Amidst  all  these  difficulties  Hastings  never  lost  his  head.  He 
created  a  diversion  in  Central  India  by  dispatching  Captain  Popham 
from  Bengal  to  support  the  rana  of  Gohad.  Captain  Popham  after 
capturing  the  fort  of  Lahar,  fifty  miles  from  Kalpi,  advanced  to 
Gwalior  which  he  carried  by  a  brilliant  night  escalade  on  3  August, 
1 78o.2  This,  an  achievement  of  great  merit  in  itself,  was  of  far  greater 
importance  in  its  political  effects.  This  fort  had  always  been  looked 
upon  throughout  India  as  impregnable,  and  its  capture  raised  the 
prestige  of  the  English  enormously.  Warren  Hastings  writing  to 
Laurence  Sulivan  on  27  August,  i78o,3  thus  refers  to  this  episode: 
"I  shall  begin  by  reciting  to  you  an  event  of  the  greatest  importance 
...  an  enterprise . . .  [of  which]  in  this  country  the  effect  is  not  to  be 
described. .  .it  is  the  key  of  Indostan".  But  it  also  had  another,  and 
perhaps  even  more  important,  result.  Sindhia,  to  whom  the  fort 
belonged,  was  dismayed  at  its  loss  and  at  once  hurried  northwards, 
abandoning  his  colleagues. 

To  turn  for  a  moment  to  the  other  members  of  the  confederacy. 
Hyder  'Ali  had  attacked  the  Carnatic,  and  Mudaji  Bhonsle  had  sent 
his  son  Chimnaji  against  Cuttack,  but  as  he  had  no  real  intention  of 
seriously  aiding  the  cause,  he  was  easily  bought  off  by  Hastings.4 

1  Forrest,  Maratha  Series,  i,  413-15.  2  East  Indian  Military  Calendar,  1823,  n,  93. 

8  Gleig,  Warren  Hastings,  n,  311. 

4  Forrest,  Selections  from  the  State  Papers  in  the  Foreign  Department,  11,  707. 


RELATIONS  WITH  NAGPUR  269 

Mudaji  had,  in  fact,  himself  originally  informed  Warren  Hastings  of 
the  confederacy  formed  between  Nana  Phadnavis,  the  Nizam,  and 
Hyder  'Ali,  also  intimating  that  the  obligation  to  attack  Bengal  had 
been  laid  upon  him,  and  that  he  could  not  refuse  to  obey.  His  son 
Chimnaji  was,  however,  instructed  to  delay  his  march  as  much  as 
possible.  This  he  effectually  contrived  to  do,  reaching  the  Bengal 
border  in  May,  1780,  instead  of  in  October,  1779,  as  he  might  have 
done.  Hastings,  well  aware  of  the  enmity  which  existed,  the  alliance 
notwithstanding,  between  the  Poona  ministers  and  Hyder  'Ali,  asked 
Mudaji  if  he  would  act  as  mediator  between  the  English  and  Nana 
Phadnavis,  and  even  sent  him  a  draft  treaty.  But  these  negotiations 
came  to  nothing.  Hastings  then  deputed  David  Anderson  to  inter- 
view Chimnaji  and  inform  him  that  a  force,  under  Colonel  Pearse, 
was  marching  from  Bengal  to  Madras,1  and  to  ask  for  his  assistance 
for  the  detachment.  This  was  granted,  and  the  promise  most  faith- 
fully kept.  Anderson  then  went  to  Cuttack  where  he  induced  Mudaji 
to  recall  his  forces  on  the  payment  of  fifteen  lakhs.  The  Nizam  took 
no  active  part  in  the  proceedings  of  the  confederacy. 

In  October  General  Goddard  advanced  on  Bassein  and,  starting 
operations  against  the  fort  in  November,  captured  it  on  1 1  December. 
The  fall  of  Bassein  was  a  very  serious  blow  to  Nana,  as  besides  the 
loss  of  a  stronghold  the  moral  effect  of  the  victory  was  almost  as  great 
as  that  caused  by  the  capture  of  Gwalior,  owing  to  the  fact  that  it 
had  been  taken  from  the  Portuguese  in  1739  and  thus  represented 
a  victory  over  Europeans. 

Goddard  in  1781  received  orders  to  conclude  peace  if  he  saw  any 
chance  of  effecting  it.  The  Madras  Presidency,  in  particular,  was 
anxious  for  a  cessation  of  hostilities,  ascribing  the  attacks  made  on 
them  by  Hyder  'Ali  to  the  support  of  Raghunath  Rao  and  the 
consequent  war.  Sir  Eyre  Coote,  at  this  time  in  Southern  India, 
wrote  to  Goddard  in  the  strongest  terms  pointing  out  that  he  must 
impose  upon  him  as  a  duty  he  owed  to  his  king,  his  country  and  his 
employers  to  leave  no  means  untried  to  effect  a  peace.2  He  also  wrote 
in  similar  strain  to  the  Bengal  Council  (March,  1781).  He  says, 

I  have  frequently  declared  it  to  you,  gentlemen,  as  my  firm  opinion  that  we  are 
altogether  unequal  to  the  difficult  and  dangerous  contention  in  which  we  are  now 
engaged. .  .and  I  must  once  more  call  upon  you. .  .to  apply  the  least  dangerous 
and  least  expensive  means  whereof  a  change  may  be  speedily  brought  about  on 
a  system  of  policy  so  ruinous  in  itself  and  so  destructive  to  their  [the  Company's] 
interests.3 

After  the  capture  of  Bassein  Goddard  moved  up  and  forced  the 
Bhor  Ghat  pass.  But  he  allowed  himself  to  be  delayed  in  negotiations, 
which  Nana  began  in  order  to  give  himself  time  to  bring  up  more 

1  Forrest,  Selections  from  the  State  Papers  in  the  Foreign  Department,  n,  749. 

2  Forrest,  Maratha  Series ,  i,  445-7. 

8  Forrest,  Selections  from  the  State  Papers  in  the  Foreign  Department,  in,  760. 


270      FIRST  CONFLICT  WITH  MARATHAS,  1761^82 

troops.  Holkar  and  Hari  Pant  advanced  with  a  large  force  and  when 
Goddard,  seeing  that  the  negotiations  were  leading  to  nothing,  tried 
to  retire  on  Kalyan  and  Bombay,  he  was  attacked  fiercely  and  lost 
400  men  killed  and  wounded.  This  it  may  be  noted  was  the  only 
reverse  Goddard  ever  suffered. 

Sindhia  who  had  hastened  northwards  on  the  fall  of  Gwalior  was 
defeated  on  16  February,  1781,  at  Sipri  (now  Shivpuri)  by  Major 
Camac,  who  had  been  sent  in  June,  1780,  to  support  the  rana  of 
Gohad.  The  effect  of  the  fall  of  Gwalior  and  of  Bassein,  his  own  defeat 
and  the  enhancement  of  his  rival  Holkar's  reputation  by  the  victory 
at  Bhor  Ghat,  convinced  Sindhia  that  his  real  advantage  lay  in 
coming  to  early  terms  with  the  English,  and  he  never  again  took  up 
arms  against  them.  He  opened  negotiations  with  Colonel  Muir  and 
signed  a  treaty  on  13  October,  I78I.1  By  this  treaty  Sindhia  agreed 
to  retire  to  Ujjain  while  Colonel  Muir  recrossed  the  Jumna.  But  the 
really  important  clause  in  the  agreement  was  that  by  which  Mahadaji 
undertook  to  effect  a  treaty  between  the  ministers  and  the  English 
and  so  stand  guarantee  for  its  observance. 

Hastings,  on  receiving  this  news,  deputed  David  Anderson,  in 
January,  1 782,  with  full  powers  to  conclude  a  treaty.2  His  instructions 
to  Anderson  are  contained  in  a  letter  dated  4  November,  1781,  from 
Benares.  The  points  which  Anderson  was  to  bear  in  mind  were:  to 
make  an  alliance  with  the  Peshwa  through  Sindhia5  s  mediation  against 
all  enemies,  but  in  particular  against  Hyder  'Ali;  otherwise  simply 
peace,  on  the  condition  that  we  restored  all  territory  gained  during 
the  war,  except  the  city  of  Ahmadabad  and  lands  granted  to  Fateh 
Singh  Gaekwad ;  adequate  provision  to  be  made  for  Raghunath  Rao ; 
Bassein  to  be  kept  if  possible,  even  if  all  the  lands  obtained  by  the 
Treaty  of  Purandhar  had  to  be  restored,  except  Salsette  and  the 
islands  and  revenues  of  Broach;  but  if  the  retention  of  Bassein  hin- 
dered the  settlement  of  the  peace,  it  must  be  given  up;  nothing  was  to 
be  done  hostile  to  the  raja  of  Berar;  Fateh  Singh  Gaekwad  was  to  be 
included  in  the  treaty;  the  treacherous  rana  of  Gohad  was  to  be  left 
to  make  his  own  terms;  all  other  European  nations  were  to  be  pro- 
hibited from  founding  new  settlements;  and  if  possible  the  Marathas 
were  to  be  induced  to  attack  Hyder  'Ali. 

Hastings,  when  he  learnt  of  Colonel  Muir's  negotiations,  was  at 
Benares,  surrounded  by  rebels,  almost  in  their  hands,  yet,  wholly 
undisturbed,  he  issued  these  instructions  to  his  envoy.  Well  might 
he  refer  to  this  transaction  with  pardonable  pride  in  one  of  his  letters 
as  having  "  conducted  a  successful  negotiation  of  peace  with  Mahdajee 
Sindia  in  the  most  desperate  period  of  my  distresses".8  Anderson 

1  Forrest,  Selections  from  the  State  Papers  in  the  Foreign  Department,  m,  813;  Aitchison, 
Treaties,  rv,  33. 

2  Forrest,  Selections  from  the  State  Papers  in  the  Foreign  Department,  m,  821-2. 
8  Gleig,  Warren  Hastings,  n,  453. 


TREATY  OF  SALBAI  271 

joined  Mahadaji  Sindhia,  who  was  acting  as  our  intermediary,  and  on 
17  May  the  Treaty  of  Salbai  was  signed.1 

The  Treaty  of  Salbai  contains  seventeen  clauses,  the  chief  stipula- 
tions being:  that  the  whole  of  the  territory  conquered  since  the  Treaty 
of  Purandhar  (1776)  should  be  restored,  together  with  three  lakhs' 
worth  of  revenue  at  Broach;  the  Gaekwad's  possessions  to  be  restored 
to  what  they  were  before  the  war,  in  1775;  Raghunath  Rao,  within 
three  months  from  the  signing  of  the  treaty,  to  fix  on  a  place  of 
residence,  receiving  no  further  help  from  the  English,  the  Peshwa 
undertaking  to  pay  him  an  allowance  of  25,000  rupees  a  month,  if 
he  would  of  his  own  accord  repair  to  Sindhia;  Hyder  'Ali  to  return 
all  territory  recently  taken  from  the  English,  and  the  nawab  of  Arcot; 
and  the  Peshwa  and  the  English  undertook  that  their  several  allies 
should  remain  at  peace  with  one  another. 

Anderson  writing  about  these  negotiations  (27  February,  1783) 
remarks  on  Sindhia's  difficulties  as  intermediary  owing  to  differences 
among  the  ministers  at  Poona,  the  opposition  oi  his  rival  Holkar,  who 
was  supported  by  Hari  Pant,  and  the  Nizam's  intrigues.2  The  treaty 
was  ratified  on  20  December,  1782,  but  the  final  adjustments  were 
delayed  by  Nana  till  the  next  year,  as  he  was  still  striving  for  the 
restoration  of  Salsette  and  was,  in  fact,  secretly  intriguing  with  Hydcr 
'Ali  in  hopes  of  being  able  to  reject  the  treaty  altogether. 

But  on  7  December,  1782,  Hyder  'Ali  had  died.  In  any  case  his 
support  would  have  been  unlikely,  as  he  was  said  to  be  convinced  of 
the  futility  of  opposing  these  new  forces  which  had  entered  the  arena 
of  Indian  politics,  and  to  have  left  a  written  message  for  his  son  Tipu 
enjoining  him  to  make  peace  with  the  English  on  any  terms,  and  so 
avoid  ruining  himself,  advice  which  Tipu  did  not  follow.  Hyder  'Ali's 
death  obliged  Nana  to  ratify  the  treaty,  which  he  did  not  do  until 
20  February,  1783. 

The  importance  of  this  treaty,  which  placed  the  political  relations 
of  the  English  and  the  Marathas  on  an  entirely  new  and  definite 
footing,  cannot  be  over-estimated.  It  formed  the  turning-point  in  the 
history  of  the  English  in  India.  It  secured  us  peace  with  the  Marathas 
for  twenty  years,  and,  without  the  acquisition  of  any  fresh  territory, 
it  established,  beyond  dispute,  the  dominance  of  the  British  as  con- 
trolling factor  in  Indian  politics,  their  subsequent  rise  in  1818  to  the 
position  of  the  paramount  power,  being  an  inevitable  result  of  the 
position  gained  by  the  Treaty  of  Salbai. 

No  greater  vindication  of  Hastings's  policy  can  be  asked  for  than 
this  successful  termination  of  seven  years  of  constant  struggling,  no 
finer  monument  be  raised  to  his  courage,  talents  and  amazing  powers 
of  organisation — for  it  was  he,  single-handed,  who  found  money  and 
men,  and  steered  the  political  course  which  led  to  victory. 

1  Gleig,  op.  cit.  n,  chap,  xii;  Aitchison,  Treaties,  iv,  41. 

*  Forrest,  Selections  from^the  State  Papers  in  the  Foreign  Department,  HI,  929. 


272      FIRST  CONFLICT  WITH  MARATHAS,  1761-^2 

It  forms  the  turning-point  in  Mahadaji's  career.  MahadajiandNana 
were  both  desirous  of  forcing  Tipu  to  conform  to  the  Treaty  of  Salbai 
in  order  that  he  should  figure  as  a  tributary,  but  each  of  them  wished 
to  claim  the  whole  credit  for  doing  so  and  Sindhia  was  not  prepared 
to  abrogate  his  newly-established  independence  of  Poona  by  sharing 
that  credit  with  Nana.  Hitherto,  though  he  had  often  disregarded 
orders,  Mahadaji  had  considered  himself  a  vassal  of  the  Peshwa,  and 
had  generally  acted  in  conformity  with  the  wishes  of  his  chief.  During 
the  next  twelve  years,  however,  assured  that  the  English  would  leave 
him  a  free  hand,  he  becomes  the  most  prominent  actor  on  the  stage 
of  Indian  history,  pursuing  with  quiet  tenacity,  but  without  ever 
forgetting,  as  his  successor  did,  the  limits  of  his  strength,  his  policy 
of  personal  aggrandisement,  a  policy,  moreover,  which,  to  a  very 
large  extent,  determined  the  general  course  of  events  in  India,  up 
to  his  death  in  1 794. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  CARNATIC,   1761-84 

1 N  the  Carnatic  the  course  of  events  was  very  different  from  that 
in  Bengal.    In  both  provinces  the  English  had  attained  military 
supremacy;  but  in  the  south  they  did  not  follow  this  up  by  the  almost 
immediate  assumption  of  political  control.  The  reasons  for  the  differ- 
ence seem  to  be  that  with  the  overthrow  of  the  French  the  Carnatic 
had  become  a  secondary  area  not  rich  enough  to  provoke  direct 
administration  or  to  bring  the  interests  of  the  nawab  and  the  Com- 
pany's servants  into  direct  conflict.  The  pet  vice  of  the  latter  in  the 
Carnatic  was  indeed  quite  different  from  that  which  prevailed  in 
Bengal.  In  Bengal  they  had  sought  to  trade  untaxed;  in  the  Carnatic 
they  found  their  easiest  advantage  to  lie  in  lending  money  to  the 
nawab.    Muhammad  'Ali  had  from  the  first  found  himself  in  em- 
barrassed circumstances.  The  war  with  the  French  had  been  carried 
on  at  his  expense  though  largely  with  the  Company's  funds ;  so  that 
the  fall  of  Pondichery  found  him  with  a  debt  of  22,25,373  pagodas 
owing  to  the  Company.  In  1766  this  had  been  reduced  to  13,65,104 
pagodas ;  but  in  reality  his  financial  position  had  grown  worse  instead 
of  better,  for  at  the  later  date  he  owed  private  creditors  a  sum 
exceeding  that  which  he  had  owed  the  Company  in  1761.  These 
private  loans  had  been  borrowed  at  the  high  rates  of  interest  pre- 
vailing in  the  country — at  first  from  30  to  36  per  cent. ;  then  25  per 
cent. ;  and  then  on  the  intervention  of  the  governor,  Palk,  to  20  per 
cent.  When  questioned,  the  nawab  stated,  probably  with  truth,  that 
he  would  have  had  to  pay  higher  rates  to  Indian  lenders.   In  1766 
-the  interest  was  reduced  by  the  Company's  orders  to  10  per  cent. 
The  existence  of  this  large  private  debt,  which  so  far  from  being 
liquidated  went  on  increasing  throughout  the  whole  of  Muhammad 
'Ali's  government,  branching  out  into  all  those  divers  funds  which 
Burke  enumerated  with  such  passionate  emphasis,  affected  the  whole 
of  the  relations  between  the  English  and  the  Nawab  Walajah,  as  he 
became  after  Clive's  Treaty  of  Allahabad.  Having  the  control  of  so 
large  a  portion  of  the  private  savings  of  the  settlement,  the  nawab 
was  able  to  exercise  a  most  unwholesome  influence  over  the  policy  of 
the  council,  particularly  in  regard  to  Tanjore;  and  was  sure  of  a 
following  even  when  the  Company  or  the  governor  was  positively 
opposed  to  his  designs.    Not  a  governor  but  was  corrupted  by  his 
bribes  or  calumniated  by  his  hatred.  For  a  time  at  least  the  financial 
interests  thus  created  dominated  Madras  in  the  person  of  Paul 
Benfield,  who,  though  probably  not  quite  deserving  all  the  strictures 
of  Burke,  undoubtedly  subordinated  public  affairs  to  the  exigencies 

CHIV  l8 


274  THE  CARNATIC,  1761-84 

of  private  concerns.  The  true  history  of  the  period  will  perhaps 
never  be  written.  The  persons  principally  concerned  did  not  entrust 
their  designs  to  the  publicity  of  the  Company's  records;  and  though 
a  certain  number  of  private  papers  have  come  to  light,  many  others 
have  been  destroyed  or  concealed;  so  that  we  are  often  left  to  guess 
at  what  actually  happened. 

While  the  French  war  was  still  continuing,  there  was  a  strong 
inclination  on  the  part  of  the  council  to  take  over  the  direct  ad- 
ministration of  the  territory  secured  by  the  Company's  arms.  But 
the  nawab's  protests  and  perhaps  more  solid  arguments  induced  the 
council  to  abandon  that  idea;1  nor,  even  under  the  pressure  of 
circumstances,  did  it  in  fact  proceed  to  that  extremity.  Probably  the 
financial  help  which  was  received  from  Bengal  saved  the  nawab's 
independence.  At  the  fall  of  Pondichery  he  found  his  nominal  power 
undiminished.  He  had  granted  to  the  Company  the  district  imme- 
diately surrounding  Madras,  and  mortgaged  other  parts  of  his 
dominions,  but  the  English  displayed  no  desire  to  take  any  part  in  the 
administration  of  these  areas;  and  even  in  the  Company's  jagir  the 
revenue  was  ultimately  leased  out  to  the  nawab  himself. 

In  the  south  the  first  ostensible  exercise  of  power  resulted  from 
Clive's  Treaty  of  Allahabad.  Among  the  other  grants  which  he 
secured  from  Shah  'Alam  was  one  exempting  Walajah  from  his 
traditional  dependence  on  the  Deccan  and  another  for  the  Northern 
Sarkars,  which  in  the  time  of  French  greatness  had  been  granted  by 
the  Nizam  to  Bussy,  and  which  after  the  expulsion  of  the  French  had 
lapsed  into  the  hands  of  that  prince.  By  this  time  the  feeble  prince, 
whom  Bussy  had  had  such  difficulty  in  maintaining  at  Hyderabad, 
had  been  replaced,  and  put  to  death,  by  his  more  vigorous  brother, 
Nizam  'Ali.  The  latter  had  already  made  more  than  one  offer  of  the 
sarkars  to  the  English  on  condition  of  military  help;  but  these  had 
not  been  accepted,  in  view  of  the  Company's  strong  desire  to  limit 
its  responsibilities;  and  offers,  the  origins  of  which  are  obscure,  to  set 
up  Walajah  in  the  Deccan  instead  of  Nizam  'Ali,  had  also  been 
rejected  under  English  dissuasion.2  However,  the  English  now  took 
steps  to  carry  the  grant  of  1765  into  effect.  Caillaud  was  sent  up 
into  the  sarkars,  and  succeeded  in  occupying  them  practically  without 
resistance.  But  it  was  not  to  be  expected  that  Nizam  'Ali  would 
silently  acquiesce  in  this  dismemberment  of  his  dominions.  In  the 
end  Caillaud  was  sent  to  Hyderabad  to  settle  the  dispute,  and  on 
12  November,  1766,  he  concluded  a  treaty  with  Nizam  'Ali  on  the 
following  terms :  in  return  for  a  grant  of  the  five  sarkars  the  Company 
agreed  "to  have  a  body  of  troops  ready  to  settle  the  affairs  of  His 

1  Madras  Mil.  Consultations,  1754,  p.  145;  1755,  pp.  146  sqq.\  29  August  and  I  Sep- 
tember, 1757. 

1  Bengal  Select  Committee  to  Madras,  27  April,  1768;  R.  J.  Sulivan,  Analysis  of  the 
Political  History  of  India,  p.  104. 


EARLY  RELATIONS  WITH  HYDER  275 

Highnesses  government  in  everything  that  is  right  and  proper,  when- 
ever required",  but  it  retained  liberty  to  withdraw  the  trpops  if 
demanded  by  the  safety  of  the  English  settlements,  and  it  was  to  pay 
a  tribute  of  nine  lakhs  a  year  in  each  year  in  which  its  military 
assistance  was  not  required.  By  a  final  article  the  Nizam  was  to  assist 
the  English  when  needed.1  This  agreement  was  pointed  directly  at 
Hyder  'Ali,  against  whom  the  Nizam  had  already  entered  into  an 
alliance  with  the  Marathas,  and  with  whom  now  the  English  were 
inevitably  embroiled.  The  Company  condemned  the  negotiations  as 
showing  great  lack  of  firmness. 

Hyder  'Ali,  who  had  very  recently  established  his  power  in  Mysore, 
was  the  son  of  a  soldier  who  had  risen  to  the  post  of  commandant  of 
the  fortress  of  Bangalore.  During  the  Seven  Years'  War  he  had 
coquetted  with  the  idea  of  assisting  the  French,  but  had  judged  the 
situation  too  correctly  to  involve  himself  in  their  failing  fortunes. 
Instead,  he  had  succeeded  in  placing  himself  in  the  position  of  the 
chief  minister — the  dalavay — seizing  the  person  of  Khande  Rao,  the 
last  holder  of  that  post,  and  keeping  him  imprisoned  in  an  iron  cage 
until  he  died.  The  raja  was  kept  a  prisoner  in  his  palace,  and  shown 
to  the  people  once  a  year;  but  altogether  ceased  to  enjoy  power  or 
influence.  The  new  ruler  of  Mysore  was  an  unlettered  soldier,  but  a 
man  of  great  energy  and  talent.  His  main  preoccupation  was  the 
extension  of  his  dominions.  He  quickly  extended  his  rule  to  the 
Malabar  Coast;  but  when  he  turned  his  attention  to  the  north  he 
found  his  way  blocked  by  the  Marathas  and  the  Nizam.  Meanwhile 
his  conquests  on  the  Malabar  Coast  had  brought  him  into  contact 
with  the  English  factories  there.  At  first  the  Bombay  Presidency 
was  in  favour  of  an  agreement.  It  decided  to  afford  Hyder  facili- 
ties for  building  fighting  vessels  in  the  Marine  Yard  at  Bombay; 
and  hoped  that  Madras  would  be  able  to  accommodate  the  disputes 
subsisting  between  Hyder  and  Walajah.  Hyder  also  hoped  for 
advantages  from  supplies  of  arms  and  gunpowder  from  the  English, 
and  offered  his  alliance,  both  parties  affording  military  help  to  the 
other  in  case  of  need.  This  was  in  1766,  just  before  Caillaud's  treaty 
with  the  Nizam.  But  by  then  Hyder's  conquests  of  the  petty  Nair 
chiefs  with  whom  the  English  were  in  alliance  had  on  the  whole 
indisposed  the  Bombay  Government  to  any  formal  alliance  with 
its  restless  neighbour,  though  it  was  at  the  same  time  anxious 
to  avoid  hostilities  if  possible.2  In  the  meantime,  as  has  been  seen, 
the  Madras  Government  had  agreed  to  assist  the  Nizam  against 
Hyder  as  the  price  of  the  cession  of  the  Northern  Sarkars,  rather  than 
face  the  probable  alternative  of  an  alliance  between  Hyder  'Ali  and 
the  Nizam  against  Walajah. 


1  Caillaud's  proceedings  on  this  mission  are  recorded  in  two  volumes  (Military  Sundries  t 
-32)  in  the  Madras  Record  Office. 
1  •fonrest,  Bombay  Selections,  n,  123-31. 

1 8-2 


276  THE  CARNATIC,  1761-84 

English  hopes  rested  on  the  triple  alliance  of  themselves,  the  Nizam, 
and  the  Marathas.  But  the  Marathas,  who  were  first  in  the  field, 
were  quickly  bought  off  by  Hyder.  The  Nizam,  accompanied  by  a 
detachment  under  the  command  of  General  Joseph  Smith,  invaded 
Mysore,  and  advanced  within  sight  of  Bangalore.  But  the  attack 
was  not  seriously  pressed  home;  the  invaders  entered  Mysore  on 
29  April,  1 767,  but  all  the  time  Mahfuz  Khan  (brother  and  rival  of 
Walajah)  remained  in  the  Nizam's  camp  as  Ryder's  agent;  many 
letters  passed  between  the  enemies;  and  a  secret  understanding  was 
reached,  probably  while  the  Nizam  was  still  before  Bangalore.1 
Thus  the  English  were  abandoned  by  the  allies  on  whose  assistance 
they  had  relied,  and  left  by  themselves  to  encounter  the  full  brunt 
of  Hyder's  attack.  They  had  indeed  managed  matters  with  a  great 
want  of  skill. 

The  war  which  followed  (August,  1 767,  to  April,  1 769)  was  one  of 
tactical  success  and  strategic  failure  in  the  Carnatic.  At  Changama 
and  Tiruvannamalai  Smith  succeeded  in  driving  Hyder  off  the  field 
of  battle;  and  after  the  severe  lessons  which  he  received  on  those 
occasions,  Hyder  was  careful  how  he  ventured  within  the  reach  of 
the  English  infantry;  but  these  successes  led  to  nothing.  The  English 
leaders  had  not  at  their  disposal  sufficient  bodies  of  cavalry  to  keep  the 
enemy's  horse  out  of  the  Carnatic.  They  were  further  distracted  by 
personal  jealousies  between  Smith,  the  senior  commander,  and 
Colonel  Wood,  the  favourite  of  the  council.  And  they  were  harassed 
by  the  appointment  of  "field-deputies"  sent  by  the  council  to  keep 
watch  over  their  movements.  On  23  February,  1 768,  the  Nizam  made 
peace  with  the  English  in  the  same  irresponsible  manner  as  he  had 
broken  with  them;  confirming  his  previous  treaty  engagements,  con- 
senting to  a  limitation  of  the  forces  which  the  English  were  obliged 
to  send  to  him  on  demand  to  two  battalions  and  six  guns,  and  ceding 
to  the  Company  the  diwanni  of  Mysore  when  that  country  should 
have  been  conquered  from  the  enemy.  About  the  same  time  the 
Bombay  forces  managed  to  capture  the  town  of  Mangalore;  but  the 
place  was  not  defended  when  Hyder  appeared  to  recover  it,  and  the 
peace  with  the  Nizam  made  little  difference  to  the  course  of  the  war. 
The  Carnatic  lay  still  open  to  the  ravages  of  the  enemy  horse,  so  that 
the  principal  sources  of  English  finance  were  dried  up;  and,  finally, 
when  in  the  month  of  March,  1 769,  Hyder  appeared  before  Madras 
at  the  head  of  a  body  of  cavalry,  and  when  Smith  had  conspicuously 
failed  to  expel  the  enemy  from  the  nawab's  country,  the  Madras 
Government  resolved  to  make  peace.  But  it  had  to  do  so  on  Hyder's 
terms.  These  were  generous  enough,  but  included  the  burden  of  a 
defensive  alliance,  so  that  the  Madras  Council  was  still  far  from  free 
of  the  political  difficulties  in  which  it  had  become  involved.  In  the 

1  Smith's  Narrative,  ap.  Orme  MSS,  Various,  10;  and  Cosby's  Journal  (Brit.  Mus. 
Add.  MSS,  29898).  * 


ENGLISH  POLICY  277 

following  year  a  further  treaty  was  concluded  between  Hyder  and 
the  Bombay  Government,  which  thereby  secured  further  commercial 
privileges.1 

The  general  conduct  of  the  war,  incompetent  as  it  had  been,  was 
a  small  evil  compared  with  the  purposeless,  undecided  policy  by 
which  it  was  preceded  and  followed.  At  this  time  the  interests  of 
Southern  and  Western  India  were  closely  connected;  the  Marathas, 
the  Nizam,  Hyder  'Ali,  and  the  English  at  Bombay  and  Madras,  were 
in  close  and  intimate  association  from  which  they  could  not  escape. 
Moreover,  the  interests  of  the  three  Indian  powers  were  mutually 
destructive.  The  one  certain  thing  about  the  situation  was  that  an 
alliance  between  any  two  of  them  against  the  third  would  be  only 
temporary,  and  would  be  dissolved  by  its  own  success.  In  these 
circumstances  the  obvious  course  for  the  English  was  to  avoid  en- 
tanglements with  any  of  the  parties.  But  what  they  did  was  to  ally 
themselves  first  with  the  Nizam,  then  with  Hyder,  and  then  with  a 
party  of  the  Marathas,  without  any  clear  idea  of  the  responsibilities 
to  which  they  were  pledging  themselves,  and  without  the  vigour  to 
carry  out  the  responsibilities  which  they  had  undertaken.  But  we 
must  remember  that  they  had  certain  excuses  for  the  imbecility  of 
*  their  policy.  In  the  first  place  their  interests  were  divided  between 
the  rival  presidencies  of  Madras  and  Bombay;  and  when  under  the 
Regulating  Act  the  government  of  Bengal  tried  to  impose  on  the 
subordinate  presidencies  a  common  policy,  its  action  was  neutralised 
by  the  jealousies  of  the  minor  governments  for  each  other  and  for  the 
Supreme  Government.  In  the  second  place  the  action  of  the  Madras 
Presidency  was  hampered  by  the  conduct  of  its  protegl  the  nawab 
Walajah.  He  was  jealous  of  the  superior  rank  of  the  Nizam;  he  was 
jealous  of  the  assumed  and  (in  his  eyes)  illegitimate  rank  of  Hyder; 
he  was  jealous  of  the  influence  which  the  English  claimed  to  exercise 
in  his  councils  in  virtue  of  the  military  power  which  alone  preserved 
his  position  in  the  face  of  an  enemy  incomparably  his  superior  in 
vigour  and  talent.  So  that  while  the  English  had  imposed  on  them- 
selves the  impossible  duties  of  assisting  both  the  Nizam  and  Hyder 
in  their  various  policies,  the  nawab  was  always  seeking  to  impose  on 
them  the  further  duty,  hardly  more  inconsistent  with  their  treaty 
obligations,  of  assisting  the  Marathas.  In  the  third  place  the  local 
governments  were  always  liable  to  the  interference  of  the  home 
authorities,  sometimes  ill-informed,  sometimes  ill-authorised,  but  at 
this  time  generally  incalculable. 

In  1 770  this  was  illustrated  by  the  arrival  of  a  small  naval  squadron 
in  Indian  waters,  under  the  command  of  Sir  John  Lindsay,  who 
proceeded  to  take  an  active,  authorised,  but  illegitimate  part  in  the 
politics  of  Madras.  His  appointment  was  the  result  of  a  series 
of  ^intrigues  in  England  in  which  the  ministry  was  on  the  whole 

1  Dupre*  to  Onne,  10  June,  1769  (Love,  Vestiges,  n,  599);  Auber,  i,  266. 


278  THE  CARNATIG,  1761-84 

discreditably  concerned .  The  discussions  of  1 766-7  had  left  the  ministry 
decidedly  inclined  to  interfere  in  the  conduct  of  Indian  affairs;  and 
occasions  were  not  wanting  to  provide  it  with  excuses.  In  1768,  on 
the  news  that  the  government  of  Bengal  had  allowed  the  French  at 
Chandernagore  to  mount  cannon  on  their  walls  contrary  to  the  treaty 
of  Paris,  Shelburne  had  written  with  some  justification: 

I  cannot  conceal  from  you  His  Majesty's  surprise  that  so  extraordinary  a  trans- 
action with  a  foreign  power,  by  which  the  articles  of  a  treaty  of  peace  have  been 
dispensed  with,  should  have  passed  in  India  by  the  sole  authority  of  the  Company's 
servants  and  have  received  your  approbation  at  home,  without  your  having 
previously  attempted  to  know  His  Majesty's  opinion  or  receive  his  commands  upon 
so  hazardous  a  concession. .  ..x 

In  the  following  year  complaints  were  received  from  the  ambassador 
at  Constantinople  about  the  conduct  of  the  Company's  servants  in 
the  Persian  Gulf;2  and  at  the  same  time,  the  Company  gave  an 
opening  to  the  ministry  by  asking  for  naval  assistance  on  an  alarm 
of  French  preparations.  At  this  moment  the  Company  was  pro- 
posing to  send  three  supervisors  to  India  with  extraordinary  powers. 
Grafton,  who  was  now  secretary  of  state,  seized  the  occasion  to  try 
to  secure  some  controlling  share  in  the  proposed  commission;  he 
suggested  that  the  commander  of  the  naval  force  which  the  Company 
had  asked  for  should  be  joined  with  the  supervisors.3  This  proposal 
was  rejected  by  the  Company.  About  the  time  that  these  affairs  were 
in  progress  there  arrived  from  Madras  John  Macpherson  on  a  mission 
from  the  nawab  of  Arcot.  He  had  gone  out  as  purser  on  an  East- 
Indiaman,  and  had  got  access  to  the  nawab  on  the  pretext  of  showing 
him  "some  electrical  experiments  and  the  phenomenon  of  the  magic 
lanthorn".4  He  appears  to  have  persuaded  Grafton  that  the  nawab 
was  a  much  ill-used  person.  The  result  was  that,  as  the  Company 
would  not  agree  to  giving  Lindsay  the  powers  that  the  ministry 
demanded,  he  was  sent  with  a  secret  commission,  which  was  not 
communicated  to  the  Company,  empowering  him  not  only  to  act  as 
plenipotentiary  on  behalf  of  the  crown  with  all  the  princes  of  India, 
but  also  to  enquire  into  the  relations  between  the  nawab  and  the 
Company's  servants  on  the  Coromandel  Coast. 

"As  there  is  great  reason  to  fear",  his  secret  instructions  ran,  "that  the  Nabob 
of  Arcot  has  been  treated  in  a  manner  by  no  means  correspondent  to  the  friendly 
stipulations  which  His  Majesty  procured  in  his  favour  at  the  Company's  request 
[in  the  Treaty  of  Paris] . .  .it  is  therefore  His  Majesty's  pleasure  that  you  make  the 
strictest  enquiry  into  their  conduct  towards  the  Nabob  of  Arcot  since  the  last  peace 
in  order  to  judge  how  far  it  has  coincided  with  His  Majesty's  friendly  declara- 
tions."6 

A  Shelburne  to  the  Company,  21  January,  1768  (Lansdowne  House  MSS,  No.  qq). 

•  Michell  to  Wood,  1 7  March,  1 769  (P.R.O.,  G.O.  77-21). 
8  Wood  to  the  Chairs,  26  July,  1769  (he.  dt.). 

*  Harland  to  Rochford,  i  September,  1772  (I.O.,  Home  Miscellaneous,  no,  p.  495). 
5  Weymouth  to  Lindsay,  Secret,  13  September,  1769  (P.R.O.,  T.  49-1). 


LINDSAY'S  MISSION  279 

Lindsay  arrived  at  Bombay  early  in  1770  and  after  some  preliminary 
enquiries  into  the  position  of  the  Marathas,  sailed  for  Madras.  His 
secret  mission  naturally  involved  him  in  disputes  with  the  council, 
which  knew  nothing  of  it,  and  had  received  no  instructions  to  admit 
him  to  a  part  in  its  political  deliberations.  The  result  was  that  the 
commodore  was  thrown  into  the  nawab's  arms  and  adopted  his 
political  views.  He  advocated  an  alliance  with  the  Marathas  and 
the  abandonment  of  the  treaty  with  Hyder;  and  interfered  at  Bombay 
to  prevent  the  council  there  from  entering  into  a  treaty  promising 
Hyder  the  same  friendship  and  support  that  had  been  promised  by 
the  Treaty  of  Madras.  In  the  course  of  the  war  between  Hyder  and 
Madhu  Rao  in  1770-1  Lindsay  did  his  utmost  to  bring  the  Com- 
pany in  on  the  side  of  the  Marathas;  and  his  successor,  Harland,  in 
1771,  actually  threatened  to  enter  into  negotiations  and  frame  a 
treaty  with  Madhu  Rao  on  his  own  account.  When  the  council 
objected  that  that  would  be  a  violation  of  its  treaty  with  Hyder, 
Harland  replied : 

Should  it  be  found  expedient  to  enter  into  an  alliance  with  any  Indian  power  for 
the  preservation  of  the  Carnatick,  for  the  security  of  the  possessions  ot  the  East 
India  Company  in  it,  and  to  give  a  probability  of  permanency  to  the  British 
interests  in  this  country,  which  may  be  incompatible  with  the  agreement  you  made 
with  Hyder  Ally,  in  1769,  it  would  be  so  far  from  a  breach  of  national  faith  that 
even  as  private  persons  you  stand  exculpated.1 

The  threatened  treaty  was  indeed  avoided.  But  backed  by  the 
plenipotentiary  on  the  one  side,  and  the  corrupt  influences  of  the 
private  debt  on  the  other,  the  nawab  became  irresistible  and  exacted 
from  the  council  its  agreement  to  the  attack  and  capture  of  the  little 
kingdom  of  Tanjore.  Its  relations  with  the  nawab  were  regulated  by 
a  treaty  of  1 762  which  Pigot,  the  governor,  and  the  council  of  that  time 
had  forced  upon  the  nawab.  It  was  alleged  that  the  raja  had  violated 
its  terms  partly  by  neglect  to  pay  the  stipulated  tribute,  and  partly 
by  hostile  intrigues  with  Hyder  'Ali  and  with  Yusuf  Khan,  the  sepoy 
commandant  who  had  rebelled  at  Madura  and  whom  it  had  taken 
the  English  long  months  and  considerable  efforts  to  reduce.  The  first 
attack  took  place  in  1771 ;  but  on  that  occasion  the  raja  was  allowed 
to  remain  on  terms.  But  two  years  later  he  was  again  attacked,  and 
this  time  his  kingdom  was  annexed  to  the  nawab's  possessions.  About 
the  same  time  English  expeditions  were  sent  to  reduce  the  two  great 
southern  poligars  of  Ramnad  and  Sivaganga. 

These  acquisitions  caused  much  stir  in  England.  By  some,  and  by 
the  Burkes  in  particular,  they  were  attributed  to  the  corrupt  intrigues 
of  the  Company's  servants.  A  whole  pamphlet  literature  sprang  up 
on  the  subject,  fathered  by  the  Burkes  and  their  friends  on  the  one 
side,  and  by  the  two  Macphersons  on  the  other.  The  truth  of  the 
matter,  as  distinguished  from  the  mere  external  facts,  remains  very 

1  Harland  to  Dupre",  etc.,  25  December,  1771  (P.R.O.,  C.O.  77-22). 


280  THE  CARNATIC,  1761-^4 

obscure.  It  is  certain  that  the  presidents,  Bouchier  and  Wynch,  were 
exceedingly  averse  to  these  extensions  of  the  nawab's  power;  and  these 
events  were  associated  with  and  followed  by  furious  disputes  between 
the  nawab  and  the  Madras  authorities.  Matters  became  worse  when 
the  Company  sent  orders  that  Tanjore  was  to  be  given  back  to  the 
raja.  George  Pigot,  who  had  so  distinguished  himself  in  the  Seven 
Years'  War  and  had  bought  himself  an  Irish  barony,  returned  as 
governor  for  a  second  term  to  put  these  orders  into  execution.  This 
brought  him  into  violent  collision  not  only  with  the  nawab  but  also 
with  the  creditors,  Benfield  at  their  head,  who  had  acquired  interests 
in  Tanjore  which  were  injured  by  the  orders  for  its  retrocession.  They 
were  supported  by  a  majority  of  the  council  and  by  the  commander- 
in-chief,  Sir  Robert  Fletcher,  who  had  formerly  displayed  his  talent 
for  intrigue  in  the  officers'  mutiny  in  Bengal.  Pigot  claimed,  as  did 
Hastings  in  like  case,  to  have  the  power  of  adjourning  the  council  at 
his  pleasure  and  of  refusing  to  put  motions  of  which  he  disapproved. 
But  unlike  Hastings,  he  attempted  to  establish  his  claims  by  moving 
the  suspension  of  his  principal  opponents,  and  thus  excluding  them 
from  the  council.  This  measure  was  countered  by  a  conspiracy,  in 
which  Benfield  and  the  nawab  were  much  concerned,  having  for  its 
object  the  seizure  of  his  person  and  the  overthrow  of  his  government.1 
The  conspirators  were  assisted  by  the  second-in-command,  Colonel 
James  Stuart,  who  condescended  to  act  as  their  decoy;  and  Pigot  was 
seized  as  he  drove  from  the  fort  to  the  governor's  garden  house  one 
evening  in  August,  1776,  and  hurried  off  into  military  confinement 
at  the  Mount.  He  died  in  the  following  year  while  still  in  confine- 
ment. 

This  event  marked  the  apogee  of  the  nawab's  power.  He  had  not 
only  evaded  all  attempts  to  establish  the  Company's  influence  in  his 
territories  or  to  control  his  administration,  but  IAe  had  also  brought 
to  condign  punishment  a  governor  who  had  ventured  to  thwart  his 
will,  even  though  that  governor  was  acting  under  the  explicit  orders 
of  the  Company.  Indeed  this  series  of  events  at  Madras  illustrates 
quite  as  clearly  as  the  simultaneous  events  in  Bengal  how  far  the  ill- 
judged  interference  from  England  had  weakened  the  stability  of  the 
English  government  in  India.  Nor  was  the  balance  to  be  restored 
until  Pitt's  India  Act  had  re-established  one  effective  control  over 
Indian  affairs.  In  the  present  case  although  the  guilty  members  of 
the  council  were  recalled  and  tried  before  the  Court  of  King's  Bench, 
their  punishment  was  limited  to  fines  of  £1000  each;  and  although 
for  the  moment  Benfield  was  recalled,  he  was  allowed  to  return  to 
the  scene  of  his  intrigues  in  1781. 

After  a  short  interregnum  Sir  Thomas  Rumbold  was  appointed 
governor  and  sent  out  to  Madras,  with  Sir  Hector  Munro,  the  hero 
of  Baksar,  as  commander-in-chief.  Rumbold,  against  whom  at  a  later 

1  See  Palk  MSS,  p.  289. 


RUMBOLD'S  NEGOTIATIONS  281 

date  was  exhibited  a  bill  of  pains  and  penalties,  was  accused  of  having 
displayed  great  corruption  in  his  administration.  But  the  principal 
evidence  of  his  having  done  so  consists  in  his  having  summoned  the 
zamindars  of  the  Northern  Sarkars  down  to  Madras  in  order  to  make 
a  settlement  with  them.  This  was  taking  that  very  profitable  business 
out  of  the  hands  of  the  local  chiefs,  and  probably  explains  why  such 
an  outcry  was  raised  against  what  may  well  have  been  a  perfectly 
innocent  and  even  meritorious  action. 

But  Rumbold's  political  conduct  was  more  open  to  criticism.  He 
was  reluctant  to  follow  the  lead  of  the  government  of  Bengal,  and 
succeeded  in  provoking  the  resentment  of  the  Nizam  at  the  very  time 
when  the  war  with  the  Marathas  made  good  relations  with  the  other 
powers  of  India  of  supreme  importance.  Under  the  treaty  of  1 766 
as  revised  in  1768  the  Company  held  the  Northern  Sarkars  on  con- 
dition of  paying  an  annual  tribute  of  nine  lakhs  of  rupees.  As  the 
sarkar  of  Guntoor  had  been  granted  for  life  to  Nizam  'Ali's  brother, 
Basalat  Jang,  a  deduction  of  two  lakhs  was  made  on  that  account; 
so  that  in  fact  the  Company  only  held  four  out  of  the  five  sarkars  and 
owed  a  tribute  of  seven  lakhs.  This  was  a  heavy  burden;  and  Basalat 
Jang  had  used  his  liberty  to  entertain  a  body  of  French  troops  on 
whom  the  English  naturally  looked  with  suspicion.  In  these  circum- 
stances war  with  the  French  broke  out  in  1778  and  was  followed  by 
the  immediate  reduction  of  Pondichery  by  Munro.  So  far  all  was 
well.  But  Rumbold  proceeded  to  attempt  to  secure  the  sarkar  of 
Guntoor  by  direct  negotiations  with  Basalat  Jang.  In  this  he  suc- 
ceeded; and  at  once  the  district  was  leased  to  Walajah.  To  the  Nizam, 
ruffled  by  such  conduct,  he  then  proposed  that  the  Company  should 
discontinue  its  payment  of  tribute.  His  reasoning  on  this  head  is 
difficult  to  understand.  He  argued  that  the  Nizam  had  broken  the 
treaty  of  1 768  by  taking  into  his  service  the  French  troops  who  had 
been  driven  from  that  of  Basalat  Jang;  that  this  of  itself  relieved  the 
Company  from  any  obligations  which  it  had  under  the  treaty;  and 
that  the  Nizam  was  likely  to  recognise  this  and  acquiesce  in  the 
abandonment  of  tribute,  if  he  were  civilly  asked  to  do  so.  To  Hastings 
the  proposals  seemed  big  with  mischief.  He  at  once  intervened, 
diplomatically  representing  the  Madras  proposals  as  proceeding  from 
the  unauthorised  action  of  the  Madras  envoy;  and,  when  the  Madras 
Government  refused  to  accept  his  decision,  and  recalled  the  Madras 
servant,  Hollond,  whom  it  had  sent  to  Hyderabad,  he  appointed 
him  to  act  as  Resident  with  the  Nizam  on  behalf  of  the  Bengal 
Government.  The  matter  led  to  a  most  unedifying  dispute  between  the 
two  governments.  Rumbold  held  that  the  Supreme  Government 
had  exceeded  its  powers  under  the  act  in  writing  direct  to  the  Nizam 
and  Hollond. 

The  manner  in  which  they  took  up  our  proceedings . . .  and  the  manner  in  which 
they  interfered  to  put  a  stop  to  them. .  .too  plainly  indicate  that  the  design  was 


282  THE  CARNATIC,  1761-84 

not  to  serve  any  interest  of  the  Company  as  to  exercise. .  .an  act  of  authority  with 
a  view  of  raising  their  authority  at  the  expense  of  ours. .  ..* 

Madras  dismissed  Hollond  for  having  communicated  his  instructions 
to  Bengal  and  having  obeyed  the  orders  of  that  government;  but  in 
the  long  run  was  obliged  to  yield  so  far  as  to  restore  Guntoor  to 
Basalat  Jang,  although  that  was  deferred  until  the  opening  of  the 
Second  Mysore  War  had  robbed  this  action  of  all  appearance  of 
grace  or  goodwill.  The  net  result  was  that  the  Nizam  was  seriously 
indisposed  against  the  English  at  the  very  moment  when  his  goodwill 
would  have  been  more  valuable  than  at  any  time  since  the  last  war 
with  Hyder. 

Hyder  too  was  alienated  from  them  at  the  same  time  and  in  part  by 
the  same  train  of  events.  He  had  long  had  his  eye  on  the  sarkar  of 
Guntoor  and  was  much  offended  at  the  English  attempts  to  gain 
possession  of  it.  By  way  of  signifying  his  annoyance  he  prevented  the 
English  troops  marching  to  occupy  it  from  moving  through  his  terri- 
tories. The  war  with  the  French  gave  him  further  motives  for  anger. 
By  reason  of  his  conquests  on  the  Malabar  Coast  he  claimed  full 
sovereignty  over  the  whole  area,  including  the  European  settlements. 
The  Europeans  had  never  acknowledged  this  claim;  the  English  in 
particular  had  rejected  it;  and  now,  in  defiance  of  his  warning  that 
he  regarded  the  French  factory  of  Mahe  as  lying  under  his  protection, 
the  Madras  council  dispatched  an  expedition  which  besieged  and 
captured  it.  But  in  all  probability  what  indisposed  him  much  more 
than  either  of  these  circumstances  was  the  fact  that  he  had  been 
wholly  unable  to  induce  them  to  renew  that  treaty  of  offensive  and 
defensive  alliance  which  they  had  concluded  in  1769  but  never 
carried  out.  He  had  made  more  than  one  overture  with  that  end 
in  view,  one  of  them  so  late  as  I778;2  but  while  they  were  ready 
enough  to  make  declarations  of  friendship,  which  in  fact  would  have 
committed  them  to  nothing,  they  had  evaded  his  principal  demand. 
He  had  therefore  made  up  his  mind  that  nothing  was  to  be  gained 
from  their  alliance;  and  turned  his  attention  to  the  French.  The 
outbreak  of  the  Maratha  War  gave  him  a  further  opening,  of  which 
he  was  not  slow  to  avail  himself;  and  the  quarrel  between  Rumbold 
and  the  Nizam  freed  him  from  every  anxiety  for  his  northern  frontiers. 
These  reasons,  one  presumes,  impelled  him  to  decide  to  attack  his 
life-long  enemy  Walajah  and  the  latter's  English  protectors,  in  the 
middle  of  1780. 

His  hostility  of  feeling  though  not  his  intention  of  war  was  well 
known  at  the  beginning  of  the  year.  In  1779  the  missionary  Swartz 
was  sent  to  Hyder  to  sound  his  intentions  and  got  nothing  from  him 
but  threatening  messages.8  In  January,  1780,  George  Grey,  a  Com- 

1  Military  dispatch  from  Madras  to  the  Company,  3  April,  1 780. 
8  Rumbold's  minute,  op.  Madras  Mil.  Consultations,  4  July,  1778. 
3  Idem,  23  October,  1779. 


OUTBREAK  OF  WAR  283 

pany's  servant,  was  sent  with  a  similar  intention;  but  Hyder  refused 
to  accept  the  presents  with  which  he  was  charged.1   In  ordinary 
circumstances  this  would  have  been  warning  sufficient.    But  un- 
luckily about  this  time  a  regiment  of  king's  troops— Macleod's 
Highlanders — arrived  at  Madras;  and  the  council  easily  persuaded 
itself  that  Hyder  would  not  dare  to  attack  the  English  now  that  they 
had  received  this  accession  of  strength.    Early  in  April  Rumbold, 
whose  health  had  been  for  some  time  but  indifferent,  sailed  for 
England,  without  any  real  apprehensions  of  the  storm  that  was 
overhanging  the  presidency.    After  the  event  his  contemporary 
enemies  accused  him  of  having  known  of  Hyder's  intentions  and  fled 
from  the  dangers  which  he  had  brought  about.  But  in  fact  he  does 
not  seem  to  have  displayed  more  than  that  very  ordinary  degree  of 
blindness  which  all  but  men  of  extraordinary  gifts  display  in  the  face 
of  the  future.2  Rumbold  Js  own  talents  were  not  such  as  to  make  his 
presence  or  absence  a  matter  of  great  concern.    But  unhappily  he 
left  the  chair  to  a  man,  John  Whitehill,  who  in  many  ways  recalls 
the  character  of  Foote's  Nabob ,  Sir  Matthew  Mite.  To  mediocre  talent 
he  joined  a  passionate  acquisitive  temperament,  impatient  of  oppo- 
sition, incapable  of  cool  judgment.   He  was  believed  to  have  shared 
in  the  corruption  which  had  distinguished  the  revenue  collections  in 
the  sarkars,  and  to  have  been  concerned  in  the  equipment  of  a  French 
privateer.  Unluckily  too  the  commander-in-chief,  Munro,  was  a  man 
whose  best  days  were  long  past;  personally  honest,  he  was  also  slow- 
minded,  irresolute  in  an  emergency,  unable  to  profit  by  the  ideas  of 
other  people.   He  could  see  no  reason  for  opposing  the  governor  so 
long  as  the  latter  did  not  interfere  with  his  military  plans.  Rumbold's 
departure  left  the  Select  Committee,  to  which  was  entrusted  the 
conduct  of  political  affairs,  reduced  to  four  members;  so  that  the 
governor  and  commander-in-chief,  so  long  as  they  agreed,  had  full 
control  of  the  situation.  At  an  earlier  time  the  disputes  between  those 
high  personages  had  almost  brought  Madras  to  ruin;  but  now  their 
agreement  went  nearer  still  to  produce  the  same  unhappy  end. 
Despite  the  warnings  they  received  of  Hyder's  preparations,  they  were 
united  in  a  foolish  optimism  which  they  did  not  abandon  till  they 
received  the  news  (23  July)  that  his  horse  was  already  ravaging  the 
Carnatic. 

Even  then  they  did  not  realise  the  seriousness  of  the  position.  With 
that  contempt  of  the  enemy,  which,  as  Macleod  observed,  generally 
leads  to  "a  damned  rap  over  the  knuckles",8  Munro  resolved  to 
concentrate  his  forces  at  Conjeeveram  instead  of  near  Madras,  with 
the  result  that  the  active  Hyder  intercepted  and  destroyed  at  Polilur 
a  detachment  marching  under  Colonel  Baillie  from  the  northward. 

1  Grey's  Journal,  I.O.,  Home  Miscellaneous,  250,  pp.  1-19. 

8  Rumbold's  minute,  ap.  Madras  Mil.  Consultations,  i  April,  1 780,  p.  440. 

8  Hook,  Life  ofBaird,  i,  17. 


284  THE  CARNATIC,  1761-84 

The  action  passed  so  close  to  the  main  body  of  the  English  that  they 
heard  the  guns  firing,  and,  had  Munro  moved  resolutely  towards 
Baillie,  the  courage  and  confidence  of  his  troops  might  have  carried 
the  day  even  against  Hyder's  superiority  offeree.  But  the  campaign 
had  been  begun  hastily,  without  due  preparation,  and  without  the 
necessary  supplies  or  transport.  That,  and  Munro's  blind  confidence 
in  the  English  success,  prevented  him  from  making  any  decisive 
movement.  On  learning  what  had  actually  occurred,  his  confidence 
gave  way  to  panic,  and  he  retired  hurriedly,  losing  much  of  his 
baggage,  to  Chingleput,  and  then  to  Madras. 

The  material  loss  had  been  considerable,  but  it  was  unimportant 
compared  with  the  loss  of  moral  which  accompanied  this  disastrous 
opening  of  the  war.  The  nawab's  garrisons  at  Arcot  and  elsewhere 
surrendered,  as  they  had  done  in  the  last  war,  after  but  the  feeblest 
of  defences,  except  at  Wandiwash,  where  Lieutenant  William  Flint, 
of  the  Company's  service,  arrived  just  in  time  to  take  the  command 
out  of  the  hands  of  the  nawab's  killadar  and  inspire  the  garrison  with 
such  confidence  in  his  leadership  as  secured  a  long  and  successful 
defence.  At  Madras,  meanwhile,  Whitehill  and  the  Select  Committee 
could  find  no  prospect  of  successfully  carrying  on  the  war  but  in 
obtaining  help  at  the  earliest  moment  from  Bengal.  The  news  reached 
that  presidency  on  23  September.  Hastings  rose  to  the  occasion.  On 
13  October  the  commander-in-chief,  Coote,  sailed  to  assume  the 
command,  with  nearly  600  Europeans  and  fifteen  lakhs  of  rupees; 
a  considerable  body  of  sepoys  set  out  overland;  and  orders  were 
issued  for  the  suspension  of  the  governor,  Whitehill,  on  the  ground 
of  disobedience  to  the  orders  of  the  Supreme  Government  in  the 
matter  of  Guntoor.  The  monsoon  months  were  occupied  in  putting 
these  orders  into  execution  and  preparing  to  take  the  field,  and  at 
last  on  17  January,  1781,  Coote  marched  from  St  Thomas  Mount. 

The  campaign  which  followed  closely  resembled  that  of  Joseph 
Smith  in  the  First  Mysore  War.  Coote  lacked  cavalry  to  meet  that 
of  the  enemy;  he  lacked  transport,  partly  owing  to  the  lack  of  pre- 
parations before  war  broke  out,  partly  owing  to  the  systematic 
ravaging  of  the  country  by  Hyder;  and  his  movements  were  further 
hampered  by  a  great  train  of  artillery,  which  he  probably  needed  to 
keep  the  enemy  horse  at  a  respectful  distance,  and  by  enormous 
hordes  of  camp-followers,  whom  he  would  not  take  adequate  measures 
to  reduce.  In  these  circumstances,  due  partly  to  the  inefficient 
government  which  had  been  in  control,  partly  to  the  defects  of  the 
military  system  which  had  grown  up,  and  partly  to  the  vigorous 
conduct  of  his  adversary,  Coote  never  succeeded  in  commanding  a 
greater  extent  of  territory  than  was  covered  by  his  guns.  He  won  a 
considerable  tactical  victory  at  Porto  Novo  (i  July,  1781),  where 
Hyder  committed  himself  more  closely  to  action  than  he  ventured  to 
do  again;  and  at  Polilur,  the  scene  of  Baillie's  destruction  (7  August), 


SUFFREN  285 

and  Sholinghur  (27  September)  he  drove  the  enemy  from  the  field 
of  battle;  but  although  these  successes  restored  the  English  confidence 
in  themselves  and  their  leader,  such  a  war  of  attrition  would  exhaust 
them  sooner  than  the  enemy;  and  neither  in  this  year  nor  in  1782 
did  Coote  make  the  least  progress  towards  driving  Hyder  out  of  the 
nawab's  possessions,  while  the  English  resources  and  finances  steadily 
decayed. 

Meanwhile  a  French  squadron  had  appeared  in  the  Indian  waters, 
under  the  command  of  a  leader  of  transcendent  abilities.  Early  in 
1782  Suffren,  who  had  succeeded  to  the  command  of  the  French 
squadron  by  the  death  of  d'Orves,  announced  his  arrival  by  the 
capture  of  grain  vessels  bound  for  Madras  from  the  northward. 
At  this  time  the  English  men-of-war  were  under  the  command  of 
Sir  Edward  Hughes,  a  stout  fighter,  but  without  the  spark  of  genius. 
In  the  previous  year  he  had  actively  co-operated  in  the  capture  of 
Negapatam  from  the  Dutch,  and  had  then  sailed  to  Ceylon,  where 
he  had  taken  Trinkomali.  He  had  under  his  command  nine  ships 
of  the  line,  of  which  six  had  been  in  the  East  for  some  time,  with  the 
result  that  their  bottoms  were  foul  and  their  crews  depleted.  Against 
them  Suffren  could  place  twelve  ships  in  the  line.  In  the  course  of 
1 782  four  actions  took  place  between  the  two  squadrons — 1 7  February, 
1 1  April,  5  July,  and  3  September.  From  the  first  the  English  began 
to  get  rather  the  worst  of  it,  in  consequence  of  the  superior  numbers 
and  superior  tactical  skill  of  the  French  leader.  Twice  he  succeeded 
in  bringing  the  greater  part  of  his  squadron  to  bear  on  a  small  part 
of  ours,  but  on  the  whole  the  English  held  their  own  by  a  stubborn 
resistance  against  superior  concentrations.  In  February  the  French 
landed  some  2000  men  under  the  command  of  Du  Chemin;  but 
luckily  he  proved  not  nearly  so  competent  a  leader  as  Suffren,  and 
his  junction  with  Hyder  led  to  no  change  in  the  military  situation. 
On  31  August  Trinkomali  surrendered  to  Suffren,  Hughes  having 
failed  to  refit  himself  in  time  to  relieve  it. 

On  the  whole  the  campaign  against  Hyder  in  the  Carnatic  seems 
to  have  been  conceived  on  false  lines.  The  easiest  way  to  drive  him 
out  was  not  to  accept  battle  in  the  nawab's  territory  but  to  carry  the 
war  into  the  enemy's  dominions,  which  lay  exposed  to  attack  from 
the  sea  all  along  the  Malabar  Coast.  Then  he  would  have  been  obliged 
to  decide  whether  to  ravage  his  own  country  01  to  allow  the  enemy 
to  make  war  in  it  at  ease.  In  either  case  he  would  early  have  become 
disgusted  with  a  war  carried  on  to  his  own  evident  detriment.  This 
was  self-evident,  and,  as  soon  as  Bombay  had  been  relieved  by  the 
progress  of  Hastings's  negotiations  from  the  pressure  of  the  Maratha 
War,  the  Supreme  Government  urged  upon  that  presidency  the 
necessity  of  taking  measures  for  an  expedition  against  Hyder's 
western  provinces.1  The  Madras  Government  had  constantly  urged 

1  Bengal  to  Madras,  16  May,  op.  Madras  Mil.  Consultations,  5  June,  1782,  p.  1710. 


286  THE  CARNATIC,  1761-^84 

the  same  point,  much  to  Coote's  indignation,  who  thought  that  the 
principal  forces  should  be  concentrated  in  the  Carnatic  under  his 
own  command.1  However,  a  body  of  reinforcements  from  Europe 
had  been  landed  at  Calicut,  and  the  royal  officer  in  command,  Colonel 
Humberstone,  had  assumed  command  of  the  Bombay  troops  there 
and  moved  inland,  a  threat  which  had  compelled  Hyder  to  send  his 
son  Tipu  with  a  part  of  his  army  to  repulse  the  invaders.  Humber- 
stone had  been  too  weak  to  do  more  than  make  a  demonstration  and 
had  had  to  fall  back  before  Tipu's  advance;  but  in  the  beginning  of 
1783  the  Bombay  Government  equipped  an  expedition,  under  the 
command  of  one  of  its  own  officers,  Brigadier  Mathews,  to  attack 
Mangalore  and  the  province  of  Bednur.  His  success  was  unexpectedly 
rapid.  Mangalore  was  carried,  the  passage  up  the  ghats  was  forced 
with  ease;  and  the  capital  of  the  province  surrendered  almost  at  once. 
But  this  success  was  due  rather  to  the  weakness  of  the  enemy  than 
to  the  skill  of  the  English.  The  Mysorean  commander,  Aiyaz  Khan, 
was  disaffected  to  Tipu,  who  had  then  just  succeeded  his  father,  and 
surrendered  the  capital  of  the  province,  Bednur,  on  condition  of 
retaining  the  management  of  the  country  under  the  new  masters. 
But  these  swift  successes  were  quickly  followed  by  complete  over- 
throw. Mathews  scattered  his  scanty  forces  in  detachments  all  over 
the  country,  and  neglected  to  concentrate  them  or  secure  his  com- 
munications with  the  coast  on  the  news  of  Tipu's  approach.  Then, 
too,  the  army  had  been  distracted  by  quarrels  over  the  Bednur  prize- 
money,  and  disputes  between  the  king's  and  the  Company's  officers. 
So  that  when  Tipu  appeared,  as  he  speedily  did,  having  for  that 
purpose  withdrawn  most  of  his  troops  from  the  Carnatic,  he  was  able 
to  re-establish  his  power  as  quickly  as  he  had  lost  it.  Mathews  and 
all  his  men  fell  into  the  enemy's  hands;  and  small  garrisons  in  the 
sea-ports  of  Mangalore  and  Honawar  alone  remained  to  keep  up  the 
struggle. 

In  the  autumn  of  1782  Coote  had  returned  to  Calcutta,  leaving 
the  command  with  Stuart,  the  officer  who  had  played  so  dubious  a 
part  in  the  Pigot  business  of  1776.  Like  Munro  he  had  lost  all  the 
talent  he  had  ever  had;  and  he  had,  moreover,  lost  a  leg  at  the  second 
battle  of  Polilur,  so  that  he  was  not  only  unenterprising  but  also 
immobile.  During  the  monsoon  of  1782  he  failed  to  get  the  army 
ready  to  take  the  field  again;  so  that  when  Hyder  died  early  in 
December,  he  was  unable  to  take  advantage  of  the  three  weeks  that 
elapsed  between  Hyder's  death  and  Tipu's  arrival  from  the  Malabar 
Coast  where  he  had  been  opposing  Humberstone.  He  did  not 
actually  take  the  field  until  the  short  successes  of  Mathews  had  sum- 
moned Tipu  with  the  bulk  of  his  army  to  the  other  side  of  India. 
This  was  the  first  piece  of  good  fortune  that  had  befallen  the  English 
since  the  beginning  of  the  war.  It  was  lucky  that  Stuart  did  not  have 

1  Coote  to  Madras,  21  June,  ap.  Madras  Mil.  Consultations  of  same  date,  1782,  p.  1893. 


BUSSY'S  EXPEDITION  287 

* 

to  encounter  Hyder  in  the  field;  it  was  supremely  lucky  that  he  did 
not  have  to  encounter  Hyder  reinforced  with  the  large  body  of 
French  troops  under  Bussy  who  arrived  on  the  coast  in  the  month 
of  April,  only  to  find  that  their  expected  allies  were  elsewhere.  In 
these  circumstances  Bussy  established  himself  at  Cuddalore.  In  May 
Stuart  reluctantly  marched  south  to  oppose  him.  After  a  march  of 
extraordinary  languor  he  arrived  before  Cuddalore  on  8  June.  On 
the  1 3th  followed  a  stubborn  action  in  which  the  English  secured 
only  a  very  incomplete  success.  Stuart's  movement  had  been  covered 
by  Hughes's  squadron ;  but  on  the  2Oth  in  action  against  Suffren  the 
latter  was  so  severely  handled  that  he  had  to  abandon  his  position 
and  put  back  to  Madras  to  refit.  On  the  25th  Bussy  attacked  Stuart's 
position.  The  French  were  repulsed;  but  Hughes's  retreat  had  placed 
the  English  army  in  a  most  dangerous  situation.  Stuart  at  this  crisis 
wrote  that  he  could  not  answer  for  the  consequences  if  Hughes  had 
really  gone  to  Madras.1  But  luck  still  was  on  the  side  of  the  English. 
On  the  23rd  Benfield  received  news  by  a  special  messenger  that  the 
French  and  English  had  signed  the  preliminaries  of  peace.  The  news 
was  communicated  at  once  to  Bussy  who  agreed  to  a  suspension  of 
arms,  and  the  English  army  was  saved. 

The  Madras  army  was  thus  set  free  to  renew  the  struggle  with 
Tipu;  it  had  been  already  decided  to  try  a  complete  change  of 
operations  and  commanders;  Colonel  Fullarton,  though  far  from 
being  the  next  senior  officer  to  Stuart,  was  selected  to  attack  the 
southern  possessions  of  Mysore.  A  beginning  had  already  been  made 
earlier  in  the  year  by  the  capture  of  Dindigul.  On  i  June,  Fullarton 
captured  Dharapuram,  and  was  preparing  for  a  further  advance  when 
he  received  orders  to  suspend  operations  until  the  issue  of  peace 
proposals  to  Tipu  should  be  known. 

Ever  since  1781,  when  Lord  Macartney  arrived  as  governor  of 
Madras,  in  succession  to  a  series  of  Company's  servants  who  had 
clearly  fallen  short  of  the  demands  of  their  position,  the  Madras 
Council  had  eagerly  desired  the  conclusion  of  peace.  In  September, 
1781,  Macartney,  in  conjunction  with  Coote,  Hughes  and  John 
Macpherson,  who  was  passing  through  Madras  on  his  way  to  take  his 
seat  in  the  council  of  the  governor-general,  took  it  on  themselves  to 
address  the  Maratha  ministry  at  Poona,  assuring  it  of  the  sincerity 
of  the  English  proposals  for  an  accommodation.2  This  measure 
Hastings  had  naturally  and  bitterly  resented.  Later  on  the  Madras 
authorities  had  repeatedly  asked  the  Bengal  Government  for  powers 
to  negotiate  a  peace  with  Hyder ;  a  request  which  Hastings  had  evaded, 
preferring  to  entrust  the  negotiations  to  Coote.  Coote's  discussions, 

1  Stuart  to  Madras,  28  June,  at.  Madras  Mil.  Consultations,  4  July,  1783,  p.  2903. 

1  Letter  of  11  September,  1781,  ap.  Madras  Mil.  Consultations,  30  January,  1782, 
p.  243.  Cf.  Macartney  to  the  Chairs,  31  July,  1781  (I.O.,  Home  Miscellaneous,  246,  p.  16) 
and  Macartney,  Coote  and  Macpherson  to  Hastings,  u  September,  1781  (Brit.  Mus. 
Add.  MSS,  22454,  f-  25). 


288  THE  CARNATIC,  1761-84 

* 

however,  had  come  to  nothing;  so  also  did  informal  overtures  which 
were  made  to  Tipu  by  Macartney,  without  sanction  from  Bengal, 
early  in  1783.  But  the  preliminaries  concluded  in  Europe  contained 
stipulations  (Article  xvi)  to  the  effect  that  all  allies  should  be  invited 
to  accede  to  the  present  pacification.  On  the  strength  of  this, 
Macartney  reopened  conversations  with  Tipu,  thinking  it  likely  that 
the  loss  of  his  French  allies,  following  on  the  peace  which  Hastings 
had  made  with  the  Marathas,  would  permit  of  effective  negotiations; 
and  on  applying  to  Bengal,  he  received  a  guarded  permission,  not 
to  enter  into  a  separate  treaty  with  Tipu,  but  to  negotiate  for  a 
cessation  of  hostilities  and  a  release  of  prisoners.  In  other  words, 
Hastings  relied  on  the  provisions  of  the  Treaty  of  Salbai  to  secure 
a  settlement.  Macartney,  however,  was  bent  on  making  peace, 
being  confident  that  that  would  serve  the  interests  of  the  Com- 
pany better  than  waiting  indefinitely  for  Sindhia  to  take  action  against 
Tipu.  He  dispatched  commissioners  to  confer  with  Tipu,  who  was 
still  lying  before  Mangalore,  The  commandant  of  the  English 
garrison,  Colonel  Campbell,  had  accepted  very  disadvantageous 
terms  for  a  suspension  of  hostilities.  He  had  agreed  for  instance  to 
receive  no  supplies  of  victuals  by  sea — the  only  way  by  which  he  could 
possibly  receive  supplies.1  Each  occasion  on  which  the  Company's 
vessels  revictualled  him  occasioned  therefore  sharp  disputes;  and 
Tipu  seems  to  have  considered  himself  warranted  by  his  acquiescence 
in  continuing  work  on  his  entrenchments,  which  was  also  a  con- 
travention of  the  suspension  of  arms.  At  last  on  29  January,  1784, 
Campbell  preferred  giving  up  the  place  to  continuing  longer  to  hold 
it,  being  driven  to  this  by  the  rapidity  with  which  the  garrison  was 
falling  sick.  The  situation  before  Mangalore  had  produced  more  than 
one  report  that  hostilities  had  broken  out  again.  As  a  result,  in 
December,  1783,  Brigadier  Macleod  had  seized  Kannanur,  be- 
longing not  indeed  to  Tipu  but  to  one  of  his  allies ;  while  Fullarton 
also  had  renewed  his  attack  on  the  southern  possessions  of  Tipu, 
capturing  Palghaut  and  Coimbatore  before  his  movements  could  be 
countermanded  by  the  deputies  on  their  way  to  Mangalore. 

The  latter  reached  that  place  shortly  after  it  had  surrendered  and 
immediately  opened  negotiations.  On  7  March  terms  were  agreed 
to  which  completely  ignored  the  Treaty  of  Salbai.  However,  they 
were  not  unreasonable.  Both  parties  were  to  give  up  their  conquests; 
all  prisoners  were  to  be  released ;  certain  specified  allies  were  included. 
In  short,  much  the  same  terms  were  obtained  from  Tipu  as  Hastings 
had  managed  to  get  from  the  Marathas.  But  men's  minds  were 
irritable  with  defeat  and  the  treaty  became  the  object  of  a,  host  of 
legends.  Tipu  was  said  to  have  treated  the  deputies  with  unparalleled 
indignity,  erecting  a  gallows  by  their  encampment,  and  keeping  them 
in  such  a  state  of  panic  that  they  contemplated  flight  to  the  English 

1  Articles  dated  2  August,  ap.  Madras  Mil.  Consultations,  27  September,  1783,  p.  4232. 


MACARTNEY'S  POLICY  289 

ships  lying  off  the  town.  There  is  reason  to  think  that  these  stories  had 
their  origin  in  the  excitable  imagination  of  Brigadier  Macleod.  They 
seem  to  have  passed  to  Calcutta  by  way  of  Bombay,  along  with 
extraordinary  versions  of  the  ill-treatment  accorded  to  the  prisoners 
by  Tipu.  The  facts  seem  to  have  been  that  the  commissioners  of  their 
own  accord  pitched  their  tents  near  a  gallows  which  had  been  set 
up  before  the  surrender  of  Mangalore  for  the  execution  of  one  of 
Tipu's  officers  who  had  entered  into  communication  with  the  English 
garrison;  and  that,  while  the  prisoners  were  not  well  treated,  there 
are  no  grounds  for  believing  that  any  of  them  were  deliberately 
murdered.  In  one  respect  Tipu  certainly  violated  the  treaty.  He  did 
not  release  all  the  prisoners  in  his  hands.  This  was  made  a  very  serious 
charge  against  Macartney.  But  we  must  remember  that  in  1792, 
after  a  successful  war,  Cornwallis  did  not  succeed  in  getting  Tipu  to 
release  all  the  prisoners  whom  he  had  taken;  and  it  is  clearly  unfair 
to  condemn  Macartney  for  failing  to  do  what  Cornwallis  himself  after 
a  successful  war  could  not  effect.  The  probability  is  that  in  each  case 
the  persons  detained  were  those  who  had  submitted  to  circumcision 
and  accepted  Tipu's  service;  and  who,  though  kept  under  a  guard, 
were  considered  by  Tipu  as  on  a  different  footing  from  those  who 
had  consistently  rejected  his  offers  and  defied  his  threats.  These 
matters,  along  with  the  fact  that  the  treaty  was  distinct  from,  and 
independent  of,  the  treaty  of  Salbai  induced  Hastings  to  condemn 
it  with  extraordinary  asperity,  and  to  move  Macartney's  suspension 
for  having  disobeyed  the  orders  of  the  Supreme  Government.  But 
he  can  hardly  have  judged  the  matter  with  an  unbiassed  mind.  The 
episode  of  the  treaty  came  at  the  end  of  a  long  series  of  disputes 
between  the  Bengal  and  Madras  Governments  in  which  Hastings 
displayed  something  less  than  the  serene  and  balanced  judgment  of 
which  at  one  time  he  had  given  such  striking  evidence. 

At  the  close  of  1 780  Lord  Macartney  had  been  appointed  governor 
of  Madras  at  the  moment  when  Has  tings' s  friends,  with  Laurence 
Sulivan  at  their  head,  had  contracted  a  short-lived  alliance  with  the 
ministry  under  North.  Macartney  was  therefore  pledged  to  the 
support  of  Hastings,  and  indeed  came  out  with  the  full  intention  of 
so  doing.  But  on  his  arrival  he  found  himself  unable  to  adopt  the 
measures  which  Hastings  had  recommended  to  the  southern  presi- 
dency. Hastings  had  urged  an  alliance  with  the  Dutch,  in  order 
to  obtain  from  them  a  force  of  European  infantry  in  return  for  the 
cession  of  the  district  of  Tinnevelly  by  the  nawab.  But  Macartney 
had  brought  out  with  him  orders  to  seize  the  Dutch  factories,  since 
the  United  Provinces  had  just  joined  the  French  and  the  Americans 
in  the  war  against  Great  Britain.  In  the  second  place  Hastings  had 
advised  the  cession  of  the  sarkars  to  the  Nizam  on  condition  of 
4  substantial  assistance  from  him  against  Hyder.  Macartney  had  no 
specific  orders  from  the  Company  on  this  head;  but  none  the  less  he 
cmv  19 


ago  THE  CARNATIC,  1761-54 

stoutly  refused  to  dismember  the  Company's  possessions;  he  urged 
that  such  a  cession  would  not  produce  effects  commensurate  with  the 
cost,  and  in  that  he  was  very  likely  right.  A  third  cause  of  difference 
between  the  two  was  fortuitous.  Hastings,  on  Macartney's  arrival, 
had  written  to  him  advising  that  the  raja  of  Tanjore  should  be 
required,  and  if  necessary  compelled,  to  contribute  his  share  to  the 
cost  of  the  war.  Macartney  was  in  agreement  with  this  view;  and 
forwarded  an  extract  from  Hastings'  letter  to  the  chairman  and 
deputy  chairman  of  the  Company  in  support  of  his  own  arguments. 
Unfortunately  the  letter  arrived  in  England  when  Sulivan  and 
Hastings's  friends  had  lost  control  of  the  directorate;  and  led  to  severe 
and  unmerited  reproaches  directed  against  Hastings  by  the  new 
chairs.  Hastings  accused  Macartney  of  having  betrayed  him  to  his 
enemies ;  and  does  not  seem  to  have  been  convinced  by  Macartney's 
temperate  and  candid  explanation.1  Gleig,  it  may  be  noted,  was 
mistaken  in  supposing  that  no  answer  was  returned  to  Hastings's 
letter  of  accusation.  Besides  these  occasions  of  difference  in  which 
Macartney  was  in  the  right  there  was  that  unfortunate  letter  to  the 
Marathas,  which  has  already  been  mentioned,  in  which  he  was 
decidedly  in  the  wrong.  The  result  was  a  strong  tendency  in  each  to 
suspect  and  question  the  opinions  of  the  other. 

At  the  same  time  Macartney  was  involved  in  disputes  with  Coote 
and  with  the  nawab.  In  sending  Coote  to  Madras  the  Bengal 
Government  had  invested  him  with  separate  and  independent  powers, 
as  the  Madras  Government  had  done  with  Clive,  in  not  dissimilar 
circumstances  in  1756.  Coote  interpreted  them  in  the  widest  possible 
sense,  neglecting  to  attend  the  meetings  of  the  Select  Committee  and 
declining  to  explain  his  plans  for  the  conduct  of  the  war,  while  he 
harassed  the  committee  with  ceaseless  complaints  regarding  the 
shortness  of  transport  and  supplies.  Both  sides  complained  to  Bengal; 
and  Bengal  preferred  to  support  Coote,  without  seriously  considering 
the  Madras  assertions  that  the  financial  management  of  the  army, 
as  distinguished  from  the  military  conduct  of  the  war,  was  wasteful 
and  extravagant.  Underlying  these  disputes  were  intrigues  in  which 
Paul  Benfield  took  a  considerable  part,  exasperating  Coote's  irritable 
mind  against  the  unfortunate  governor. 

From  the  first  the  resources  of  Madras  had  been  wholly  unequal  to 
the  maintenance  of  the  war.  Bengal  had  contributed  largely,  sending 
no  less  than  265  lakhs  of  rupees,  in  specie,  bills,  and  supplies,  in  the 
course  of  the  four  years  that  the  war  continued.  But  the  government 
had  frequently  and  loudly  declared  that  it  was  incumbent  on  the 
Madras  Government  to  do  everything  in  its  power  to  increase  its  own 
resources,  particularly  the  contributions  from  the  nawab's  revenues. 
But  that  spring  had  completely  dried  up.  Twenty  years  of  financial 

1  Macartney    to  Hastings,    10    May,    1783  (Brit.  Mus.  Add.  MSS,  22455,  f.  47 
verso). 


ASSIGNMENT  OF  REVENUES  291 

mismanagement  had  exhausted  the  nawab's  treasury,  never  very  full. 
In  the  crisis  which  resulted  from  Hyder's  invasion,  he  had  sought  to 
evade  payment  rather  than  to  provide  with  funds  the  only  power  that 
would  protect  him.  To  the  demands  of  the  Madras  authorities  he  had 
returned  blank  refusals.    Foreseeing  that  this  course  could  not  be 
continued  indefinitely,  he  had  sent  a  mission  to  Calcutta  where  terms 
were  settled  between  him  and  the  Supreme  Government,  which 
proceeded  to  dispatch  to  Madras  a  special  agent,  chosen  with  singular 
lack  of  tact  from  among  the  Madras  covenanted  servants,  to  watch 
over  the  performance  of  the  treaty.  This  was  in  1781,  before  Macart- 
ney had  arrived.   In  so  doing  Hastings  and  his  council  had  clearly 
overstepped  the  limits  of  their  statutory  powers;  but  they  had  not 
doubted  their  power  of  coercing  the  Madras   Government  into 
obedience.   It  was  as  discredited  as  had  been  that  of  Drake  in  1 756 
But  Macartney's  arrival  had  changed  the  situation  altogether.    He 
soon  made  this  clear.   He  and  the  Select  Committee  declared  that 
they  could  not  acquiesce  in  the  appointment  of  an  agent  to  perform 
the  functions  with  which  they  were  specially  charged  by  the  Company. 
But  though  they  refused  to  recognise  the  agent  whom  Hastings  had 
appointed,  they  did  adopt  the  Bengal  treaty  as  the  basis  of  a  new 
agreement  which  Macartney  proceeded  to  negotiate  with  the  nawab. 
On  2  December,  1781,  the  latter  executed  an  assignment  of  his 
revenues  to  Macartney  in  person  for  a  fixed  term  of  five  years,  re- 
serving to  his  own  use  one-fifth  of  what  amounts  should  be  collected. 
This  'agreement  was  formally  approved  by  the  Bengal  Government. 
But  it  soon  was  evident  that  it  was  no  more  genuine  than  had  been 
all  the  previous  promises  of  the  durbar.  The  revenues  which  were 
collected  were  not  paid  in  to  the  Company,  but  secretly  transmitted 
to  the  nawab.  When  it  was  proposed  to  appoint  inspectors  to  watch 
over  the  revenue  officials,  the  nawab  refused  to  grant  them  the 
necessary  powers;  when  it  was  proposed  to  lease  out  the  country  to 
renters,  the  nawab  refused  to  sign  the  documents  appointing  them. 
In  these  circumstances  Macartney  resolved  no  longer  to  give  way, 
but  to  exercise  himself  the  power  of  appointing  the  renters.   In  this 
conduct  he  was  confirmed  by  a  letter  from  Bengal,  written  indeed 
without  knowledge  of  the  crisis  that  had  arisen  at  Madras,  but  strongly 
and  pointedly  urging  the  absolute  necessity  of  making  the  assignment 
a  reality  in  order  that  all  the  resources  of  the  country  might  be 
made  available  for  the  conduct  of  the  war.   In  this  course  Macartney 
persevered  with  considerable  success.   The  Committee  of  Assigned 
Revenue,  which  he  appointed  to  manage  the  business,  introduced 
great  reforms  into  the  nawab's  disordered  administration.  The  gross 
revenue  levied  from  the  cultivators  was  reduced  from  14-4  to  13-8 
lakhs  of  pagodas  in  the  six  districts  which  remained  under  effective 
control,  while  at  the  same  time  by  the  abolition  of  a  host  of  needless 
charges  the  net  revenue  was  increased  from  six  to  twelve  lakhs,  and 

19-2 


292  THE  CARNATIC,  1761-84 

the  total  collections  of  assigned  revenue  amounted  between  the  end 
of  1781  and  September,  1784,  to  over  thirty-three  lakhs  of  pagodas, 
or  over  one  hundred  lakhs  of  rupees,  not  a  fanam  of  which  would 
have  been  secured  for  the  Company's  use  but  for  Macartney's  in- 
sistence on  making  the  assignment  a  reality  instead  of  a  mere  bit  of 
window-dressing. 

The  nawab,  however,  was  untiring  in  his  endeavours  to  secure  the 
abolition  of  the  grant  which  he  had  made  but  had  not  intended  to 
make  effectual.    First  he  offered  to  Coote  the  management  of  the 
revenues  which  he  had  already  granted  to  Macartney;  and  then  he 
sent  another  mission  to  Bengal  to  induce  the  government  to  cancel 
a  measure  of  which  it  had  repeatedly  and  formally  approved.  At 
first  the  mission  met  with  no  success.  But  in  the  autumn  of  1782,  just 
about  the  time  of  the  return  of  Coote,  Hastings  changed  his  attitude. 
The  reasons  remain  obscure,  but  were  almost  certainly  connected 
with  the  necessity  under  which  he  thought  he  lay  of  preserving 
the  support  of  Benfield's  friends  in  London.    At  the  moment  he, 
Macpherson,  and  Coote  were  united  on  the  need  of  annulling  the 
assignment.   But  when  the  matter  came  up  for  final  decision  in  the 
early  part  of  1 783,  though  it  was  resolved  that  the  assignment  should 
be  annulled,  yet,  when  Hastings  proposed  to  give  Coote  provisional 
powers  to  suspend  Macartney  in  case  he  failed  to  obey  ty  orders  of 
Bengal,  he  failed  altogether  to  carry  the  council  with  him.  He  and 
Coote  alone  voted  for  the  proposal;  so  that  when  Coote  at  last  did 
return  to  Madras,  he  lacked  the  orders  to  coerce  Madras  into 
obedience  to  most  unpalatable  resolutions.  That  government,  how- 
ever, being  privately  informed  of  Hastings's  intentions,  had  resolved 
no  longer  to  recognise  the  special  powers  which  Coote  had  formerly 
enjoyed,  nor  to  render  up  the  assignment  until  the  orders  of  the  court 
of  directors  should  be  received.   Coote  died  immediately  on  Banding 
at  Madras,  otherwise  a  fierce  struggle  must  have  resulted  from  the 
decisions  of  the  Bengal  and  Madras  Governments  respectively.   As 
it  was  the  matter  did  not  pass  beyond  the  stage  of  controversy,  the 
Madras  Government  obstinately  reftising  to  obey  the  orders  of  Bengal 
until  in  1785  the  matter  was  settled  by  orders  from  the  Company 
requiring  the  assignment  immediately  to  be  cancelled.    On  this 
Macartney  at  once  resigned  and  went  home  rather  than  carry  out 
a  policy  which  he  was  convinced,  and  rightly,  could  lead  to  nothing 
except  misgovernment.1 

These  disputes  with  the  Bengal  Government  did  not  exhaust  the 
difficulties  which  Macartney  had  to  encounter.  His  controversy  with 
the  commander-in-chief  continued  after  Coote's  departure  to  Bengal 
and  even  after  Coote's  death.  The  military  talents  of  Stuart,  Coote's 
successor,  were  too  slender  in  any  way  to  warrant  the  continuance  of 

1  Dodwell,  "Hastings  and  the  Assignment  of  the  Carnatic",  English  Historical  Review, 
- 


THE  COMMAND  OF  THE  ARMY  293 

the  special  powers  which  the  commander-in-chief  had  been  exercising; 
and  the  Select  Committee  assumed  the  control  of  military  affairs. 
Stuart,  however,  paid  it  but  an  unwilling  obedience  and  in  some 
points  departed  from  its  actual  instructions.  As  soon  as  news  of  peace 
with  France  was  received,  he  was  therefore  summoned  to  hand  over 
the  command  of  the  army  and  return  to  Madras.  There  the  dispute 
developed  with  vigour  and  threatened  to  merge  itself  with  the  dispute 
over  the  assignment.  There  appeared  that  same  ominous  conjunction, 
the  nawab,  Benfield  and  Stuart,  which  had  produced  the  arrest  of 
Pigot  just  seven  years  before.  Macartney  arrested  Stuart,  and  sent 
him  off  to  England,  while  Benfield  was  ordered  down  to  a  small 
station  at  a  considerable  distance  from  the  presidency,  where  he 
could  do  no  harm.  It  is  impossible  to  say  with  certainty  to  what 
extent  Macartney  was  justified  in  his  belief  of  impending  violence. 
But  there  were  many  suspicious  circumstances,  and  he  cannot  be 
blamed  for  keeping  on  the  safe  side.  Unluckily  the  matter  involved 
him  in  further  disputes  with  the  military  authorities.  Coote  had  been 
commander-in-chief  of  the  king's  troops  in  India  as  well  as  of  the 
Company's  and  had  been  succeeded  in  this  dual  office  by  Stuart. 
When  the  latter  was  dismissed  in  1783  no  difficulty  arose  over  the 
command  of  the  Company's  forces,  but  the  command  of  the  king's 
wets  a  very  different  question.  The  officer  next  in  succession  was  Sir 
John  Burgoyne,  who  honestly,  and,  in  the  circumstances,  justly, 
doubted  Macartney's  power  of  removing  the  commander  of  the  king's 
troops.  The  two  men  failed  to  reach  any  agreement  on  the  point; 
and  the  outcome  was  that  Macartney  and  the  Select  Committee 
nominated  Colonel  Ross  Lang,  of  the  Company's  service,  to  the 
command-in-chief,  with  the  rank  of  lieutenant-general,  which  placed 
him  in  command  of  all  the  king's  general  officers  on  the  coast.  This 
was  a  measure  of  very  doubtful  prudence.  But  for  the  sober  conduct 
of  Burgoyne,  it  might  have  led  to  open  disorder.  At  first  all  the 
general  officers  withdrew  from  the  army,  directing  their  subordinates 
to  obey  the  orders  issued  by  Lang.  The  object  of  this  was  to  permit 
the  commands  of  government  to  be  obeyed  without  giving  up  the 
principles  of  the  service  which  were  regarded  as  sacrosanct.  But 
Macartney  instead  of  accepting  this  compromise  in  the  spirit  in  which 
it  was  offered  was  bent  on  triumph  at  any  price.  Burgoyne  was  placed 
in  arrest;  the  other  general  officers  were  struck  off  staff  allowances 
until  they  submitted.  In  the  early  part  of  his  struggles  with  the 
military  he  had  on  the  whole  been  in  the  right;  but  in  the  concluding 
part  of  his  contest,  with  the  king's  general  officers,  he  showed  much 
want  of  tact;  and  owed  his  success  to  the  public  spirit  of  his  adversaries 
rather  than  to  his  own  wisdom.  Finally  the  matter  was  regulated  by 
a  decision  from  home  that  in  future  king's  officers  holding  commands 
under  the  East  India  Company  should  receive  letters  of  service 
authorising  them  to  exercise  their  rank  only  so  long  as  they  continued 


294  THE  CARNATIC,  1761-84 

in  the  Company's  service,  so  that  dismissal  from  the  latter  auto- 
matically ended  their  authority  in  India. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  Macartney  was  placed  in  a  position 
of  extraordinary  difficulty  owing  to  the  lack  of  definition  of  powers 
as  between  the  Bengal  and  Madras  Governments,  and  between  the 
civil  government  and  the  military  commanders.  The  first  was  due  to 
the  neglects  of  those  who  drew  the  Regulating  Act;  the  second  in 
part  to  the  anomalous  position  of  the  king's  officers  in  India,  in  part 
to  the  decision  of  Hastings  in  the  crisis  of  1 780  to  free  Coote  from 
dependence  on  the  civil  government  at  Madras.  Only  a  man  of 
very  extraordinary  gifts  could  have  overcome  such  difficulties  with 
complete  success. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

CHAIT  SINGH,  THE  BEGAMS  OF  OUDH 
AND  FAIZULLA  KHAN 

A  HE  Company's  exchequer  had  been  seriously  drained  by  the 
Maratha  War,  and  the  outbreak  of  hostilities  with  France  in  1778 
warned  Hastings  that  he  must  consider  new  methods  of  raising  money. 

He  had  recourse  to  the  rather  harsh  and  discreditable  policy  which 
brought  upon  him  the  impeachment  and  which,  when  every  possible 
excuse  has  been  made  for  it,  remains  the  one  serious  stain  on  his 
administration.  Was  there  no  other  alternative?  Would  it  not  have 
been  possible  to  raise  a  loan  as  would  have  been  done  in  modern 
times?  The  answer  is  that  Hastings  was  very  unwilling  to  contract 
another  bonded  debt,  for  he  had  received  much  credit  with  the 
directors  for  having  paid  off  that  which  he  found  existing  when  he 
came  to  India.  He  decided  that  he  was  justified  in  demanding  from 
Chait  Singh,  the  raja  of  Benares,  a  special  sum  of  over  £50,000  in 
addition  to  his  regular  tribute,  or  rent,  of  £225,000.  The  council 
agreed,  and  were  therefore  equally  responsible  with  Hastings  for  the 
exaction.  Francis,  it  is  true,  was  inclined  to  demur  and  suggested — 
a  suggestion  which  was  not  accepted — that  Chait  Singh  should  be 
assured  at  the  same  time  that  the  demand  was  entirely  exceptional, 
but  in  the  end  he  acquiesced  in  Hastings's  policy.  The  same  demand 
was  made  in  the  two  following  years.  Chait  Singh  naturally,  following 
the  invariable  practice  in  the  East,  protested  against  these  exactions, 
but  after  slight  delay  he  paid  the  money. 

The  British  methods  of  enforcing  payment  were  certainly  harsh. 
In  1779  Chait  Singh  asked  that  the  payment  should  be  limited  to 
that  year,  and  his  "contumacy"  was  punished  by  an  order  to  pay 
the  whole  in  one  sum  instead  of  in  instalments.  When  again  he  asked 
for  an  indulgence  of  six  or  seven  months,  he  was  told  that  if  he  failed 
to  meet  the  original  demand  he  would  be  treated  as  though  he  had 
refused  altogether.  He  urged  that  his  agreement  with  the  Company 
should  have  exempted  him  from  all  contributions  beyond  the  normal 
tribute.  Troops  were  then  ordered  to  march  into  his  territory,  and 
an  extra  charge  of  £2000  was  made  against  him  for  their  expenses. 

In  1780,  on  the  same  day  that  he  paid  the  last  instalment  of  the 
third  £50,000,  an  entirely  new  demand  was  made  upon  him  that  he 
should  provide  the  Company  with  2000  cavalry,  although  when  the 
Company  took  over  the  sovereignty  of  Benares  in  1775,  he  had  been 
merely  recommended  to  maintain  a  body  of  that  number  of  horse, 
and  was  told  that  there  would  be  "no  obligation  on  him  to  do  it".1 

1  Reports  from  Committee  of  the  House  of  Commons,  v,  489. 


296    CHAIT  SINGH,  OUDH  BEGAMS,  FAIZULLA  KHAN 

Ghait  Singh  replied  that  he  was  unable  to  spare  so  large  a  number* 
The  demand  was  then  reduced  to  1000.  He  mustered  500  horse  and 
500  infantry  and  sent  a  message  to  Hastings  that  these  troops  were 
ready  for  his  service.  Chait  Singh  declared  that  he  never  received  an 
answer  to  this  message,  a  statement  which  is  almost  certainly  accurate, 
for  Hastings  in  his  Narrative  of  the  Insurrection  practically  admits  it: 
"I  do  not  know  but  it  may  be  true.  He  had  received  positive  orders, 
and  those  had  been  repeated.  It  was  his  duty  to  obey  them,  not  to 
waste  my  time  with  letters  of  excuse".1 

Hastings  now  made  up  his  mind  to  inflict  upon  Chait  Singh  the 
immense  fine  of  half  a  million  sterling:  "I  was  resolved  to  draw  from 
his  guilt  the  means  of  relief  to  the  Company's  distress. . .  .In  a  word 
I  had  determined  to  make  him  pay  largely  for  his  pardon,  or  to  exact 
a  severe  vengeance  for  his  past  delinquency".2  Hastings  was  by  this 
time  entirely  his  own  master,  for  Wheler  was  the  only  councillor  left 
at  Calcutta.  An  arrangement  was  made  by  which  Hastings  himself 
was  to  go  to  Benares  and  settle  the  question  as  he  deemed  best,  while 
Wheler  was  to  remain  on  duty  in  Bengal.  The  governor-general  went 
northward  in  July.  Chait  Singh  met  him  at  Baksar  and  abjectly 
humbling  himself,  asked  for  pardon.  Hastings  refused  to  give  him 
any  answer  till  his  arrival  at  Benares.  There  he  again  refused  to  grant 
him  a  personal  interview  and  merely  transmitted  his  demand  in 
writing.  He  received  a  letter  from  the  raja,  which  to  an  impartial 
judge  would  seem  to  err,  if  at  all,  in  the  direction  of  servility,  but 
which  Hastings  described  as  "Not  only  unsatisfactory  in  substance 
but  offensive  in  style".3 

Though  Hastings  had  taken  with  him  only  a  weak  escort,  he  ordered 
Chait  Singh  to  be  put  under  arrest.  The  raja  humbly  submitted  but 
the  troops,  infuriated  by  the  indignity  placed  upon  their  ruler  in  his 
own  capital,  suddenly  rose  and  massacred  a  company  of  British  sepoys 
with  their  officers.  Chait  Singh,  fearing  for  the  consequences,  escaped 
in  the  turmoil  and  joined  his  rebellious  army.  Hastings  was  in  the 
most  imminent  danger  and  had  to  fly  for  safety  to  Chunar.  There  he 
showed  his  customary  coolness  and  presence  of  mind,  rallied  all 
available  forces  to  his  aid  and  drove  back  his  enemy.  Chait  Singh, 
maintaining  his  innocence  of  the  massacre,  was  hunted  over  the 
Ganges  and  fled  to  Gwalior.  His  dominions  were  sequestrated  and 
were  conferred  upon  a  nephew,  the  tribute  at  the  same  time  being 
raised  from  £225,000  to  £400,000.  The  council  at  Calcutta,  now 
consisting  of  Wheler  and  Macpherson,  were  obviously  embarrassed 
in  their  attempts  to  defend  and  ratify  these  proceedings  of  their  chief. 
They  felt  bound  to  ask  themselves  certain  questions,  first,  "Where 
were  the  Governor-General's  particular  instructions  for  such  extra- 

1  Warren  Hastings,  A  Narrative  of  the  Insurrection  which  happened  in  the  ^amindary  of  Benares, 
p.  27. 

,  p.  9.  8  Idem,  p.  19. 


CHAIT  SINGH'S  TENURE  297 

Ordinary  demands  upon  Chait  Singh?  "  To  this  they  replied  that " he 
was  fully  authorised  by  the  general  tenor  of  his  instructions"  and  that 
in  not  requiring  more  particular  injunctions  "  there  was  a  delicacy 
in  the  mode  he  preferred  and  it  imposed  a  greater  responsibility." 
Their  second  question  was,  "Why  was  Chait  Singh  put  in  arrest 
when  he  offered  to  make  every  concession?"  to  which  they  replied 
that  nothing  but  arrest  could  have  convinced  Chait  Singh  of  Hastings5  s 
determination.  Their  third  question  was  "Whether  there  was  not  a 
compact  between  him  and  the  Company  which  specified  that  he  was 
only  to  pay  them  a  certain  annual  tribute?"  They  agreed  that  this 
"involves  much  argument",  but  they  accept  Hastings's  own  version 
of  the  sanad  or  original  agreement  with  Chait  Singh  given  in  his 
Narrative.  They  admit  that  his  actions  "certainly  precipitated  the 
storm  from  the  cloud  in  which  it  had  gathered",  and  that  these 
acts  "judges  at  a  distance,  judges  unoppressed  with  the  actual 
embarrassments  of  this  government,  may  with  great  speciousness  of 
argument  condemn".1  Their  attitude  suggests  a  certain  uneasiness, 
together  with  an  obvious  desire  to  defend  the  governor-general.  We 
must  deal  here  very  shortly  with  certain  technical  and  legal  points 
which  were  discussed  at  immense  length  in  the  impeachment.  The 
first  is  whether  Chait  Singh  was  an  independent  raja  or  a  mere 
zamindar.  The  fact  was  that  though  he  undoubtedly  had  a  zamindari 
status,  he  had  a  very  real  measure  of  independence  and  quite  an 
exceptional  position.  Hastings  had  committed  himself  in  the  past  to 
the  view  that  he  was  far  more  than  a  zamindar,  but  this  question 
clearly  does  not  affect  the  main  point  at  issue,  which  is  whether  Chait 
Singh,  whatever  his  exact  degree  of  dependency  upon  the  British, 
was  treated  with  fairness  and  mercy.  In  any  case,  as  Grey  pointed 
out  in  the  impeachment,  Hastings's  defenders  were  impaling  them- 
selves upon  the  horns  of  a  dilemma,  if  they  maintained  that  Chait 
Singh  was  a  mere  zamindar  and  at  the  same  time  that  the  demand 
made  upon  him  was  justifiable.  In  that  case  the  exaction  ought  to 
have  taken  the  form  of  a  general  universal  tax  levied  on  all  the 
zamindars  under  the  Company's  rule;  but  it  was  directed  only  against 
Chait  Singh.  Hastings  had  admitted  that  "there  was  no  other  person 
in  the  situation  of  Chait  Singh",2  which  was  really  fatal  to  the  "mere 
zamindar"  theory.  The  second  question  is  whether  the  Company  had 
not  bound  itself  to  levy  no  contribution  upon  him  beyond  his  normal 
tribute  or  rent  of  £225,000.  It  would  take  too  long  to  discuss  this 
question  in  all  its  detail,  but  there  is  no  doubt  of  the  technical  point 
that  such  a  promise  had  been  definitely  given  in  1775.  A  later  grant, 
it  is  true,  of  1776,  contained  the  words  that  "all  former  sanads  had 
become  null  and  void",  and  it  was  upon  this  fact  that  Hastings  tried 
to  base  a  technical  defence;  but  it  is  clear  that  Chait  Singh  had 

1  Forrest,  Selections  from  the  State  Papers  in  the  Foreign  Department,  in,  830-2. 
*  Bond,  Speeches  in  ike  Trial  of  Warren  Hastings,  i,  328. 


298    CHAIT  SINGH,  OUDH  BEGAMS,  FAIZULLA  KHAN 

objected,  as  he  had  every  right  to  do,  to  the  insertion  of  these  words, 
and  that  the  grant  was  altered  accordingly.  Hastings  also  claimed 
that: 

it  [is]  a  right  inherent  in  every  government  to  impose  such  assessments  as  it  judges 
expedient  for  the  common  service  and  protection  of  all  its  subjects;  and  we  are 
not  precluded  from  it  by  any  agreement  subsisting  between  the  Raja  and  this 
government.1 

These  Asiatic  views  naturally  exposed  Hastings  to  the  attacks  of 
Burke. 

A  third  question  whether  Chait  Singh  was  in  rebellion  against  the 
Company  hardly  deserves  examination.  It  is  perfectly  certain  that, 
until  his  troops  broke  out  in  detestation  of  the  treatment  to  which 
their  ruler  was  subjected,  the  idea  of  rebellion  had  never  dawned 
upon  the  raja.  The  truth  is  that  Hastings  in  his  desperate  need  for 
supplies  allowed  himself  to  depart  from  his  usually  generous  and 
kindly  attitude  towards  Indian  powers.  Whatever  the  legal  rights 
and  wrongs  of  the  matter,  no  sane  person  can  deny  that  Hastings's 
treatment  of  the  unfortunate  raja  was  merciless  and  vindictive.  This 
can  be  illustrated  by  one  incident  which  occurred  in  the  year  1 780. 
In  that  year  after  the  demand  for  a  third  sum  of  £50,000  had  been 
made,  Chait  Singh  sending  a  confidential  agent  to  Calcutta  offered 
Hastings  a  present  of  about  £20,000.  Hastings  at  first  refused  it, 
which  was  of  course  the  only  proper  course  to  take,  for  the  sum  was 
meant  as  a  bribe  to  save  Chait  Singh  from  the  larger  amount  of 
£50,000.  If  it  was  right  to  levy  the  latter  sum,  it  was  unquestionably 
most  improper  to  receive  the  former.  But  Hastings  after  a  few  days, 
being  in  serious  need  of  money  to  equip  an  expedition  against  Sindhia, 
accepted  the  money.  We  need  not  here  consider  the  unconstitutional 
nature  of  his  act  in  taking  such  sums  without  the  knowledge  of  his 
council,  the  difficulties  in  which  he  involved  himself  by  representing 
the  money  as  a  gift  from  his  private  estate  or  the  unfortunate  view  of 
money  transactions  which  the  whole  affair  implies ;  but  it  is  difficult 
to  understand  how  any  man  of  ordinary  feeling  and  consideration 
for  his  fellow-creatures  could  accept  the  proffered  gift  of  £20,000 
and  then  immediately  exact  the  larger  sum  of  £50,000,  confront  his 
suppliant  with  a  further  demand  for  troops,  and,  on  the  ground  that 
the  demand  was  not  met,  proceed  to  levy  a  fine  of  £500,000.  There 
seems  no  doubt,  as  Sir  Alfred  Lyall  points  out  and  as  Hastings'  own 
language  shows,  that  the  governor-general  had  never  quite  forgiven 
Chait  Singh  for  having  in  the  crisis  of  1777  sent  an  emissary  to  make 
favour  with  Clavering. 

Quite  apart  from  the  morality  of  the  transaction,  Hastings  lies  open 
to  criticism  in  regard  to  the  policy  of  it.  He  has  been  justified,  after 
all  other  defences  have  been  surrendered,  on  the  ground  that  the 

1  Reports  from  Committees  of  the  House  of  Commons,  v,  463. 


CONDITION  OF  BENARES  299 

political  situation  was  so  serious  as  to  justify  any  means  of  obtaining 
money.  The  answer  to  this  is  that  he  obtained  none,  and,  what  is 
more,  placed  his  own  valuable  life  in  the  utmost  peril.  By  his  im- 
prudent action  in  arresting  Chait  Singh  he  was  responsible  for  the 
uprising  of  the  people  of  Benares;  the  raja  escaped  with  part  of  his 
wealth — the  amount  he  took  with  him  was  in  all  probability  grossly 
exaggerated — and  the  rest  of  it  amounting  to  twenty-three  lakhs  of 
rupees  was  seized  by  the  troops  atBijaigarh  who  promptly  proceeded  to 
divide  it  up  amongst  themselves.  This  was  largely  due  to  an  indiscreet 
letter  of  Hastings  himself  which  encouraged  the  army  to  claim  the  prize 
money.  The  immediate  result  therefore  on  the  financial  side  was  that 
the  Company  incurred  the  expense  of  the  military  operations  that 
ensued.  For  the  moment  they  got  nothing,  and  it  was  an  immediate 
subvention  that  was  required.  Hastings  afterwards  boasted,  "I  lost 
the  zemindari  with  the  rent  of  22  lakhs;  I  recovered  it  with  a  revenue 
of  40". x  But  this  only  applied  of  course  to  the  future,  and  as  a  matter 
of  fact  for  a  long  time  the  augmented  revenue  (partly  owing  to  the 
simultaneous  occurrence  of  a  famine)  could  not  be  raised.  Two 
successive  ministers  of  finance  were  dismissed  because  they  failed  to 
produce  it.  All  the  evidence  shows  that  it  was  a  very  long  time  before 
Benares  recovered  from  the  heavy  exactions  made  upon  it.  Hastings, 
with  a  curious  detachment  which  often  prevented  him  from  seeing, 
or  at  any  rate  from  acknowledging  the  consequences  of  his  own  actions, 
himself  bears  witness  to  the  desolation  of  the  country  without 
apparently  the  least  apprehension  that  he  was  in  any  way  responsible 
for  it.  In  June,  1 784,  he  wrote  that  he  would  avoid  Benares  on  his  way 
back  to  Calcutta,  "for  I  underwent  the  persecution  of  mobs  of  com- 
plainants from  Buxar  to  Joosee  in  my  way  thither,  and  there  is  now  a 
little  mob  parading  even  at  my  gate  ",2  In  1 788  Lord  Cornwallis  sent 
Jonathan  Duncan  as  a  commissioner  to  report  on  the  condition  of 
Benares.  His  report  dealt  one  by  one  with  the  districts  of  the  pro- 
vince and  is  a  most  serious  indictment  of  the  treatment  meted  out  to 
Benares.  In  one  district  it  is  said  that  a  third  of  the  land  is  un- 
cultivated. In  another  for  about  twelve  or  fourteen  miles,  "  the  whole 
appeared  one  continual  waste  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach".  In  a 
third  in  a  stretch  of  about  twelve  miles  "not  above  twenty  fields  of 
cultivated  ground  are  to  be  seen:  all  the  rest  being  as  far  as  the  eye 
can  reach,... one  general  waste  of  long  grass".  The  report  adds 
significantly  that  this  falling  off  in  cultivation  is  said  to  have 
happened  in  the  course  of  a  few  years,  that  is,  since  the  late  raja's 
expulsion.3 

Hastings  having  failed,  as  we  have  seen,  to  obtain  any  money  from 
Chait  Singh  had  to  seek  for  another  source  of  supply.  The  nawab  of 
Oudh,  Asaf-ud-daula,  owed  the  Company  at  this  time,  for  arrears  of 

1  Glcig,  op.  cit.  n,  421.  a  Idem,  m,  185. 

8  Minutes  of  the  Evidence  in  the  Trial  of  Warren  Hastings ,  pp.  261-2. 


300    CHAIT  SINGH,  OUDH  BEGAMS,  FAIZULLA  KHAN 

subsidy,  about  fifteen  lakhs  of  rupees,  and  he  professed  that  he  had 
no  means  of  discharging  the  debt.  His  mother  and  grandmother, 
the  begams  or  princesses  of  Oudh,  had  inherited  from  the  late  nawab 
large  jagirs  or  landed  estates  and  a  treasure  amounting  it  is  said  to 
about  £2,000,000.  The  nawab  had  long  desired  to  get  control  of  this 
wealth  and  claimed  that  it  was  unjustly  withheld  from  him.  The  will 
had  never  been  produced  and  it  was  claimed  that  by  the  Muham- 
madan  law  the  begams  had  no  right  to  inherit  so  large  a  proportion 
of  the  late  ruler's  property.  In  any  case,  it  was  said,  this  property 
was  really  part  of  the  wealth  of  the  sovereign  of  the  country  and  the 
first  claim  upon  it  ought  to  have  been  the  late  nawab's  debt  to  the 
Company.  All  this  was  no  doubt  largely  true,  but  in  1775  the  widow 
of  Shuja-ud-daula,  on  the  urgent  representation  of  the  British 
Resident,  agreed  to  pay  her  son  £300,000  in  addition  to  £250,000 
already  given  to  him,  on  condition  that  he  and  the  Company 
guaranteed  that  no  further  demand  should  ever  be  made  upon  her. 
The  guarantee  was  given.  In  1781  Asaf-ud-daula,  urged  on  thereto 
by  the  Resident,  as  is  clear  from  the  private  correspondence  between 
Hastings  and  Middleton,  asked  that  he  might  be  allowed  to  resume 
the  estates  and  seize  the  treasure  of  the  begams.  Hastings  in  sore 
need  of  money  agreed  to  the  proposal  and  withdrew  the  Company's 
protection  from  the  begams.  At  this  point  the  nawab,  who  had 
probably  never  desired  to  seize  the  treasure,  and  was  afraid,  as  the 
Resident  said,  of  the  "uncommonly  violent  temper  of  his  female 
relations",  began  to  hang  back,  and  had  henceforward  to  be  steadily 
driven  on  by  the  British  authorities  to  avail  himself  of  the  opportunity 
thus  given  him.  In  December,  1781,  Hastings  wrote  to  Middleton, 
"You  must  not  allow  any  negotiations  or  forbearance,  but  must 
prosecute  both  services  until  the  begams  are  at  the  entire  mercy  of 
the  nawab".1  In  January,  1782,  he  writes  to  say  that  he  had  hoped 
the  nawab  would  have  immediately  entered  upon  the  measures 
agreed  upon,  but  "after  having  long  waited,  with  much  impatience, 
for  this  effect,  I  was  apprised . . .  that  the  nawab,  from  what  cause 
I  know  not,  had  shown  a  great  reluctance  to  enter  on  this  business". 
He  tells  the  council  that  if  the  Resident  cannot  carry  out  the  i&- 
structions, "  I  would  myself  proceed  to  Lucknow,  and  afford  the  nawab 
any  personal  assistance  for  carrying  them  into  execution. .  .1  dread 
the  imbecility  and  irresolution,  which  too  much  prevail  in  the  nawab's 
councils".  Hastings  refers  to  "the  pressing  letters  which  I  have 
written  to  the  nawab,  the  strong  injunctions  which  I  have  repeated 
to  the  Resident".2  Middleton  replied  that  "the  temporising  and 
indecisive  conduct  of  the  nawab  seem  to  promise  an  issue  very 
*  different  from  that  expected  in  your  commands".3  Hastings,  how- 
ever, was  not  to  be  deterred  from  his  object  by  the  unwillingness  of 

1  Forrest,  Selections  from  the  State  Papers  in  the  Foreign  Department,  HI,  950. 

8  Report  from  Committees  of  the  House  of  Commons,  vi,  537.  •  Idem,  p.  538. 


THE  BEGAMS'  CASE  301 

the  nawab  or  the  shrinking  from  strong  measures  of  his  representative, 
and  in  February  we  find  him  writing  to  Scott  that  he  had  been 
compelled  to  rouse  Middleton's  activity  "by  letters  written  in  a  style 
of  the  greatest  severity".1 

Middleton,  not  having  satisfied  Hastings  as  sufficiently  energetic 
in  applying  coercion,  was  superseded  as  Resident  by  Bristow,  and 
Bristow  wrote  in  June : 

The  begam  complains  that  having  no  pension  or  jagir  she  now  subsists,  her 

family  and  herself,  with  the  greatest  difficulty Previous  to  my  arrival  her 

eunuchs  were  kept  for  many  months  in  confinement,  and  led  out  to  corporal 
punishment..  ..These  measures  failed,  and  you  have  before  you  the  opinions 
given  by  Major  Gilpin. .  .that  all  that  force  could  do  has  been  done.8 

The  above  quotations  are  perhaps  sufficient  to  meet  the  theory 
that  Hastings  was  not  responsible  for  what  his  agents  were  doing  at 
Faizabad  and  that  the  latter  were  merely  carrying  out  the  wishes  of 
the  nawab.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  nawab  was  a  reluctant  party 
throughout,  and  Hastings  asks  that  a  very  severe  rebuke  should  be 
given  to  his  minister  for  having  assumed  "a  very  unbecoming  tone  of 
refused,  reproach  and  resentment  in  opposition  to  measures  recom- 
mended by  me  and  even  to  acts  done  by  my  authority".8  As  to 
the  actual  treatment  inflicted  on  the  begam's  two  ministers,  they  were 
imprisoned  from  January  to  December,  1782,  and  they  were  for  a 
time  deprived  of  food  and  put  in  irons.  It  seems  doubtful  whether 
flogging  was  actually  inflicted. 

Finally  in  December,  1782,  they  paid  over  large  sums  of  money 
and  were  released.  The  British  officer  who  had  charge  of  them  wrote: 
"I  wish  you  had  been  present  at  the  enlargement  of  the  prisoners. 
The  quivering  lips,  the  tears  of  joy  stealing  down  the  poor  men's 
cheeks  was  a  scene  truly  affecting".4 

The  justification  put  forward  by  Hastings  for  tearing  up  the  Com- 
pany's guarantee  was  that  the  begams  had  supported  the  rising  of 
Chait  Singh  and  were  in  rebellion  against  the  British  Government. 
The  answer  to  this  appears  to  be  that,  even  if  it  were  entirely  true, 
the  proper  course  would  have  been  to  confront  the  begams  with  the 
charge,  produce  the  evidence  and  demand  proofs  of  innocence,  not 
to  cancel  the  treaty  and  cast  them  to  the  tender  mercies  of  the  nawab, 
or  rather  to  those  of  the  British  Resident. 

The  evidence  for  the  alleged  rebellion  is  conflicting.  It  depends 
upon  the  affidavits  taken  by  Sir  Elijah  Impey,  in  his  injudicious 
attempt  to  support  the  governor-general,  the  statements  of  Colonel 
Hannay  and  his  officers,  and  those  of  Wheler  and  others.The^ 
affidavits  are  worthless.  Sir  James  Stephen  points  out 

1  Gleig,  op.  cit.  ii,  449. 

*  Forrest,  Selections  from  the  State  Papers  in  the  Foreign 


8  Idem,  p.  982. 

4  Bond,  Speeches  in  the  Trial  of  Warren  Hastings,  i,  707. 


302    CHAIT  SINGH,  OUDH  BEGAMS,  FAIZULLA  KHAN 

of  them  mention  the  begams  and  then  only  on  hearsay,  and  if  they 
are  to  be  accepted  at  all,  most  of  them  equally  inculpate  the  nawab 
himself— an  awkward  fact  which  was  ignored  by  Hastings  and  the 
council.  The  evidence  of  Colonel  Hannay  can  only  be  accepted  with 
many  reservations ;  he  was  in  the  service  of  the  nawab  and  acquired 
a  large  fortune  by  questionable  means.  The  country  was  no  doubt 
in  a  state  of  disturbance  and  Hannay  and  his  colleagues  would  be 
interested,  as  Mill  suggests,  in  finding  for  these  disturbances  some 
cause  other  than  their  own  malversations.  The  third  piece  of  evidence, 
and  the  strongest,  is  the  statement  of  Wheler,  an  honest  man,  that 
he  believed  the  begams  were  really  stirring  up  a  rebellion.  Against 
the  theory  of  the  defection  of  the  begams,  is,  first  of  all,  the  extreme 
improbability  of  their  taking  any  part  in  any  serious  movement 
against  the  British  Government.  Even  those  who  afterwards  adopted 
the  charge,  wrote  and  spoke  during  the  events  as  though  such  a  thing 
were  impossible.  For  instance,  in  a  letter  from  Middleton  to  Hastings 
on  1 8  January,  1782,  the  phrase  occurs,  "The  reliance  which  not- 
withstanding the  part  I  have  avowed  and  acted  with  respect  to  her 
she  probably  placed  in  the  support  and  mediation  of  our  Govern- 
ment".1 Further,  in  all  the  correspondence  that  passed  between 
Hastings  and  Wheler  at  the  time,  there  is  no  mention  at  all  of  any 
rebellion.  The  only  question  is  how  soon  the  money  could  be  exacted 
from  the  begam  and  her  ministers.  In  the  private  correspondence 
too  between  Middleton,  Impey  and  Hastings  there  is  nothing  to  lead 
one  to  suppose  that  the  money  was  being  levied  as  a  fine  for  an  in- 
surrection. It  seems  probable  that  the  charge  of  rebellion  was  ex  post 
facto,  made  when  it  was  found  necessary  to  present  a  justification  for 
the  whole  business.  It  was  easy  enough  to  do  this,  because  under  the 
wretched  government  of  the  nawab  there  was  always  an  endemic 
insurrection  going  on  in  Oudh,  the  unfortunate  rajas  who  owned 
him  as  their  suzerain  being  frequently  in  revolt  against  his  oppressions. 
In  any  case  we  must  be  fair  enough  to  admit  that  the  treatment  meted 
out  to  Chait  Singh,  whatever  its  justification,  was  sufficient  to  make 
any  Indian  power  adopt  measures  for  its  own  protection.  The  truth 
is  that,  making  every  possible  allowance  for  Hastings's  financial 
difficulty,  and  granting  for  purposes  of  argument  that  the  begams 
were  quite  willing  to  stir  up  every  kind  of  trouble  for  him,  we  must 
yet  agree  that  it  was  a  sordid,  shabby  and  sorry  business.  Before  we 
leave  the  subject  a  curious  episode  must  be  mentioned.  We  have 
seen  that  Hastings  in  1780  took  a  present  of  £20,000  from  Chait 
Singh  while  engaged  in  pressing  him  for  money.  In  almost  exactly 
the  same  way  in  1781,  he  was  offered  and  accepted  £100,000  from 
*  the  nawab  of  Oudh.  He  employed  it  in  the  Company's  service  and 
then  after  a  considerable  delay  and  some  amazing  manipulation  of 
the  accounts,  he  reported  the  matter  to  the  directors  and  made  the 

1  Minutes  of  the  Evidence,  p.  820. 


QUESTION  OF  PRESENTS  303 

astonishing  request  that  they  should  present  it  to  himself  as  a  token 
of  their  approval.  We  need  not  concern  ourselves  here  with  the 
decency  or  taste  of  his  suggestion  to  the  directors — the  suggestion  we 
must  remember  of  a  man  whose  official  salary  with  allowances  was 
about  £30,000 — but  the  transaction  throws  a  vivid  light  on  Hastings's 
laxity  of  view  on  all  monetary  transactions.  The  money  was  un- 
doubtedly offered  by  the  nawab  as  a  bribe  to  Hastings  to  release  him 
from  the  disagreeable  task  of  coercing  the  begams.  Hastings  accepts 
it  but  continues  his  policy  nevertheless,  an  exact  parallel  to  his 
conduct  in  the  Chait  Singh  case.  The  whole  proceeding  was  kept 
secret  from  the  council,  a  most  unconstitutional  act.  If  the  money 
had  been  taken  at  all,  it  ought  to  have  been  accepted  as  a  mere  in- 
stalment of  the  debt  due  to  the  Company.  In  truth  there  is  no  defence 
at  all  for  the  acceptance  of  these  sums.  Modern  historians  sometimes 
write  as  though  the  practice  was  defensible,  if  it  can  be  proved  that 
Hastings  spent  the  money  in  the  public  service.  But  the  Regulating 
Act  had  forbidden  presents  absolutely,  for  the  sake  of  Indian  princes. 
The  whole  theory  underlying  them  was  highly  objectionable.  Either 
the  giver  obtained  some  special  favour  from  the  government,  which 
means  corruption,  or  he  did  not,  which  implies  deception.  The  Select 
Committee  of  1781  said  with  justice  that  the  generosity  of  the  donors 
"is  found  in  proportion,  not  to  the  opulence  they  possess  or  to  the 
favours  they  receive,  but  to  the  indigence  they  feel,  and  the  insults 
they  are  exposed  to",1  and  Burke  for  once  was  surely  fully  justified 
when  he  described  presents  from  Indian  rulers  as  "the  donations  of 
misery  to  power,  the  gifts  of  wretchedness  to  the  oppressors".2 
Hastings  we  must  admit  seems  to  have  had  a  blind  spot  in  his  mind 
as  regards  money  matters. 

A  third  case  of  Hastings' s  financial  operations  with  an  Indian  ruler 
must  be  mentioned  as  it  throws  considerable  light  on  the  other  two. 
We  have  explained  how  at  the  end  of  the  Rohilla  War  the  only 
chieftain  of  that  race  left  in  possession  of  territory  was  Faizulla  Khan 
of  Rampur.  A  peace  had  been  made  between  him  and  the  nawab  of 
Oudh.  By  it  he  was  to  retain  not  more  than  5000  troops  and  if  the 
nawab  was  at  war  he  was  to  "send  two  or  three  thousand  men 
according  to  his  ability".8  Faizulla  Khan  proved  himself  an  able 
and  vigorous  ruler,  as  Hastings  some  years  later  freely  admitted. 
Under  him  the  country  prospered  and  the  people  were  contented. 
In  February,  1778,  there  were  some  rumours  that  he  was  maintaining 
an  unnecessarily  large  army.  Middleton,  Resident  in  Oudh,  said 
that  he  might  well  have  acted  in  this  way  owing  to  the  injustice  and 
oppression  of  the  nawab,  but  the  commissioner  who  was  sent  down 
to  Rampur  to  investigate  reported  that  Faizulla  Khan  had  "  preserved 

1  Reports  from  Committees  of  the  House  of  Commons,  vi,  585. 
*  Bond,  Speeches  in  the  Trial  of  Warren  Hastings,  i,  70. 
8  Reports  jrom  Committees  of  the  House  of  Commons,  vi,  22. 


304    CHAIT  SINGH,  OUDH  BEGAMS,  FAIZULLA  KHAN 

every  article  of  his  treaty  inviolate".1  Faizulla  Khan  was,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  one  of  the  very  small  band  of  Indian  rulers  like  Ranjit  Singh, 
who  formed  a  great  admiration  for  the  British  nation  and  recognised 
once  and  for  all  the  advantage  of  trusting  them.  It  is  rather  a  lament- 
able reflection  that  he  was  very  nearly  entangled  and  ruined  in  the 
policy  of  Hastings.  He  asked  that  the  treaty  which  Champion  had 
made  between  him  and  the  nawab  might  now  receive  the  Company's 
own  ratification,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  "the  only  power  in  which 
he  had  confidence,  and  which  he  could  look  up  to  for  protection".2 
The  council  agreed  to  his  proposal  and  a  special  treaty  was  presented 
to  him.  Soon  afterwards  Faizulla  Khan,  whose  treaty  only  bound 
him  to  assist  the  nawab,  on  a  hint  from  Middleton  offered  to  lend 
the  Company  2000  horse.  He  was  formally  thanked  for  this  mark  of 
his  faithful  attachment  to  the  Company  and  the  English  nation. 

In  November,  1 780,  Hastings  obliged  the  nawab  of  Oudh  to  write 
to  Faizulla  Khan  requiring  him  to  furnish  "the  quota  of  troops 
stipulated  by  treaty. .  .being  5000  horse".3  It  is  charitable  to  assume 
that  in  the  original  demand  Hastings  had  simply  made  a  mistake 
about  the  terms  of  his  treaty.  But  this  excuse  could  not  be  made  for 
his  subsequent  action,  for  Faizulla  Khan  replied  civilly  and  moderately 
pointing  out  that  he  was  only  bound  to  furnish  2000  or  3000  troops, 
not  necessarily  horse,  "according  to  his  ability",  and  offering  to  dis- 
charge his  liabilities  to  the  full  by  sending  2000  horse  and  1000  foot. 
It  has  been  well  pointed  out  that  if  he  had  been  able  to  provide  5000 
horse  he  might  have  been  charged  with  breaking  the  other  article 
in  the  treaty  which  prevented  him  from  maintaining  more  than  that 
number  as  his  total  army.  Hastings  recorded  a  minute  that  Faizulla 
Khan  had  "evaded  the  performance  of. .  .the  treaty"4  which  was 
of  course  a  direct  falsehood.  He  then  in  March,  1781,  slightly 
mitigating  his  demand,  sent  a  deputation  requiring  the  delivery  of 
3000  cavalry.  As  Faizulla  Khan  firmly  but  politely  maintained  his 
former  position,  Hastings  made  a  formal  protest  against  him  for 
breaking  the  treaty  and  gave  the  nawab  of  Oudh  permission  to  resume 
his  lands.  That  Hastings  knew  perfectly  well  that  the  treaty  had  not 
been  broken  is  proved  by  the  amazing  minute  which  he  laid  before 
the  council  at  Calcutta: 

The  conduct  of  Faizulla  Khan,  in  refusing  the  aid  demanded,  though  not  an 
absolute  breach  of  treaty  was  evasive  and  uncandid. .  .so  scrupulous  an  attention 
to  literal  expression,  when  a  more  liberal  interpretation  would  have  been  highly 
useful  and  acceptable  to  us,  strongly  marks  his  unfriendly  disposition,  though  it 
may  not  impeach  his  fidelity.6 

Even  at  this  distance  of  time  the  thought  that  a  British  administrator 
could  have  written  such  words  arouses  a  flush  of  shame  and  it  may 

1  Reports  from  Committees  of  the  House  of  Commons,  vi,  24.  a  Idem,  p.  24. 

9  Idem,  p.  27.  *  Idem,  p.  29.  *  Idem,  p.  31. 


CHANGES  IN  OUDH  305 

safely  be  surmised  that  such  a  justification  for  charging  a  ruler  with 
disaffection  has  never  been  offered  before  or  since.  Faizulla  Khan 
escaped  ruin  partly  because  Hastings,  it  is  to  be  hoped  with  a  sense 
of  compunction,  postponed  for  a  time  the  execution  of  the  decree 
against  him,  and  partly  because  before  it  was  put  into  force  the 
directors  of  the  Company  much  to  their  honour  sent  a  stern  dispatch 
condemning  the  whole  business  and  forbidding  Hastings  to  go  any 
further  in  the  matter. 

Hastings's  final  activities  in  India  were  devoted  to  an  attempt  at 
reconstruction  in  Benares  and  Oudh.  Bristow  had  not  succeeded  in 
recovering  the  Company's  balances  from  that  incorrigibly  insolvent 
debtor,  the  nawab  of  Oudh,  and  his  own  financial  transactions  seem 
to  have  been  open  to  serious  criticism.  The  nawab  himself  desired, 
or  more  probably  had  been  ordered  by  Hastings  to  ask  for,  the  recall 
of  the  Resident,  and  the  abolition  of  the  residency.  Hastings  may 
have  been  right  in  demanding  a  complete  change  of  system  in  Oudh, 
but  it  must  be  confessed  that  his  action  in  the  matter  was  curiously 
tortuous,  and  no  quite  adequate  explanation  of  his  conduct  has  ever 
been  offered.  He  had  himself  given  Bristow  the  strictest  orders  to 
obtain  a  complete  control  over  the  government  of  Oudh.  Soon  after- 
wards he  proposed  to  the  council  that  Bristow  should  be  recalled  for 
having  attempted  to  tyrannise  over  the  nawab,  and  that  the  nawab 
himself,  and  his  minister,  Haidar  Beg  Khan,  whom  he  had  in  the  past 
severely  criticised,  should  jointly  be  security  for  the  Company's  debts. 
The  council  at  first  defended  Bristow  on  the  ground  that  he  had  only 
been  endeavouring  to  carry  out  his  instructions,  and  that  Haidar  Beg 
Khan  had  consistently  opposed  all  reforms.  Finally,  however,  with 
great  reluctance  they  accepted  Hastings's  proposal  and  agreed  that 
he  should  proceed  to  Lucknow  to  carry  out  the  change.  Hastings 
arrived  at  the  nawab's  capital  on  27  March,  1784,  and  attacked  his 
new  task  with  characteristic  courage  and  buoyancy.  "It  is  my  am- 
bition", he  wrote,  "to  close  my  government  with  the  redemption  of 
a  great  government,  family,  and  nation  from  ruin ...  it  is  the  boldest 
enterprise  of  my  public  life,  but  I  confidently  hazard  the  conse- 
quences."1 It  is  generally  said  that  he  was  very  successful,  but  there 
is  not  much  evidence  of  it;  he  merely  won  a  respite  for  the  time  by 
a  heavy  mortgage  on  the  future.  He  conciliated  the  nawab  by  his 
dominating  personality,  by  removing  the  residency,  and  by  restoring 
the  jagirs  to  the  begams — an  act  of  restitution  which  had  been  ordered 
by  the  court  of  directors.  He  also  claimed  to  have  "adjusted  all  the 
disputed  accounts  between  the  Nabob  Vizier  and  the  Company".2 
The  position  in  Oudh  was  no  doubt  easier  for  the  moment,  but  as  soon 
as  Hastings  had  departed,  the  hollowness  of  his  reforms  was  revealed. 
It  then  appeared  that,  if  the  residency  was  removed,  there  had  been 
established  in  its  place  an  "agency  of  the  governor-general",  which 
1  Gleig,  op.  cit.  ra,  153.  •  Idem,  p.  184. 

era  v  a° 


3o6    CHAIT  SINGH,  OUDH  BEGAMS,  FAIZULLA  KHAN 

interfered  quite  as  drastically  in  the  affairs  of  Oudh,  and  was  a  still 
greater  burden  on  its  revenues.  Whereas  the  expense  of  Bristow's 
residency  had  been  £64,202  per  annum,  the  cost  of  the  new  agency 
was  over  £112,000,  of  which  £22,000  was  the  salary  of  the  agent. 
As  soon  as  Cornwallis  came  out,  the  nawab  approached  him  with 
exactly  the  same  complaint  that  he  had  addressed  to  Hastings,  that 
the  burden  upon  his  country  was  insupportable.  As  for  the  alleged 
reform  of  the  finances,  Cornwallis  writes :  "  I  cannot  express  how  much 
I  was  concerned. . .  to  be  witness  of  the  disordered  state  of  his  finances 
and  government,  and  of  the  desolated  appearance  of  the  country.  The 
evils  were  too  alarming  to  admit  of  palliation".1 

In  regard  to  Benares,  Hastings  laid  before  the  council  a  scheme  for 
securing  the  revenues,  for  removing  incapable  and  oppressive  officials, 
and  for  safeguarding  the  tenancy  rights  of  the  ryots;  but  even  his 
unremitting  defender  Gleig  admits,  that  in  the  regeneration  of 
Benares  he  was  not  so  immediately  successful  as  in  the  case  of  Oudh.2 
No  real  reformation  was  possible,  so  long  as  the  British  Resident  was 
allowed  to  amass,  exclusive  of  his  official  salary,  an  income  of  £40,000 
a  year,  and  Cornwallis  could  only  describe  the  whole  position  there 
as  "a  scene  of  the  grossest  corruption  and  mismanagement".8 

While  he  was  at  Lucknow,  Hastings  had  an  interview  with  the 
eldest  son  of  the  Moghul  emperor,  who,  a  fugitive  from  the  warring 
factions  in  Delhi,  implored  the  aid  of  the  British  to  re-establish  his 
father's  throne.  It  was  thoroughly  typical  of  Hastings— typical  both 
of  the  defiant  hardihood,  which  formed  so  strong  an  element  in  his 
character,  and  of  the  wilful  blindness  to  obstacles  lying  athwart  his 
path— that  he  was  willing  to  engage  upon  this  enterprise.  Any  other 
man  in  the  face  of  an  imminent  retirement,  would  have  been  glad 
enough  to  disentangle  himself  from  old  responsibilities,  let  alone 
incur  new  ones.  But  Hastings  urged  upon  the  council  as  a  reason 
for  taking  up  the  prince's  cause  "our  relaxation  from  every  other 
external  concern";  and  had  the  political  effrontery  to  maintain: 
"I  am  not  sure,  but  I  believe,  that  we  shall  be  applauded  at  home, 
if  we  take  the  generous  side  of  the  question".4  The  council  very 
wisely  would  have  none  of  it,  and  Hastings,  though  he  felt  that  their 
action  went  some  way  to  save  his  own  interests  and  peace  of  mind, 
could  not  resist  the  temptation  of  flinging  a  gibe  at  them  for  their  want 
of  courage  and  for  their  propensity  to  turn  from  the  setting  to  the 
rising  sun. 

1  Ross,  Correspondence  of. .  .Marquis  Cornwallis,  I,  300. 
a  Gleig,  op.  at.  m,  194.  «  Ross,  op.  at.  i,  253. 

*  Gleig,  op.  at.  m,  191. 


CHAPTER   XVII 

THE   IMPEACHMENT  OF  WARREN  HASTINGS 

JLl  ASTINGS  left  India  in  February,  1785,  and  arrived  in  England 
in  June,  unconscious  of  the  tremendous  attack  on  his  life  and  work 
that  was  being  prepared  by  the  vindictive  enmity  and  foiled  am- 
bition of  Francis  and  the  more  honourable  but  misguided  zeal  of 
Burke.  He  was  at  first  well  received,  especially  at  court,  for  George  III 
was  one  of  his  firmest  supporters.  But  in  January,  1786,  Scott, 
Hastings's  agent,  challenged  Burke  to  produce  his  charges.  Scott  has 
been  severely  blamed  for  this,  and  contemporary  observers,  like 
Wraxall  and  Fanny  Burney,  declared  that  the  prosecution  was  really 
due  to  him.  Scott  was  undoubtedly  an  impetuous  and  injudicious 
man,  yet,  as  Professor  Holland  Rose  points  out,  he  would  scarcely 
have  acted  without  Hastings's  consent;  and  tfince  the  vote  of  censure 
of  28  May,  1782,  still  remained  on  the  records  of  the  House,  the 
question  would  have  had  some  day  to  be  raised  and  settled.  Burke 
moved  for  papers  on  1 7  February,  1 786,  and  in  April  brought  forward 
his  charges;  at  first  eleven  in  number,  they  were  afterwards  increased 
to  twenty-two.  On  i ,  2  and  3  May  Hastings  was  granted  permission 
to  read  a  defence  at  the  bar  of  the  House.  The  actual  reading  was 
done  partly  by  himself,  partly  by  Markham,  son  of  the  archbishop 
of  York.  The  step  was  a  serious  error  in  judgment;  it  would  have  been 
better  for  Hastings  to  have  reserved  his  defence.  The  apologia  was  too 
long  and  wearied  his  hearers.  It  was  badly  put  together  and  was  not 
always  consistent,  for  parts  of  it  had  been  drawn  up  by  different 
hands:  by  Scott,  Shore,  Middleton,  Markham  and  Gilpin.  It  was 
combative  and  defiant  in  tone,  for  Hastings  not  only  defended  himself 
against  censure,  he  claimed  positive  merit  for  all  his  actions.  There 
was  a  certain  moral  splendour  in  such  a  demeanour,  but  in  the 
present  temper  of  the  House  it  was  not  diplomatic.  As  one  member 
said:  "I  see  in  it  a  perfect  character  drawn  by  the  culprit  himself, 
and  that  character  is  his  own.  Conscious  triumph  in  the  ability  and 
success  of  all  his  measures  pervades  every  sentence".  On  i  June 
parliament  refused  to  accept  an  impeachment  on  the  charge  of  the 
Rohilla  War  by  119  votes  to  79,  Dundas  and  Pitt  voting  with  the 
majority.  On  the  isth,  the  House  accepted  the  charge  on  the  Chait 
Singh  case,  and  on  this  occasion  Pitt  and  Dundas  voted  against 
Hastings.  From  that  day  to  this  an  extraordinary  amount  of  in- 
genuity has  been  exercised  in  the  attempt  to  find  some  motive, 
recondite  or  unworthy,  for  this  action.  It  has  been  suggested  that 
Pitt  was  jealous  of  Hastings  and  his  favour  with  the  king;  that  he  was 
over-persuaded  by  Dundas,  who  feared  that  Hastings  might  succeed 

2O-2 


308          IMPEACHMENT  OF  WARREN  HASTINGS 

him  at  the  Board  of  Control ;  that  Pitt  was  not  sorry  to  see  the  energies 
of  a  powerful  and  able  opposition  directed  to  a  quarry  other  than 
His  Majesty's  Government.  The  first  of  these  reasons  seems  only 
worthy  of  the  author,  Gleig,  from  whence  it  sprang.  That  Hastings, 
whose  career  rightly  or  wrongly  had  been  subject  to  so  much  con- 
troversy, should  ever  become  President  of  the  Board  of  Control  was 
entirely  impossible.  The  third  suggestion  loses  sight  of  the  fact  that 
though  the  trial  lasted  over  seven  years,  the  court  only  sat  in  full 
session  118  days  out  of  that  time,  and  there  is  not  the  least  reason  to 
suppose  that  the  energy  of  the  opposition  in  the  ordinary  work  of 
parliament  was  in  any  way  diminished. 

All  this  subtlety  is  beside  the  mark,  and  overlooks  the  fact  that  there 
is  a  very  simple  and  adequate  explanation.  It  must  be  remembered 
that,  till  a  full  and  elaborate  defence  was  put  forward  at  the  trial, 
the  evidence  in  the  Chait  Singh  case  looked  extremely  damaging. 
There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  Pitt  acted  otherwise  than  as  an 
honest  man,  that  he  weighed  the  evidence  carefully,  defended  Hastings 
when  he  could  conscientiously  do  so,  as  in  the  matter  of  the  Rohilla 
War,  and  reluctantly  voted  against  him  where  the  evidence  appeared 
to  be  prima  facie  strong.  Above  all,  it  often  seems  to  be  forgotten  that 
he  was  only  voting  for  a  trial  not  for  a  condemnation.  Apart  from 
the  inherent  probabilities  of  the  business,  there  is  plenty  of  evidence 
to  support  this  view.  We  have  first  the  letter  of  Dundas  to  Cornwallis, 
21  March,  1787: 

The  proceeding  is  not  pleasant  to  many  of  our  friends;  and  of  course  from  that 
and  many  other  circumstances,  not  pleasant  to  us;  but  the  truth  is,  when  we 
examined  the  various  articles  of  charges  against  him,  with  his  defences,  they  were 
so  strong,  and  the  defences  so  perfectly  unsupported,  it  was  impossible  not  to 
concur.1 

There  is,  secondly,  a  still  more  important  piece  of  evidence  that  has 
we  think  generally  escaped  notice,  namely  a  letter  of  George  III  to 
Pitt  which  is,  it  may  be  said,  equally  creditable  to  king  and  minister. 
George  III  was  always  a  thorough-going  believer  in  Hastings,  and 
Pitt  naturally  desired  wherever  he  could  to  meet  the  king's  wishes. 
After  the  adverse  vote  on  the  Chait  Singh  charge,  George  III  wrote: 

Mr.  Pitt  would  have  conducted  himself  yesterday  very  unlike  what  my  mind 
ever  expects  of  him  if,  as  he  thinks  Mr.  Hastings'  conduct  towards  the  Rajah  was 
too  severe,  he  had  not  taken  the  part  he  did,  though  it  made  him  coincide  with 
the  adverse  party.  As  for  myself,  I  own  I  do  not  think  it  possible  in  that  country 
to  carry  on  business  with  the  same  moderation  that  is  suitable  to  a  European 
civilised  nation.  * 

It  may  be  added  that  Wilberforce  entirely  believed  in  Pitt's  integrity; 
he  tells  us  that  Pitt  paid  as  much  impartial  attention  to  the  case  "as 
if  he  were  a  juryman".  It  is  important  to  remember  that  there  was 

1  Ross,  Correspondence  of. .  .Marquis  Cornwallis ,  I,  281. 
8  Stanhope,  Life  of  William  Pitt,  i,  480. 


OPENING  THE  CHARGES  309 

no  attempt  to  constrain  men's  opinions  by  the  application  of  party 
discipline.  The  colleagues  of  the  prime  minister  were  left  free  to  vote 
as  they  chose,  and  Grenville,  Lord  Mulgrave  and  the  attorney- 
general  opposed  their  chief  in  debate.  There  is  a  final  argument  which 
will  only  appeal  to  a  limited  class  but  will  appeal  with  irresistible 
strength — we  should  have  to  alter  our  whole  conception  of  the  serene, 
pure  and  lofty  mind  of  Pitt,  if  we  believed  that  on  such  a  question  he 
were  capable  of  being  swayed  by  mere  motives  of  the  lowest  political 
expediency. 

On  7  February,  1 787,  the  charge  relating  to  the  begams  of  Oudh  was 
introduced  by  Sheridan  in  a  speech,  which  was  said  to  have  eclipsed 
all  previous  displays  of  eloquence  ever  heard  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
and  the  debate  was  adjourned  that  members  might  not  vote  till  their 
minds  were  freed  from  the  spell  of  the  orator.  On  8  February,  the 
charge  was  accepted  by  1 75  votes  to  68,  and  finally  in  May  the  de- 
cision was  made  to  impeach  on  twenty- two  articles.  These  articles 
attempted  to  cover  the  whole  of  Hastings's  administration.  He  was 
charged  with  having  violated  treaties  made  with  the  nawab  of  Oudh, 
with  having  interfered  in  that  ruler's  internal  affairs,  with  having 
unrighteously  sold  to  him  Kora  and  Allahabad,  with  oppression  and 
cruelty  in  the  case  of  Chait  Singh  and  the  begams  of  Oudh,  with  an 
arbitrary  settlement  of  the  land  revenues  of  Bengal,  with  fraudulent 
dealings  in  contracts  and  commissions  and  the  acceptance  of  presents 
and  bribes.  The  managers  for  the  Commons  were  Burke,  Fox, 
Sheridan,  Pelham,  Windham,  Sir  Gilbert  Elliot,  Charles  Grey,  Sir 
James  Erskine  and  twelve  others.  The  House  most  properly  refused 
to  allow  Francis  to  be  one  of  them.  Hastings's  counsel  were  Law 
(afterwards  Lord  Ellenborough),  Plumer  (afterwards  Master  of  the 
Rolls),  and  Dallas  (afterwards  Chief  Justice  of  the  Common 
Pleas). 

The  impeachment  was  a  calamitous  mistake  and  before  it  had  gone 
very  far  it  developed  into  something  like  a  cruel  wrong.  It  was  not 
unreasonable  that  some  enquiry  should  be  held;  indeed,  after  the 
vote  of  censure  of  May,  1782,  it  was  perhaps  essential.  The  fair  course 
would  have  been  to  hear  Hastings's  case  and  then  parliament  might 
have  expressed  a  temperate  disapproval  of  some  of  the  methods  he 
had  employed  in  the  case  of  Chait  Singh  and  the  begams  of  Oudh, 
and  might  well  have  commented  severely  upon  the  laxity  of  his  ideas 
of  account-keeping.  Having  ensured  that  these  unhappy  features  of 
his  period  of  office  should  not  be  allowed  to  become  precedents  for 
British  policy  in  the  East,  they  should  have  recognised  the  immense 
difficulties  that  confronted  Hastings  and  acknowledged  his  mag- 
nificent services  to  his  country.  A  grant  of  some  high  honour  from 
the  crown  would  naturally  have  followed,  and  the  energies  of  the 
reformers  might  have  been  devoted,  with  Hastings's  aid  and  co- 
operation, to  amending  the  whole  system  of  the  Indian  government. 


3io          IMPEACHMENT  OF  WARREN  HASTINGS 

The  impeachment  of  Hastings  was  an  anachronism,  a  cumbrous 
method  of  inflicting  most  unmerited  suffering  on  one  of  the  greatest 
Englishmen  of  his  time,  something  very  like  a  travesty  of  justice. 

For  this  there  were  several  reasons.  The  trial  was  intolerably 
lengthy.  It  lasted  from  February,  1788,  to  April,  1795,  through  seven 
sessions  of  parliament  and  148  sittings  of  the  court.  The  personnel  of 
the  judges  was  constantly  changing — during  the  seven  years  there 
were  180  changes  in  the  peerage.  There  was  a  great  inequality  between 
the  defence  and  the  attack.   Hastings' s  counsel  consisted  of  trained 
lawyers — all  of  them  afterwards  rose  to  high  judicial  office — men  who 
used,  and  rightly  used,  all  the  technical  devices  of  the  law  to  protect 
their  client.   His  accusers  were  parliamentary  orators  and  debaters, 
masters  of  invective  and  controversy,  but  men  unused  to  weigh 
testimony,  to  substantiate  their  charges  in  the  cold  and  dry  atmo- 
sphere of  a  court  of  law  or  to  be  guided  by  the  rules  of  evidence. 
Lord  Thurlow,  Hastings's  friend,  and  Lord  Loughborough,  who  was 
on  the  whole  hostile,  agreed  in  reprobating  the  "looseness  and  in- 
accuracy" with  which  the  articles  were  drawn  up.  They  formed 
indeed  an  absurd  hotchpot  of  charges,  some  involving,  had  they  been 
proved,  heinous  guilt,  others  mere  errors  of  policy  or  pardonable 
miscalculations.  Over  the  whole  trial  there  lies  the  false  and  histrionic 
glitter  of  an  elaborate  and  self-conscious  display.  Sherman's  speeches 
were  dramatic  entertainments  for  connoisseurs  of  orat<£  *cal  invective. 
The  Whig  party  made  the  occasion  a  manifesto  for  their  numanitarian 
sentiments  and  an  exercise  in  vituperation.    Burke,  whose  motives 
were  the  most  reputable,  for  he  was  entirely  sincere,  was  the  worst 
sinner  of  all,  in  his  utter  surrender  to  a  violent  animosity  against  the 
accused  and  his  refusal  to  accord  to  him  even  those  rights  and 
facilities  which  it  would  have  been  unrighteous  to  deny  to  the  worst 
of  criminals.  Through  constant  disputes  as  to  the  admissibility  of 
evidence  and  through  the  lack  of  technical  juridical  skill  on  the  part  of 
the  prosecution  the  trial  lasted  just  over  seven  years.   Gradually  it 
was  found  necessary  to  drop  most  of  the  charges.    In  1791  it  was 
resolved  to  proceed  only  with  those  dealing  with  Chait  Singh,  the 
begams  of  Oudh,  fraudulent  contracts,  presents  and  bribes;  the 
verdict  was  finally  given  on  23  April,  1795.  Hastings  was  acquitted 
on  all  the  articles  on  which  a  verdict  was  recorded.  The  highest 
minorities  against  him  were  on  the  charges  relating  to  Ghait  Singh 
and  the  begams  of  Oudh,  where  the  voting  was  23  to  6. 

The  Lords  reviewed  the  evidence  with  the  greatest  care.  Though 
the  trial  had  opened  before  160  peers,  only  29  recorded  their  votes. 
This  was  due  to  the  fact  that,  by  an  informal  understanding  honour- 
ably observed,  only  those  Lords  actually  voted  who  had  either 
attended  the  trial  from  its  commencement,  or  had  been  present 
during  a  majority  of  the  days  when  the  court  was  sitting.  Lord 
Carnarvon  had  suggested  that  the  House  should  itself  determine 


BURKE'S  VIOLENCE  311 

"what  lords  had,  and  what  lords  had  not,  a  right  to  vote".1  But  in 
the  end  it  was  resolved  to  accept  the  opinion  of  Lord  Thurlow  "that 
every  lord  must  draw  the  line  for  himself;  his  own  conscience  and  his 
own  sense  of  honour  must  determine  how  many  days'  attendance 
entitled  him  to  vote".2  In  the  discussion  Lord  Thurlow  and  the 
bishop  of  Rochester  were  strong  supporters  of  Hastings.  Lough- 
borough,  the  lord  chancellor,  was  on  the  whole  against  him;  Lord 
Mansfield,  though  a  former  friend,  felt  himself  bound  to  censure  some 
of  his  acts.  It  is  clear  that  even  Hastings's  warmest  allies  were  hard 
put  to  it  to  defend  some  parts  of  his  financial  administration  and  in 
the  last  resort  could  only  do  so  on  the  plea  that  his  difficulties  were 
great  and  that  "he  was  a  man  uncommonly  regardless  of  money". 
It  seems  fairly  certain  that  some  votes  were  given  for  an  acquittal, 
not  because  the  judges  condoned  every  act  of  the  accused,  but  because 
they  held  that  the  long  torture  of  the  trial  was  a  more  than  adequate 
punishment  for  some  errors  of  judgment,  financial  irregularities  and 
even  acts  of  unjust  severity  committed  in  circumstances  of  supreme 
crisis  and  peril.  For  long  it  had  been  clear  that  this  was  the  only 
possible  issue.  The  curious  thing  is  that  Burke  to  the  last  refused  to 
see  it.  He  seemed  determined  to  reach  the  acme  of  unreason  and  folly : 

The  crimes  with  which  we  charge  the  prisoner  at  the  bar  are  substantial  crimes. 
. .  .They  are  crimes  which  have  their  rise  in  the  wicked  dispositions  of  men. .  .in 
avarice,  rapacity,  pride,  cruelty,  ferocity,  malignity  of  temper,  haughtiness,  in- 
solence; in  short,  my  Lords,  in  everything  that  manifests  a  heart  blackened  to  the 
very  blackest — a  heart  dyed  deep  in  blackness — a  heart  corrupted,  vitiated  and 
gangrened  to  the  very  core. 3 

It  is  not  surprising  that  men  revolted  from  such  a  monstrous  position. 
The  defence,  on  the  other  hand,  did  their  best  to  build  a  golden 
bridge  for  the  retreat  of  the  managers,  and  perhaps  showed,  by  the 
reasonableness  of  their  attitude  in  this  respect,  that  they  recognised 
that  there  was  a  case  to  meet  and  to  defend. 

"The  Commons",  they  said,  "have  well  exercised  their  honour  by  preferring 
a  charge  and  bringing  it  here  to  be  discussed,  to  know  whether  it  is  true  or  not; 
and  it  is  no  dishonour  or  disgrace  to  the  House  of  Commons  to  say,  ultimately, 
that  upon  that  inquiry,  it  turns  out  that  the  charge  is  not  well  founded. . . .  Their 
object  is  not  the  individual,  but  the  crime.  If  the  crime  does  not  exist,  they  have 
no  resentment  against  Mr.  Hastings . . .  the  House  of  Commons  and  every  individual 
member  of  it  has  no  other  wish  but  that  the  charge  should  be  fairly  sifted  and 
examined,  to  see  whether  their  suspicions  are  well  or  ill  founded;  and. .  .every 
member  of  the  House  of  Commons  will  rejoice  if  it  should  turn  out,  in  the  event, 
that  Mr.  Hastings  is  able  to  exonerate  himself  from  these  imputations  that  have  been 
cast  upon  him  and  upon  the  nation."4 

But  the  sentiments  thus  described  had  no  place  in  the  heart  of  the 
leading  manager.  Burke  would  have  none  of  it: 

"No",  he  cried  in  answer  to  Plumer,  "we  never  would,  nor  can  we  conceive 
that  we  should,  do  other  than  pass  from  this  bar  with  indignation,  with  rage  and 

1  Debates  of  the  House  of  Lords  on  the  Evidence. . . ,  p.  1 1 .  *  Idem,  p.  13. 

8  Bond,  Speeches  in  the  Trial  of  Warren  Hastings,  i,  6-7.  4  Idem,  n,  692-3. 


312          IMPEACHMENT  OF  WARREN  HASTINGS 

despair,  if  the  House  of  Commons  should,  upon  such  a  defence  as  has  here  been 
made  against  such  a  charge  as  they  have  produced — if  they  should  be  foiled, 
baffled  and  defeated  in  it.  No,  my  Lords,  we  never  should  forget  it.  A  long,  lasting, 
deep,  bitter  memory  of  it  would  sink  into  our  minds;  for  we  have  not  come  here 
to  you  in  the  rash  neat  of  a  day,  with  that  fervour  which  sometimes  prevails  in 
popular  assemblies  and  frequently  misleads  them.  No;  if  we  have  been  guilty  of 
error,  it  is  a  long  deliberate  error;  an  error  the  fruit  of  long  labourious  inquiry. . . . 
We  are  not  come  here  to  compromise  matters  at  all.  We  do  admit  that  our  fame, 
our  honours,  nay,  the  very  being  of  the  inquisitorial  power  of  the  House  of  Commons 
are  gone,  if  this  man  is  not  guilty.  We  are  not  come  here  to  solve  a  problem,  but 
to  call  for  justice.. .  .1,  for  myself  and  for  others,  make  this  deliberate  determina- 
tion, I  nuncupate  this  solemn  and  serious  vow — that  we  do  glow  with  an  immortal 
hatred  against  all  this  corruption."1 

It  is  not  surprising  that  when  a  motion  of  thanks  was  made  to  the 
managers  of  the  impeachment,  one  member  declared  that  he  would 
be  willing  to  agree,  if  the  leading  manager  were  excepted,  "who  had 
by  his  conduct  disgraced  and  degraded  the  House  of  Commons". 
But  Burke's  errors  were  the  errors  of  a  noble,  if  utterly  misguided 
soul.  He  never  recovered  from  the  verdict.  The  day  after  it  was  given 
he  left  the  House  of  Commons  for  ever. 

Throughout  the  trial — in  the  darkest  hour  of  his  fate — Hastings 
had  borne  himself  with  the  same  dauntless  courage  which  had  enabled 
him  to  hold  his  head  high  under  the  cruel  "  bludgeonings  of  chance" 
in  scenes  far  distant  from  Westminster  Hall.  Nothing,  not  even  the 
scorching  invective  of  his  accusers,  nor  the  long  mental  agony  of  the 
seven  years'  ordeal,  had  been  able  to  break  that  indomitable  spirit.  As 
in  the  council  chamber  at  Calcutta,  so  at  the  bar  of  the  House  of 
Lords,  treatment  that  would  have  crushed  most  men  to  the  earth 
seemed  only  to  brace  him  to  a  stubborn,  heroic  and  provocative 
defiance.  For  his  most  questionable  acts  he  claimed  not  pardon  or 
indulgence  but  full  justification  and  unmeasured  praise.  In  facing 
his  accusers  he  showed  in  every  gesture  and  every  inflection  of  his 
voice  that  icy  yet  burning  scorn  which  sprang  from  his  unconquerable 
belief  in  his  own  rectitude  and  which  drove  his  adversary,  Burke, 
into  frenzies  of  impotent  anger. 

And  so  perhaps  the  greatest  Englishman  who  ever  ruled  India, 
a  man  who  with  some  ethical  defects  possessed  in  superabundant 
measure  the  mobile  and  fertile  brain,  the  tireless  energy  and  the  lofty 
fortitude  which  distinguishes  only  the  supreme  statesman,  was  left 
with  his  name  cleared  but  his  fortunes  ruined,  and  every  hope  of 
future  distinction  and  even  employment  taken  from  him.  The  East 
India  Company  came  not  ungenerously  to  his  assistance,  and  Hastings 
passed  from  the  purview  of  history  to  spend  the  long-drawn  evening 
of  his  arduous  life,  surrounded  by  a  circle  of  devoted  friends,  in  the 
peaceful  seclusion  of  his  recovered  ancestral  home  at  Daylesford. 

1  Bond,  Speeches  in  the  Trial  of  Warren  Hastings,  rv,  332,  334,  345. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

LEGISLATION  AND  GOVERNMENTS,   1786-1818 

A  HE  legislation  of  1784-6  was  developed  and  in  some  respects 
extended  when  the  Company's  privileges  were  reviewed  by  parlia- 
ment in  1793  and  1813.  On  each  occasion  the  principal  object  of 
attack  was  the  commercial  monopoly  of  the  eastern  trade,  and  on 
each  occasion  the  Company  had  to  give  up  something  of  its  rights. 
In  1 793  it  was  obliged  to  allow  a  certain  amount  of  tonnage  for 
private  merchants'  goods  both  outward  and  homeward;  in  1813  it 
lost  its  monopoly  of  the  Indian  though  not  of  the  China  trade.  In 
this  respect  legislative  action  merely  aftticipated  by  a  few  years 
the  consequences  of  economic  developments.  The  application  of 
machinery  and  power  to  the  cotton  manufacture  and  calico  printing 
would  in  any  case  have  soon  brought  to  an  end  its  main  commercial 
activity  in  India — the  export  to  Europe  of  cotton  piece-goods.  After 
a  period  of  abnormal  activity  during  the  wars  with  France,  this 
rapidly  declined,  and  expired  about  the  end  of  the  third  decade  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  just  before  the  commercial  powers  of  the 
Company  were  finally  abolished  by  the  act  of  1833. 

In  the  field  of  general  policy  the  main  tendency  was  to  develop 
and  emphasise  that  consciousness  of  moral  obligation  in  administering 
the  Company's  possessions  which  had  marked  the  act  of  1784.  In 
1 793  Wilberforce  had  striven,  though  in  vain,  to  procure  the  insertion 
in  the  act  of  provisions  for  the  admission  and  encouragement  of 
missionaries  in  India.  In  that  he  had  been  defeated;  but  in  1813 
section  33  declared  that  "it  is  the  duty  of  this  country  to  promote 
the  interest  and  happiness  of  the  native  inhabitants  of  the  British 
dominions  in  India",  and  section  43  empowered  the  government  to 
expend  not  less  than  a  lakh  of  rupees  on  the  revival  and  encouragement 
of  learning.  At  the  same  time,  although  missionaries  were  not 
specifically  named,  a  section,  which  clearly  had  them  in  view,  em- 
powered the  Board  of  Control  to  give  licences  of  residence  in  India 
to  persons  improperly  refused  them  by  the  court  of  directors;  and 
another  section  set  up  a  bishop  and  archdeacons  in  India. 

So  far  as  political  institutions  went,  Pitt's  India  Act  and  the  supple- 
mentary acts  of  1786  had  already  defined  the  outlines  of  the  Anglo- 
Indian  constitution,  which,  though  developed  by  subsequent  legislation, 
was  not  fundamentally  altered  so  long  as  the  Company  continued 
to  exist.  However,  a  good  many  changes  in  detail  took  place,  and 
the  actual  working  of  the  superior  institutions  then  set  up  demands 
statement  and  illustration.  This  is  particularly  necessary  as  regards 
the  Home  Government,  although  the  only  formal  changes  of  any 


LEGISLATION  AND  GOVERNMENTS,  1786-1818 

moment  were  the  establishment  of  a  paid  board  by  the  Charter  Act 
of  1 793  in  lieu  of  the  unpaid  board  set  up  in  1 784,  and  the  declaration 
of  British  sovereignty  over  the  Company's  eastern  possessions  in  the 
Charter  Act  of  1813 — which  continued  the  administration  in  the 
Company  "without  prejudice  to  the  undoubted  sovereignty  of  the 
Crown  of  the  United  Kingdom. .  .in  and  over  the  same". 

Meanwhile  the  board  rapidly  lost  its  powers,  which  were  concen- 
trated in  the  hands  of  a  single  person,  the  president.  This  change  was 
not  effected  without  some  ill-feeling.  Henry  Dundas  had  from  the 
first  been  the  moving  spirit,  to  the  great  indignation  of  some  of  his 
colleagues,  especially  Lord  Sydney,  who  protested  against  the  way 
in  which  Dundas  pushed  the  interest  of  Scotsmen  in  India.1  In  1786 
it  was  intended  to  make  the  change  formal;  "In  which  case",  wrote 
Dundas,  "I  suppose  your  humble  servant  not  only  in  reality  but 
declaredly  will  be  understood  as  the  cabinet  minister  for  India".2 
But  although  this  idea  was  ultimately  carried  out  by  the  withdrawal 
of  the  eX'officio  members  from  attending  at  the  board,  to  the  last  the 
president  required  the  formal  assent,  first  of  two  and  then  of  one  of  his 
colleagues  to  legalise  his  proceedings.  The  position  of  the  president  as 
regards  the  cabinet  varied.  It  depended  on  the  position  of  the  person 
holding  the  office.  So  long  as  Dundas  continued  to  hold  it,  his  in- 
timacy with  Pitt  ensured  his  inclusion  in  the  cabinet;  but  others, 
Minto  for  example,  held  it  without  a  seat  in  the  cabinet.3  Relations 
with  the  court  of  directors  also  varied.  Dundas  almost  invariably 
took  a  high  hand  with  the  court.  At  one  time  he  had  even  contem- 
plated taking  all  the  administration  out  of  the  hands  of  the  Company 
and  leaving  it  with  nothing  but  the  conduct  of  the  East  India  trade.4 
But  this  probably  seemed  to  Pitt  too  near  an  imitation  of  the  bills  of 
Fox,  and  even  the  hints  which  Dundas  had  let  fall  revived  something 
of  the  language  which  had  resounded  through  the  country  in  1783. 
When  the  negotiations  for  the  renewal  of  the  charter  in  1 793  had 
been  completed,  a  member  of  the  Company,  in  moving  a  vote  of 
thanks  to  the  directors  and  the  ministry, 

hoped  by  Englishmen  it  would  be  long  remembered  that  an  administration  in  the 
meridian  of  power,  well  knowing  that  the  patronage  of  India  would  render  that 
power  immortal,  and  almost  urged  by  the  people  to  grasp  it, ...  had  had  the 
magnanimity  to  refuse  it  and  assign  as  reason  to  the  House  of  Commons. .  .that 
such  an  accession  of  power  to  the  executive  government  was  not  compatible  with 
the  safety  of  the  British  constitution.6 

But  though  in  this  project  Dundas  was  foiled,  in  lesser  matters  he 
had  his  own  way.  When,  for  instance,  in  1 788  the  Company  protested 
against  the  dispatch  to  India  of  four  royal  regiments,  and  declined 

1  Sydney  to  Pitt,  24  September,  1 784,  ap.  Stanhope,  Life  of  Pitt,  I,  227. 

2  Comwallis  Correspondence,  i,  244.  s  Minto  in  India,  p.  3. 

4  Cornwallis  Correspondence,  n,  13.  ^ 

5  Debates  at  the  East  India  House  in  1793,  p.  120. 


BOARD  AND  COMPANY  315 

to  provide  the  funds  for  their  payment,  a  Declaratory  Act  was 
promptly  passed,  legalising  the  ministerial  view  of  the  question.1 
In  the  appointment  of  governors  to  the  subordinate  presidencies,  too, 
he  used  the  power  of  the  board  relentlessly  to  enforce  his  own  wishes 
on  the  directors.  But  later  presidents  certainly  exercised  a  less 
complete  control.  Castlereagh,  for  instance,  wrote  to  Wellesley: 

Your  lordship  is  aware  how  difficult  and  delicate  a  task  it  is  for  the  person  who 
fills  my  situation  (particularly  when  strong  feelings  have  been  excited)  to  manage 
such  a  body  as  the  court  of  directors  so  as  to  shield  the  person  in  yours  from  any 
unpleasant  interference  on  their  part.2 

The  fact  was  that  each  part  of  the  Home  Government  could  make  the 
position  of  the  governor-general  intolerable  if  it  pleased;  so  that 
despite  the  superiority  of  the  Board  of  Control  and  its  access  to  the 
cabinet,  and  despite  its  power  of  sending  orders  through  the  Secret 
Committee  of  the  directors,  which  the  latter  could  neither  discuss 
nor  disclose,  policy  in  general  was  determined,  when  disputes  arose, 
on  a  basis  of  compromise;  just  as  in  the  matter  of  appointments  both 
sides  had  in  effect  a  power  of  veto,  so  also,  in  discussions  about  policy, 
neither  body  cared  to  provoke  the  other  overmuch  save  in  exceptional 
circumstances.  There  were  two  recognised  methods  by  which  the 
orders  to  be  transmitted  to  the  governments  in  India  might  be 
prepared.  In  matters  of  urgency  the  president  himself  might  cause 
a  dispatch  to  be  prepared,  which  was  then  sent  to  the  Secret  Com- 
mittee, which  could  only  sign  it  and  send  it  off.  Dispatches  from  India 
in  like  manner  might  be  addressed  to  the  Secret  Committee,  in  which 
case  they  would  only  be  laid  before  the  court  of  directors  if  and  when 
the  president  desired.  But  this  was  not  the  procedure  generally 
adopted.  Usually  the  chairman  of  the  court  would  informally  propose 
a  course  of  action  to  the  president;  and  the  matter  would  be  discussed 
between  them,  either  in  conversation  or  by  private  letters.  The  chair- 
man would  then  informally  propose  a  dispatch,  which  would  be 
prepared  at  the  India  House,  and  sent  to  the  Board  of  Control 
together  with  a  mass  of  documentary  information  on  which  the 
dispatch  was  founded.  This  was  technically  called  a  Previous  Com- 
munication. It  was  returned  with  approval  or  correction  to  the 
Company,  and  after  reconsideration  sent  a  second  time  to  West- 
minster— the  document  on  this  second  submission  being  called  a 
Draft.  This  double  submission — informal  and  formal — resulted  from 
the  clause  in  the  act  of  1 784  by  which  amendments  had  to  be  com- 
pleted by  the  board  within  fourteen  days.  After  1813  the  term  was 
extended  to  two  months.  If  the  court  concurred  with  the  amend- 
ments, the  dispatch  would  then  be  sent  off;  but  if  they  did  not,  the 
discussions  might  continue,  in  the  last  resort  the  board  securing 
obedience  by  a  mandamus  from  the  Court  of  King's  Bench.  The 

* l  28  Geo.  Ill,  c.  8.  Gf.  Cornwallis  Correspondence,  i,  349,  354. 
1  Wellesley  Despatches,  HI,  92. 


3i6    LEGISLATION  AND  GOVERNMENTS,  1786-1818 

procedure  renders  it  exceedingly  difficult  without  the  information 
afforded  by  private  correspondence  to  define  the  actual  part  played 
by  the  various  presidents  of  the  board  in  the  determination  of  policy; 
the  Previous  Communications  have  seldom  been  preserved;  and  so 
one  seldom  knows  to  what  extent  a  Draft  was  influenced  by  the 
preliminary  discussions  between  the  president  and  the  chair.1  The 
system  was  certainly  slow  and  clumsy.  But  the  importance  of  such 
a  defect  was  largely  neutralised  by  the  length  of  time  that  communi- 
cations took  to  reach  India,  and  the  large  degree  of  discretion  which 
the  Indian  governments  necessarily  enjoyed.  With  all  its  defects  it 
was  a  vast  improvement  over  the  ruinous  system  which  had  preceded 
it,  when  the  ministry  was  seeking  to  control  Indian  policy  by  a  system 
of  influence,  and  when  there  was  no  certain  link  between  the  cabinet 
and  the  head  of  the  Indian  administration  such  as  was  now  provided 
by  the  ministry's  share  in  the  appointment  of  the  governor-general, 
and  the  possibility  of  sending  direct  orders  from  the  ministry  to  the 
governor-general  through  the  president  of  the  board  and  the  Secret 
Committee  of  the  court  of  directors.  In  the  last  resort  and  in  matters 
of  real  importance  the  ministry  could  enforce  its  will  on  the  most 
factious  court  of  directors  or  on  the  most  independent  of  governors- 
general;  while  no  governor-general  was  now  exposed  to  the  shocking 
danger  which  had  confronted  Warren  Hastings  of  having  to  determine 
policy  without  even  a  probability  of  support  from  either  side  of  the 
House  of  Commons. 

In  other  ways,  too,  the  government  of  Bengal  had  been  strengthened. 
Previous  chapters  have  illustrated  the  fatal  manner  in  which  the 
limited  powers  of  the  governor-general  and  the  limited  control  of  the 
Bengal  Government  over  the  subordinate  presidencies  had  worked. 
Under  the  new  system  the  governor-general  could  enforce  his  will  over 
refractory  councillors  if  he  were  convinced  of  the  need  of  doing  so. 
Nor  was  he  longer  exposed  to  the  opposition  of  Madras  or  Bombay 
without  adequate  powers  of  repressing  it.  The  act  of  1773  only  gave 
a  superintending  power,  and  that  with  exceptions  and  limitations, 
with  regard  to  the  declaration  of  war  and  the  making  of  peace ;  so 
that  it  still  lay  within  the  powers  of  the  subordinate  governments  by 
their  previous  conduct  of  policy  to  render  war  or  peace  inevitable. 
But  Pitt's  India  Act  gave  power  of  control  over  "all  transactions  with 
the  country  powers  or  the  application  of  the  revenues  or  forces. .  .in 
time  of  war,  or  any  such  other  points  as  shall  be  referred  by  the  court 
of  directors  to  their  control".  And,  further,  to  prevent  disputes 
regarding  the  extent  of  the  powers  of  the  government  of  Bengal, 
orders  from  the  latter  were  to  be  obeyed  in  every  case  except  only 
where  contrary  orders  had  been  received  from  England  and  were  stiU 
unknown  to  the  superintending  government.2  The  supplementary  act 

1  Foster,  John  Company,  pp.  246  sqq.  4 

8  Sections  31  and  32. 


THE  GOVERNOR-GENERAL  317 

of  1786  had  permitted  the  union  in  the  same  hands  of  the  offices 
of  governor-general  and  commander-in-chief ;  so  that  no  effective 
opposition  was  now  to  be  expected  from  the  military  as  distinct  from 
the  civil  power.  But  in  spite  of  all  these  extensions,  one  serious  limita- 
tion still  remained — that  imposed  by  the  distances  and  the  slow 
communications  of  India.  Calcutta  was  a  long  way  from  Madras 
and  Bombay;  and  what  would  be  the  position  of  the  governor-general 
if  he  quitted  Bengal  and  went  to  one  of  the  subordinate  presidencies 
to  supervise  or  conduct  affairs  in  person?  The  question  emerged 
during  the  government  of  Cornwallis,  when  he  went  down  to  Madras 
to  assume  the  command  against  Tipu  Sultan.  He  was  formally 
granted  separate  powers  by  his  council;  but  as  it  was  held  in  England 
that  the  council  had  no  authority  so  to  do,  an  act  was  passed1 
validating  what  had  been  done  under  such  defective  authority;  and 
in  the  Charter  Act  of  I7932  provision  was  made  for  the  appointment 
of  a  vice-president  during  the  governor-general's  absence  from 
Bengal,  and  the  governor-general  himself  was  empowered  (i)  to  act 
with  a  local  council  in  all  things  as  with  the  council  of  Bengal,  and 
(2)  to  issue  orders  to  any  of  the  Company's  servants  without  previously 
communicating  them  to  the  local  council.  By  virtue  of  these  altera- 
tions the  governor-general  was  enabled  to  proceed  to  either  of  the 
subordinate  provinces  and  assume  the  full  control  of  affairs  there. 
The  result  was  seen  in  the  swift  overthrow  of  Tipu,  when  Wellesley, 
following  Cornwallis's  example,  proceeded  to  Madras  in  1 798  in  order 
to  control  the  preparations  for  the  war  with  Mysore.  Thus  the  later 
governors-general  were  freed  from  the  restraints  which  had  so  dis- 
astrously hampered  the  action  of  Warren  Hastings,  and  which  he 
had  vainly  tried  to  overcome  by  the  futile  expedient  of  nominating 
residents  on  behalf  of  the  Supreme  Government  at  Madras  and 
Bombay. 

Nor  were  these  statutory  provisions  more  than  was  actually  needed 
to  keep  the  control  of  policy  under  one  hand.  Even  Cornwallis  had 
had  to  meet  counteraction  on  the  part  of  the  governor  of  Madras, 
the  unworthy  John  Hollond,  who,  mainly,  it  appears,  owing  to  his 
concern  in  the  nawab's  debt,  not  only  dispatched  military  expedi- 
tions without  informing  the  Bengal  Government,  but  also,  when 
ordered  to  afford  assistance  to  the  raja  of  Travancore  against  Tipu, 
tried  to  bargain  with  the  raja  for  the  assistance  it  was  his  duty  to  give. 
Lord  Hobart,  governor  of  Madras,  would  order  the  naval  squadron 
about  without  reference  to  the  governor-general,  Sir  John  Shore, 
and  at  last  quarrelled  so  violently  with  his  official  superior  that  he 
preferred  to  return  to  England  and  forfeit  his  ultimate  succession  to 
the  post  of  governor-general  rather  than  continue  under  Shore's 
orders.8  Even  Wellesley  was,  or  thought  he  was,  opposed  in  the 

Vji  Geo.  Ill,  c.  40.  *  Sections  52-54. 

•HTeignmouth,  Life  of  Short,  i,  372;  Cornwallis  Correspondence,  n,  307. 


3i8    LEGISLATION  AND  GOVERNMENTS,  1786-1818 

preparations  which  he  ordered  for  the  war  against  Tipu,  and  used 
very  direct  language  on  the  subject  of  his  superior  powers  not  only 
to  the  subordinate  officers  of  the  government  of  Bengal,  but  also  to 
the  subordinate  presidencies.  "The  main-spring  of  the  government 
of  India",  said  he,  "can  never  be  safely  touched  by  any  other  hand 
than  that  of  the  principal  mover."1 

In  another  way  also  a  great  change  for  the  better  was  made.  Before 
the  act  of  1784  patronage  was  exercised  in  a  peculiarly  demoralising 
way.  The  home  authorities,  not  content  with  having  the  nomination 
of  the  persons  who  were  to  enter  the  Company's  civil  and  military 
services,  had  also  sought  to  control  their  promotion.  Covenanted 
servants  and  military  officers  would  take  a  trip  to  England  in  order 
to  gain  admission  to  council,  appointment  to  some  lucrative  office, 
or  the  command  of  a  regiment  or  an  army  out  of  their  turn.  The 
relatives  of  directors  expected  special  promotion  without  regard  to 
their  seniority  or  talents.  Laurence  Sulivan,  for  example,  looked  to 
restoring  the  fallen  fortunes  of  his  family  by  employing  his  influence 
in  favour  of  his  son.  Men  with  powerful  connections  were  constantly 
appearing  in  India — the  illegitimate  half-brother  of  Charles  Fox,  for 
instance — expecting  to  be  provided  for.  The  necessary  result  was  that 
the  government  in  India  lacked  that  most  salutary  power  of  rewarding 
merit  by  promotion.  Hastings  in  particular  had  found  this  a  most 
grievous  tax.  But  Dundas's  legislation  cut  at  the  root  of  these  per- 
nicious practices.  In  the  first  place  the  India  Act  forbade  vacancies 
in  the  councils  to  be  filled  by  other  than  covenanted  servants  except 
in  the  case  of  the  governor-general,  the  governors,  and  the  com- 
manders-in-chief,  and  confined  promotion  to  due  order  of  seniority 
except  in  special  cases  when  full  details  were  immediately  to  be  sent 
to  the  court  of  directors.  Then  the  act  of  I7862  limited  the  nomina- 
tion to  vacancies  to  the  Company's  servants  on  the  spot  and  prescribed 
terms  of  service  as  the  minima  for  offices  carrying  more  than  certain 
rates  of  pay.  The  Charter  Act  of  1793  went  a  step  further  and  decreed 
that 

all  vacancies  happening  in  any  of  the  offices,  places,  or  employments  in  the  civil 
line  of  the  Company's  service  in  India  (being  under  the  degree  of  councillor)  shall 
be  from  time  to  time  filled  up  and  supplied  from  amongst  the  civil  servants  of  the 
said  company  belonging  to  the  presidency  wherein  such  vacancies  shall  respect- 
ively happen.... No  office,  place  or  employment,  the  salary,  perquisites,  and 
emoluments  whereof  shall  exceed  £500  per  annum  shall  be  conferred  upon  or 
granted  to  any  of  the  said  servants  who  shall  not  have  been  actually  resident  in 
India  as  a  covenanted  servant  of  the  said  company  for  the  space  of  three  years  at 
the  least  in  the  whole. . . . 

Six  years'  service  was  the  minimum  for  posts  of  £  1 500  a  year,  nine  years 
for  those  of  £3000,  and  twelve  years  for  those  of  £4000.  The  net  results 
of  these  enactments  were  (i)  that  the  flood  of  adventurers  into  India 

1  Wellesley  Despatches,  I,  290,  528. 
8  26  Geo.  Ill,  c.  1 6,  sections  13-14. 


PATRONAGE  319 

was  checked;  (2)  that  the  jobs  of  the  directors  were  curtailed;  and 
(3)  that  after  1786  the  civil  and  military  services,  and  after  1793  the 
civil  service,  secured  a  monopoly  of  well-paid  administrative  employ- 
ment in  the  old  provinces,  though  not  in  new  acquisitions.  The  policy 
of  Cornwallis  in  confining  employment  in  the  higher  ranks  to  Euro- 
peans had  thus  a  legislative  basis  which  has  often  been  forgotten. 
Even  had  he  wished  to  do  so,  it  would  not  have  been  legal  for  him  to 
nominate  an  Indian  to  any  post  carrying  more  than  £500  a  year,  for 
no  Indian  was  a  Company's  servant  within  the  meaning  of  the  acts. 
And  while  the  recruitment  to  the  higher  administrative  posts  was 
thus  being  limited  to  the  members  of  the  Company's  service,  the 
practice  of  appointment  from  home  to  special  posts  was  also  curtailed. 
"The  system  of  patronage,  which  you  so  justly  reprobated",  wrote 
Shore  to  Hastings  in  1787,  "and  which  you  always  found  so  grievous 
a  tax,  has  been  entirely  subverted."1  Cornwallis  put  the  matter  to 
one  of  the  directors  very  bluntly. 

"I  must  freely  acknowledge",  he  wrote,  "that  before  I  accepted  the  arduous 
task  of  governing  this  country,  I  did  understand  that  the  practice  of  naming  persons 
from  England  to  succeed  to  offices  of  great  trust  and  importance  to  the  public 
welfare  of  this  country,  without  either  knowing  or  regarding  whether  such  persons 
were  in  any  way  qualified  for  such  offices,  was  entirely  done  away.  If  unfortunately 
so  pernicious  a  system  should  be  again  revived,  I  should  feel  myself  obliged  to  request 
that  some  other  person  might  immediately  take  from  me  the  responsibility  of 
governing. .  ,."2 

A  little  later  difficulties  arose  from  the  directors'  nominations  to  posts 
on  the  board  of  revenue  at  Madras  and  their  refusal  to  confirm 
Wellesley's  nomination  to  the  post  of  Political  Secretary.  But  these 
were  due  rather  to  the  directors3  distrust  of  Wellesley's  policy 
than  to  any  revival  of  the  old  system.  Save  as  regards  the  highest 
posts  of  all,  the  tendency  was  for  the  directors  to  be  limited  to  the 
recruitment  of  their  services  by  the  nomination  of  writers  and  cadets, 
while  the  executive  governments  in  India  determined  their  promotion 
and  employment. 

On  the  whole  the  covenanted  servants  benefited  by  these  changes. 
The  old  system  had  been  exceedingly  unhealthy,  promoting  intrigue, 
and  that  most  vicious  practice  of  private  correspondence  between 
subordinates  and  members  of  the  direction  in  England  on  matters  of 
public  concern,  in  which  the  officials  sought  to  secure  favour  in 
England  by  communicating  news  that  they  had  learnt  in  the  dis- 
charge of  their  official  duties.  This  custom  was  prohibited  (though 
not  suppressed)  in  1785.  Burke  expressed  great  indignation  at  the 
prohibition,8  but  it  was  in  fact  the  natural  and  necessary  concomitant 
of  the  introduction  of  a  modern  system  of  administration,  under  which 
it  neither  is,  nor  is  thought  desirable  to  guard  against  the  misconduct 
of  the  heads  of  the  government  by  such  indirect  and  devious  means. 

1  Teignmouth,  Life  of  Shore,  i,  136.  2  Cornwallis  Correspondence,  I,  421. 

8  Life  and  Letters  of  Sir  G.  Elliot,  i,  100. 


320    LEGISLATION  AND  GOVERNMENTS,  1786-1818 

In  one  direction,  however,  the  covenanted  servants  lost  ground. 
With  the  appointment  of  Gornwallis  they  became  practically  in- 
eligible for  the  highest  post  in  India.  It  is  true  that  he  was  immediately 
succeeded  by  Shore,  who  was  a  covenanted  servant;  but  his  appoint- 
ment was  already  regarded  as  somewhat  exceptional  in  nature.1  In 
1802,  in  discussing  the  selection  of  Wellesley's  successor,  Castlereagh, 
who  inclined  strongly  to  the  nomination  of  another  Company's 
servant,  Barlow,  nevertheless  wrote,  "I  am  aware  that  there  is  the 
strongest  objection  on  general  grounds  to  the  governments  abroad 
being  filled  by  the  Company's  servants,  but  there  is  no  rule  which  is 
universal".2  But  having  heard  what  Wellesley  had  to  say  on  this 
head,  and  in  view  of  the  renewal  of  war  in  Europe,  Pitt  and  Castlereagh 
decided  to  try  to  find  a  suitable  man  in  England.8  It  will  be  remem- 
bered that  Cornwallis  was  sent  out,  only  to  die;  and  so  Barlow 
succeeded  to  the  chair.  But  his  succession  only  proved,  even  more 
strikingly  than  the  government  of  Shore  had  done,  that  under  the 
new  regime  the  Company's  servants  were  apt  to  shirk  responsibility 
and  yield  too  ready  a  compliance  with  the  wishes,  right  or  wrong, 
of  their  honourable  masters,  the  court  of  directors.  Nor  was  the  ex- 
periment repeated  until  the  time  of  Lawrence,  although  the  directors 
made  a  strong  push  in  favour  of  Metcalfe  in  1834,  in  opposition  to  the 
president  of  the  board,  Charles  Grant,  who  had  (it  seems)  proposed 
himself.  But  on  that  occasion  Melbourne's  ministry  rejected  the 
recommendation,  founding  its  opposition  on  principles  which  had 
been  laid  down  by  George  Canning  during  his  short  tenure  of  the 
presidency  of  the  board.4  The  system  of  appointing  the  governor- 
general  from  England  must  on  the  whole  be  considered  to  have 
worked  well.  The  persons  selected  were  in  fact  of  very  various  charac- 
ter and  talent;  two  indeed  were  failures  outright;  but  in  general  their 
rank  and  standing  secured  for  them  a  more  ready  and  willing  obedience 
than  the  Company's  servants  would  have  accorded  to  one  of  them- 
selves; moreover,  these  English  noblemen  brought  with  them  a  wider 
experience  of  affairs,  a  broader  knowledge  of  politics,  a  higher 
standard  of  political  ethics  than  were  likely  to  be  found  in  India; 
nor  should  it  be  forgotten  that  they  carried  much  more  weight,  and 
that  their  representations  were  treated  with  greater  respect  by  the 
home  authorities  than  would  have  been  the  case  with  the  Company's 
servants. 

The  same  system  was  extended  to  the  governorships  of  the  two 
subordinate  presidencies.  The  earliest  example  of  this  was  the 
appointment  of  Lord  Macartney  to  the  government  of  Madras  in 
1780.  He  was  succeeded  by  a  soldier,  Sir  Archibald  Campbell,  who 


1  Cornwallis  Correspondence,  H,  219. 
8  WeUesley  Despatches,  m,  91. 


8  Idem,  iv,  533. 

4  Kayc,  Life  of  Tucker,  p.  449;  Kaye,  tife  of  Metca(fe,  n,  237  n.;  and  WeUesley  Papers, 
n,  248,  259. 


PROVINCIAL  GOVERNORS  321 

had  had  experience  of  administration  in  the  West  Indies.  Lord 
Hobart  and  Lord  Clive  (son  of  the  hero  of  Plassey)  filled  the  same 
office  before  the  end  of  the  century.  But  in  the  case  of  the  subordinate 
presidencies  the  line  was  less  firmly  drawn  and  exceptions  made  less 
reluctantly.  At  almost  the  same  time  Elphinstone  and  Munro 
received  the  governments  of  Bombay  and  Madras,  in  recognition  of 
their  services  in  the  last  Maratha  War. 

"The  more  general  practice  of  the  court",  Canning  wrote  during  his  short 
tenure  of  the  Board  of  Control,  "is  to  look  for  their  governors  rather  among  persons 
of  eminence  in  this  country  than  among  the  servants  of  the  Company;  and  when 
I  profess  myself  to  be  of  opinion  that  this  practice  is  generally  wiser,  it  is,  I  am 
confident,  unnecessary  to  assure  you  that  such  an  opinion  is  founded  on  considera- 
tions the  very  reverse  of  unfriendly  to  the  Company's  real  interest;  but  the  extra- 
ordinary zeal  and  ability  which  have  been  displayed  by  the  Company's  servants 
civil  and  military  in  the  course  of  the  late  brilliant  and  complicated  war,  and  the 
peculiar  situation  in  which  the  results  of  that  war  have  placed  the  affairs  of  your 
presidency  at  Bombay,  appear  to  me  to  constitute  a  case  in  which  any  deviation 
from  the  general  practice  in  favour  of  your  own  service  might  be  at  once  becoming 
and  expedient."1 

On  the  whole  the  system  was  less  advantageous  in  the  case  of  the 
provincial  governors  than  in  that  of  the  governor-general.  The  men 
willing  to  accept  these  second-rate  posts  were  mostly  second-rate  men. 
Lord  William  Bentinck  is  the  only  man  of  real  eminence  who  can  be 
named  among  them;  and  Dalhousie  was  probably  justified  in  ad- 
vocating the  abandonment  of  the  practice.2  The  main  advantage 
that  can  be  fairly  claimed  for  this  extension  of  the  recruitment  from 
the  English  political  world  is  that  it  multiplied  contact  between  it 
and  India  and  increased  the  number  of  persons  in  the  British 
parliament  who  really  knew  what  India  or  a  part  of  it  was  like. 

In  form  these  subordinate  governments  were  framed  on  the  same 
plan  as  that  of  Bengal.  The  governor  had  a  council  of  two  civil 
members  with  the  commander-in-chief  when  that  post  was  not  joined 
to  his  own.  He  enjoyed  the  same  power  of  overruling  his  council  as 
the  governor-general.  Under  the  Governor  in  Council  were  three 
boards — the  Board  of  Trade,  the  Board  of  Revenue,  and  the  Military 
Board — which  conducted  the  detail  of  the  administration,  and  normally 
were  presided  over  by  a  member  of  council.  Under  the  Board  of 
Revenue  there  was  at  Madras,  where  large  territories  had  come  under 
the  Company's  control  in  the  decade  1793-1802,  a  complicated 
district  system  (described  in  chapter  xxv).  At  Bombay,  where  the 
great  accession  of  territory  only  came  with  the  peace  of  1818,  the 
district  administration  was  on  the  whole  of  later  development,  and 
will  be  described  in  the  succeeding  volume. 

The  main  defect  in  the  organisation  thus  established  under  the 
legislation  of  the  period  was  the  union  of  general  responsibility  for 

1  Colebrooke,  Life  of  Elphinstone,  n,  100. 

2  Lee-Warner,  Life  of  Dalhousie,  n,  252. 

CHI v  21 


322    LEGISLATION  AND  GOVERNMENTS,  1786-1818 

the  whole  of  British  India  and  the  special  administration  of  Bengal 
in  the  hands  of  the  governor-general  and  council.  It  meant  almost 
certainly  that  the  whole  influence  of  the  supreme  government  would 
be  devoted  to  the  imposition  of  the  Bengal  system  on  the  other 
provinces,  irrespective  of  its  suitability,  and  that  the  Supreme  Govern- 
ment would  find  itself  with  much  more  work  to  do  than  could  be  done 
by  any  one  set  of  men.  The  first  of  these  evils  was  that  principally 
evident  in  the  period  here  dealt  with;  the  second  that  of  the  period 
which  succeeded. 


CHAPTER   XIX 

THE  EXCLUSION  OF  THE  FRENCH,    1784-1815 

JL  HE  French  rivalry  must  be  reckoned  in  that  series  of  lucky  events 
and  fortunate  conditions  which  did  so  much  in  the  second  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century  to  enable  the  English  East  India  Company  to  rise 
to  a  position  of  predominance  in  India.  Without  intending  it,  French 
adventurers  played  the  part  of  agents  provocateurs.  Indian  princes  were 
encouraged  by  their  sanguine  estimates  of  French  co-operation  to 
entertain  designs  against  the  English,  while  the  impossibility  of 
effective  French  support,  from  European  considerations  in  time  of 
peace  and  from  lack  of  the  necessary  naval  superiority  in  time  of  war, 
ensured  that  they  would  take  up  arms  without  the  assistance  on 
which  they  had  reckoned.  Since  the  previous  century  there  had  always 
been  a  certain  number  of  adventurers  in  the  service  of  the  Indian 
states;  and  after  the  great  period  of  Dupleix  various  causes  combined 
to  increase  their  numbers,  activity  and  influence.  The  career  of 
Dupleix  like  that  of  Clive,  had  served  to  attract  great  attention  in 
his  country  to  India.  It  seemed  to  Frenchmen,  as  to  Englishmen  of 
the  time,  the  land  of  easy  wealth,  so  that  the  number  of  those  who 
sought  fortunes  there  rose.  At  the  same  time  the  decay  of  the  Moghul 
Empire,  and  the  rise  of  the  numerous  military  states  on  its  ruins, 
enlarged  the  demand  for  military  leaders  and  organisers;  while  the 
resounding  victories  won  by  European  arms,  whether  French  or 
English,  raised  the  value  set  upon  all  who  could  pretend  to  any 
knowledge  of  European  tactics  and  discipline;  so  that  the  adventurers 
found  themselves  no  longer  mere  artillerymen  but  commanders  of 
regiments  anjl  brigades,  personally  consulted  by  the  princes  whose 
pay  they  drew.  Finally  the  ideas  of  Dupleix  and  the  Anglo-French 
rivalry  which  had  sprung  out  of  them  had  opened  out  new  possibilities 
promising  personal  gain  and  national  aggrandisement. 

The  result  was  that  from  the  government  of  Warren  Hastings  down 
to  that  of  Wellesley  the  Indian  courts  were  full  of  Frenchmen,  com- 
manding large  or  small  bodies  of  sepoys,  and  eager  for  the  most  part 
to  serve  their  country  by  the  exercise  of  their  profession.  A  typical 
example  of  them  is  afforded  by  Ren6  Madec,  who,  after  serving  in  the 
ranks  under  Lally  and  then  joining  the  English  service  for  a  while, 
deserted  and  passed  from  court  to  court,  serving  now  a  Jat  chief,  now 
Shah  'Alam,  and  now  Begarn  Samru,  until  in  1778  he  retired  and 
went  home  to  his  native  Brittany.  With  him  and  others  in  a  like 
condition  Chevalier,  head  of  French  affairs  in  Bengal,  was  in  constant 
communication,  discussing  schemes,  now  for  the  march  of  Madec 
into  Bengal,  now  for  the  cession  and  occupation  of  Sind,  whence  a 

21-2 


324          EXCLUSION  OF  THE  FRENCH,  1784-1815 

French  army  was  to  march  to  Delhi,  and  then  drive  the  English  into 
the  sea.  Chevalier's  policy  was  to  spread  great  ideas  abroad  regarding 
French  power,  and  he  had  no  hesitation  in  offering  to  the  emperor 
in  1772  the  services  of  two  or  three  thousand  Frenchmen  from  the 
Isle  of  France.  Madec  in  1 775  writes  from  Agra  that  when  war  breaks 
out  with  the  English  he  will  march  down  the  Ganges  and  ravage  the 
upper  provinces  of  Bengal,  holding  the  towns  to  ransom  and  doing 
his  utmost  to  destroy  the  English  revenues.1  A  little  later  we  find 
St  Lubin  and  Montigny  at  Poona,  making  treaties  which  neither  • 
party  attempted  to  carry  out,  and  venting  large  promises  which  the 
Marathas  were  much  too  astute  to  trust. 

On  the  whole  these  political  activities  were  more  harmful  than 
advantageous  to  the  French  cause,  for  they  achieved  nothing  beyond 
a  reputation  for  big  words.  Nor  did  Bussy's  expedition  of  1 782  add 
much  to  the  French  position.  It  arrived  too  late.  Before  it  had 
accomplished  anything,  it  was  paralysed  by  the  news  of  peace,  and 
that  too  of  a  peace  which  merely  put  the  French  back  where  they 
had  been  before.  It  was  difficult  for  their  agents  to  persuade  Indian 
princes  of  the  great  successes  they  claimed  to  have  won  in  America 
when  they  still  remained  in  their  old  position  of  inferiority  in  India. 
Souillac  might  write  assuring  Sindhia  that  the  English  had  been 
driven  out  of  all  their  American  possessions  and  declare  that  now  the 
great  object  of  the  king  of  France  was  to  compel  the  English  to  restore 
the  provinces  which  they  had  stolen  from  the  princes  of  India;2  but 
Sindhia  simply  did  not  believe  him.  Bussy,  who  viewed  the  position 
with  tired  and  disappointed  eyes,  wrote  nevertheless  with  great  truth 
to  the  minister,  de  Castries  (9  September,  1783),  that  the  terms  of 
peace  had  produced  an  unfavourable  impression,  and  that  impossible 
hopes  of  Indian  co-operation  had  been  raised  in  France  by  the  fables 
sent  home  inspired  by  vanity  and  self-interest.  He  actually  advised 
the  recall  of  the  various  parties  serving  with  Indian  princes,  as  being 
nothing  but  a  lot  of  brigands — un  amas  de  bandits* 

As  regarded  the  future,  too,  the  French  plans  were  quite  indefinite. 
It  was  proposed,  for  instance,  to  remove  the  French  headquarters 
from  Pondichery,  as  too  near  the  English  power  at  Madras,  and  too 
remote  from  the  possible  allies  of  France — Tipu  and  the  Marathas. 
For  a  while  the  minister  thought  of  removing  it  to  Mah6  on  the  other 
side  of  India,  where  perhaps  Tipu  would  cede  a  suitable  extent  of 
territory,  or  else  to  Trinkomali,  if  it  could  be  obtained  from  the 
Dutch,  or  to  some  point  on  the  coast  of  Burma.4  But  either  of  the 
last  two  presupposed  the  maintenance  of  a  large  naval  force.  Bussy 
again  went  to  the  heart  of  the  matter.  All  this  consideration  of  possible 
allies,  he  said,  was  beside  the  mark.  Pondichery  was  suitable  enough 
if  the  ministry  would  find  the  money  to  fortify  it  and  garrison  it  with 

1  Barb6,  Rent  Madec,  passim.  a  Gaudart,  Catalogue,  I,  321. 

1  1dm,  p.  137.  *  Idem,  p.  183. 


FRENCH  PROJECTS  325 

1800  Europeans  and  2000  sepoys ;  the  French  should  do  like  the  English 
— depend  on  themselves  alone.1  The  only  way  to  get  allies,  he  says 
again  a  year  later,  is  to  send  out  large  military  and  naval  forces  with 
plenty  of  money,  and  "  every  thing  to  the  contrary  that  you  will  be 
told  on  this  point  will  be  derived  from  that  charlatanry  that  has  so 
long  obscured  the  facts".2 

As  regards  possible  allies  against  the  English  in  India  the  views  of 
the  ministry  were  frankly  hostile.  In  1787  de  Castries  resolved  to 
*  recall  one  Frenchman,  Aumont,  who  was  then  with  the  Nizam,  and 
to  replace  the  French  agent,  Montigny,  at  Poona  by  a  Brahman 
vakil,  since  nothing  was  to  be  got  out  of  the  first,  while  with  the  second 
no  common  interests  could  be  discovered.  But  Tipu  was  to  be  informed 
of  the  French  desire  to  co-operate  with  him  in  hindering  the  English 
from  remaining  the  masters  of  India.  The  king's  intention,  de  Castries 
went  on,  is  to 

tacher  de  conserver  les  princes  de  1'Inde  dans  la  tranquillite  entre  eux  jusqu'a  ce 
qu'il  soit  en  mesure  de  les  secourir,  et  comme  nous  parviendrons  sans  doute  a 
combiner  un  jour  nos  forces  avec  celles  de  la  Hollande,  il  faut  attendre  que  cet 
arrangement  soit  fini  pour  pouvoir  poser  quelques  bases  avec  cette  puissance. 3 

Indeed  at  this  moment,  when  Holland  was  sharply  split  into  French 
and  Orangist  factions,  the  French  seem  to  have  counted  on  being 
able  in  a  time  of  war  to  employ  Dutch  naval  power  and  naval  bases 
against  the  English,  as  partly  came  to  pass  in  the  Revolutionary  and 
Napoleonic  Wars,  though  even  then  the  French  were  to  find  that  the 
lukewarm  assistance  which  they  received  from  the  Dutch  was  a  poor 
counterpoise  to  the  overwhelming  force  of  the  English  navy  and  an 
incomplete  compensation  for  having  to  protect  the  Dutch  possessions 
as  well  as  their  own.  In  1787,  when  these  proposals  were  being 
considered,  the  Orangists  were  urging  the  adoption  of  an  exactly 
opposite  policy,  that  of  an  alliance  with  Great  Britain.  Neither  treaty 
was  formally  concluded;  but  the  eyes  of  both  French  and  English 
seem  to  have  been  fixed  upon  the  same  points — Dundas  declaring  that 
the  only  thing  which  would  make  the  alliance  useful  to  us  was  the 
cession  of  Trinkomali,  while  de  Castries  issued  orders  that  in  the  event 
of  war  with  England  Pondichery  was  to  be  evacuated  and  all  troops 
and  munitions  of  war  removed  to  Trinkomali,  which  harbour  seems 
to  have  been  promised  them  by  the  French  party  in  Holland.4 

It  was  while  these  matters  were  under  discussion  that  Tipu  sent  to 
France  the  first  of  the  embassies  by  which  he  tried  in  vain  to  secure 
material  assistance  against  the  English  in  the  event  of  war.  The 
ambassadors  proceeded  by  a  French  vessel,  the  Aurore,  and  were 
received  with  every  courtesy;  but  beyond  that  they  obtained  nothing, 
for,  as  has  been  seen,  de  Castries  did  not,  and  indeed  with  any  degree 

1  Gaudart,  Catalogue,  I,  142.  2  Idem,  pp.  157  sqq. 

*  Idem,  p.  361. 

4  Comwallis  Correspondence)  i,  357;  Wilks,  Historical  Sketches,  n,  124. 


336          EXCLUSION  OF  THE  FRENCH,  1784-1815 

of  financial  prudence  could  not,  desire  so  soon  to  renew  the  struggle. 
But  they  must  have  received  a  good  deal  of  encouragement  in  view 
of  future  contingencies,  and  that  must  have  contributed  to  stiffen 
Tipu's  attitude.  However,  with  the  usual  English  good  fortune,  Tipu 
selected  as  the  time  for  his  provocative  attack  upon  Travancore  the 
time  when  the  French  were  much  too  engrossed  by  their  domestic 
affairs  to  spare  a  thought  to  India;  so  that  he  was  left  to  meet  Corn- 
wallis's  attack  alone,  and  had  already  been  reduced  to  sign  away  half 
his  kingdom  and  surrender  much  of  his  treasure  before  the  year  1793 
renewed  war  in  Europe. 

Indeed  French  intrigues  had  been  somewhat  interrupted  by  the 
outbreak  of  the  Revolution.  In  the  French  settlements  in  India  the 
latter  produced  more  excitement  than  bloodshed;  and  as  soon  as  war 
broke  out  Pondichery  was  immediately  besieged  and  quickly  taken, 
and  the  other  factories  could  offer  no  resistance;  so  that  the  revolu- 
tionary spirits  soon  found  themselves  under  a  foreign  and  military - 
control,  while  of  their  possible  allies  Tipu  was  crippled,  and  the 
Marathas  were  looking  rather  to  the  conquest  of  their  weaker  neigh- 
bours in  the  north  and  south  than  to  the  attack  of  the  powerful  East 
India  Company.  So  the  Revolutionary  War  brought  no  immediate 
troubles  on  Indian  soil.  At  sea,  indeed,  French  privateers,  fitted  out 
at  the  Isle  of  France,  captured  many  prizes ;  but  though  these  losses 
weighed  heavily  on  private  merchants,  they  scarcely  affected  the 
resources  of  the  East  India  Company,  while  at  the  same  time  the 
naval  squadron  under  Rainier  accompanied  by  an  expedition 
equipped  at  Madras  in  1795  occupied  Ceylon,  Malacca,  Banda  and 
Amboina,  not  unassisted  by  the  partisans  of  the  Orangist  party, 
indignant  at  the  establishment  of  the  republic  in  Holland.  An 
expedition  from  England  occupied  the  Cape.  The  position  in  India, 
however,  was  thought  too  uncertain  to  launch  enterprises  against  the 
French  islands,  which  would  have  made  a  stouter  resistance  and 
required  a  considerable  proportion  of  the  English  forces  in  India  for 
their  subjugation. 

Although  the  French  settlements  in  India  had  all  been  occupied, 
there  still  remained  considerable  forces  under  French  control.  At 
Hyderabad  Raymond  had  built  up  a  body  of  sepoy  troops  under 
French  instruction  and  leadership;  under  Sindhia  Perron  had  done 
the  same;  and  although  these  armies  were  in  the  pay  of  Indian 
princes,  no  one  could  say  when  they  might  not  be  marched  against 
the  Company's  possessions,  with  or  without  the  consent  of  their 
ostensible  masters.  The  appearance  of  a  French  expedition  would 
almost  certainly  set  them  in  movement.  But  such  an  expedition  by 
the  ordinary  route  was  hardly  practicable  in  view  of  the  English 
superiority  at  sea  and  the  absence  of  stations  at  which  provisions  or 
protection  could  be  found.  In  these  circumstances  the  French  pressed 
into  realisation  a  scheme  which  had  long  floated  in  their  minds,  that. 


EGYPT  327 

namely,  of  establishing  themselves  in  Egypt,  and  thence  preparing  an 
attack  on  India. 

A  quarter  of  a  century  earlier  Warren  Hastings  had  attempted  to 
open  a  trade  with  Suez.  He  had  probably  been  impelled  by  con- 
siderations of  imperial  policy;  the  traders  whom  he  supported  may 
have  been  influenced  by  hopes  of  evading  the  regulations  which 
confined  the  English  trade  to  Europe  to  the  East  India  Company 
itself.  At  a  later  time  George  Baldwin,  under  the  influence  of  both 
motives,  for  a  time  succeeded  in  convincing  ministry  and  Company 
of  the  need  of  a  British  consul  in  Egypt  and  the  advisability  of  naming 
him  to  the  office.  But  his  efforts  had  come  to  nothing  under  the 
persistent  opposition  of  the  Turks  to  a  policy  which  would  have 
placed  the  half-independent  ruling  beys  in  intimate  association  with 
a  European  power.  These  ideas  of  the  importance  of  Egypt  had  not 
been  confined  to  the  English.  The  French  had  shared  them;  and  from 
about  1770  onwards  many  mdmoires  had  been  submitted  to  the 
ministers  urging  the  importance  of  Egypt  upon  their  attention.  The 
trade  between  Alexandria  and  Marseilles  was  active ;  the  French  had 
maintained  a  consul  in  Egypt;  and  after  the  war  of  the  American 
Revolution,  de  Castries's  eastern  projects  had  included  the  occupation 
of  Egypt  in  case  Austria  and  Russia  combined  to  partition  Turkey. 
In  1785  a  French  agent  succeeded  in  concluding  treaties  with  the 
leading  beys;  and  these  would  have  reopened  the  Red  Sea  route  for 
Indian  trade  had  not  the  Porte  at  once  resolved  to  vindicate  its 
authority  and  sent  an  expedition  which  overthrew  the  beys  and  for 
the  moment  re-established  Turkish  authority.1  When  therefore  in 
1798  Napoleon  decided  on  the  expedition  to  Egypt  as  a  stroke  aimed 
against  the  English,  he  was  carrying  into  effect  plans  laid  long  before. 
But  though  he  was  locally  successful,  this  partial  success  did  the  French 
cause  more  harm  than  good.  Napoleon  himself  accurately  appreciated 
the  situation  when  he  wrote :  La  puissance  qui  est  mattresse  de  V£gypte 
doit  l9Stre  d  la  longue  de  VInde.  Time  was  needed  to  concert  measures 
with  Tipu  or  the  Marathas,  to  prepare  and  organise  transport, 
whether  by  way  of  the  Red  Sea  or  by  the  route  of  Alexander.2 
Establishment  in  Egypt  did  not  and  could  not  lead  at  once  to  an 
attack  on  India;  so  that  while  in  March,  1800,  Napoleon  was  still 
talking  of  appearing  on  the  Indus,  Tipu  had  fallen  and  the  French 
force  at  Hyderabad  had  been  broken  up. 

The  immediate  effect  of  the  French  appearance  in  Egypt  was  to 
set  all  the  English  authorities  in  India  on  the  alert;  and  at  their  head 
was  a  man  of  exceptional  energy,  of  keen  insight,  of  great  organising 
power,  Lord  Mornington,  better  known  by  his  later  tide  of  the 
Marquess  Wellesley.  On  arriving  at  Calcutta  in  May,  1798,  he  was 
struck  by  the  diffusion  of  French  influence,  and  resolved  not  to  allow 

1  Charles-Roux,  Autour  d'une  route,  passim-,  Brit.  Mus,  Add.  MSS,  29210,  ff.  341  sqq. 
1  Charlcs-Roux,  L'Angleterre  ft  I'exptditionfranfoise,  i,  227-9. 


328          EXCLUSION  OF  THE  FRENCH,  1784-1815 

it  to  gather  to  a  head.  At  almost  the  same  time  he  learnt  that  Tipu 
had  recently  sent  an  embassy  to  the  Isle  of  France,  seeking  military 
help,  that  the  governor,  Malartic,  had  issued  a  proclamation  calling 
for  volunteers,  and  that  the  embassy  had  returned  to  Mangalore  with 
a  small  party  thus  collected.  Mornington  regarded,  and  rightly 
regarded,  this  as  a  sign  of  Tipu's  reviving  hopes.  Then  came  news  of 
Napoleon's  success  in  Egypt,  impelling  the  governor-general  to  meet 
the  danger  before  it  grew  greater,  and  inspiring  Tipu  with  the  hope 
that  help  was  nearer  than  it  really  was.  As  a  first  measure  Mornington 
entered  into  negotiations  with  the  Nizam,  who  in  1 795  had  suffered 
a  severe  defeat  by  the  Marathas  followed  by  considerable  loss  of 
territory.  He  was  willing  enough  to  sacrifice  his  French-led  troops 
who  had  been  beaten,  though  not  by  any  fault  of  theirs,  at  Kharda, 
if  thereby  he  could  secure  the  services  of  a  body  of  the  Company's 
forces.  Thus  was  signed  the  first  of  that  group  of  treaties  which 
contributed  so  much  to  establish  the  Company's  dominion  in  India; 
and  then  Mornington  demanded  of  Tipu  that  he  should  expel  all 
Frenchmen  from  Mysore.  Tipu,  encouraged  by  the  apparent  approach 
of  the  French,  could  not  bring  himself  to  answer  these  demands  till 
the  English  troops  had  already  crossed  his  frontiers  and  the  last 
Mysore  war  had  begun.  Once  more  French  attempts  had  gone  far 
enough  to  involve  their  friends  in  trouble  without  going  far  enough 
to  afford  them  material  aid. 

As  soon  as  the  danger  from  Mysore  had  been  overcome,  Mornington 
contemplated  three  further  objects.  One  was  the  conquest  of  the 
French  islands,  as  the  only  effective  measure  that  could  be  taken  to 
stop  the  privateers  from  preying  on  English  vessels;  the  second  was 
the  capture  of  Batavia;  and  the  third  was  an  expedition  directed 
against  the  French  in  Egypt.  With  these  alternatives  in  view,  he 
assembled  troops  at  Trinkomali.  But  the  last  of  these  was  a  project 
which  the  governor-general  perceived  could  not  be  prudently  under- 
taken except  in  co-operation  with  an  expedition  from  England;  and 
the  first  was  prevented  by  the  refusal  of  Commodore  Rainier  to  co- 
operate, as  he  had  received  no  specific  instructions  to  that  end.  At 
first,  therefore,  Mornington's  views  were  limited  to  his  design  against 
Batavia.  But  various  circumstances  deferred  the  dispatch  of  the 
expedition  till  at  length  on  6  February,  1801,  dispatches  arrived 
announcing  Abercromby's  expedition  to  Egypt,  and  desiring  the 
assistance  of  a  force  from  India.1  Mornington's  reluctance  therefore 
to  send  the  expedition  so  far  to  the  east  as  Batavia  was  rewarded  by 
his  now  being  able  to  send  it  to  the  Red  Sea  with  a  minimum  of 
delay.  Baird,  to  whom  the  command  had  been  entrusted,  landed 
at  Kosseir,  marched  across  the  desert  to  Thebes,  and  on  10  August 
reached  Cairo,  six  weeks  after  it  had  surrendered  to  Hutchinson, 
Abercromby's  successor,  but  in  time  to  impress  Menou  at  Alexandria 

1  Wellesky  Despatches,  n,  436. 


RENEWAL  OF  WAR  329 

with  a  full  consciousness  of  his  inability  to  continue  the  struggle.1 
The  first  French  attempt  to  establish  themselves  on  the  overland  route 
to  India  had  been  defeated. 

The  Revolutionary  War  thus  came  to  an  end  in  1802  with  a  marked 
advantage  to  the  English  in  the  East.  Nor  did  the  brief  breathing- 
space  which  followed  last  long  enough  to  permit  the  French  to  regain 
a  positive  foothold  in  India.  The  treaty  which  had  closed  the  war 
merely  stipulated  for  the  retrocession  of  the  French  and  Dutch  factories 
in  India  and  of  the  Cape  and  the  spice-islands  to  the  Dutch.  Ceylon 
remained  permanently  in  English  hands.  But  before  Decaen,  the 
newly  appointed  captain-general  of  French  India,  could  reach 
Pondichery,  the  English  ministry  was  already  doubtful  of  the  duration 
of  peace.  A  dispatch  (17  October,  1802)  received  by  Wellesley 
30  March,  1803,  directed  him  to  delay  the  restitution  of  the  French 
factories;  and  though  these  instructions  were  cancelled  by  later  orders 
of  1 6  November  (received  8  May),2  yet  even  then  the  Indian  govern- 
ment was  warned  against  the  possibility  of  French  attempts  upon  the 
Portuguese  possessions  in  Asia.3  Soon  after  came  news  of  the  critical 
situation  in  Europe;  and  on  6  July  the  governor-general  learnt  that 
the  renewal  of  war  was  officially  thought  very  probable.  In  the  first 
week  of  September  he  learnt  that  diplomatic  relations  had  been 
broken  off,  and  a  few  days  later  that  war  had  been  declared.  It  was 
what  with  his  usual  discernment  he  had  expected.  At  the  close  of 
the  previous  year,  more  than  four  months  before  Decaen  had  sailed 
from  Brest,  Wellesley  had  directed  the  governor  of  Madras  not  to 
deliver  up  the  French  possessions  without  specific  orders  from  Bengal. 
On  15  June,  1803,  Binot,  Decaen's  chief  of  staff,  arrived  at  Pondichery 
in  the  frigate  Belle  Poule  with  authority  to  take  over  the  place.  He 
was  allowed  to  land,  and  his  dispatches  were  sent  up  to  Calcutta, 
arriving  there  4  July.  Wellesley  resolved  at  once  not  to  hand  over 
the  French  possessions  until  receiving  further  orders  from  Europe; 
and  accordingly  deferred  answering  the  dispatches  from  Decaen  until 
that  officer  should  actually  arrive  in  India.  This  event  took  place  on 
1 1  July,  and  was  known  at  Calcutta  on  the  23rd,  together  with  the 
further  news  that  a  French  packet  had  come  in  the  day  after  Decaen's 
arrival,  and  that  Decaen's  squadron  had  quitted  the  Pondichery 
roads  that  night.  The  packet  was  the  Belief 9  sent  out  after  Decaen 
with  orders  that  if  war  had  broken  out  by  the  time  of  his  arrival  in 
Indian  waters,  he  was  to  proceed,  not  to  Pondichery,  but  to  the 
French  islands.  Binot  and  his  party,  being  ashore,  were  left  behind, 
and  when  the  news  of  war  arrived,  were  obliged  to  surrender.4 

But  though  the  French  flag  was  thus  excluded  from  India,  French 
intrigue  was  active.  Binot  had  employed  his  brief  sojourn  at  Pondi- 

1  Charles-Roux,  op.  cit.  n,  213-4.  *  Wellesley  Despatches,  ra,  72,  98. 

*  Prcntout,  Decaen  et  Wle  de  France,  p.  437. 

4  Gaudart,  op.  cit.  n,  460  sqq.\  Prentout,  op.  cit.  pp.  39  sqq. 


330          EXCLUSION  OF  THE  FRENCH,  1784-1815 

chery  in  sounding  the  rulers  who  seemed  likely  to  welcome  his  over- 
tures. Thus  he  opened  relations  with  the  rajas  of  Tanjore  and 
Travancore,  and  sent  to  visit  the  Marathas  an  officer  who  obtained 
an  English  passport  under  the  assumed  guise  of  a  German  painter. 
Decaen  took  up  the  quest  for  allies.  He  had  agents  at  Tranquebar 
in  the  south,  and  Serampur  in  the  north,  until,  after  the  breach 
between  England  and  Denmark,  these  places  passed  temporarily  into 
English  keeping.  These  men,  with  their  spies  constantly  coming  and 
going,  deemed  all  India  ready  for  revolt  against  the  English.  They 
represented  the  Vellore  mutiny  as  having  spread  to  every  cantonment 
in  the  south.  The  lesser  southern  chiefs  were  all  ready,  and  only 
needed  a  small  sum  of  money,  for  a  rising.  To  them  the  English  cause 
was  maintained  (as  one  of  them  wrote)  by  nothing  but  violence  and 
corruption.1  A  manifesto,  addressed  by  Decaen  to  the  chiefs  of 
Hindustan,  urged  them  to  attack  the  Company  with  their  united 
force  if  they  would  save  themselves  from  the  fate  of  Oudh,  Arcot  and 
Mysore.2  But  all  this,  as  Prentout  has  justly  remarked,  served  the 
English  cause  better  than  the  French.  It  assisted  the  English  to  recognise 
their  enemies,  without  providing  the  latter  with  anything  more  service- 
able than  encouragement  in  what  was  to  prove  a  suicidal  policy. 

The  fact  was  that  the  French,  now  as  in  the  Revolutionary  War, 
could  not  get  within  reach  in  India.  "It  is  painful",  wrote  Decaen 
commenting  on  the  sanguine  reports  of  his  agents  in  India,  "to  learn 
of  all  these  good  dispositions  and  to  be  unable  to  support  them."8 
But  his  military  forces  were  barely  enough  to  garrison  the  islands; 
the  French  squadron — one  ship  of  the  line  and  three  frigates — under 
the  unenterprising  leadership  of  Admiral  Linois  was  not  even  able 
to  take  the  China  convoy  under  the  protection  of  the  Company's 
armed  vessels  (14  February,  1804);  and  the  only  serious  means  of 
attack  in  Decaen's  power  was  the  encouragement  of  the  privateers, 
which  again  covered  the  Indian  seas  in  all  directions,  capturing  a 
great  number  of  private  merchantmen  and  even  a  few  Company's 
ships.  The  two  Surcoufs,  in  the  Caroline  and  the  Revenant,  were  perhaps 
the  boldest  and  most  enterprising  of  the  privateers;  and  after  Linois' 
departure  from  Indian  waters  in  1805  (to  fall  in  with  an  English 
squadron  off  the  Canaries  13  March,  1806)  the  frigates  which  then 
came  under  Decaen's  control  vigorously  seconded  the  efforts  of  the 
privateers.  Obstinate  conflicts  took  place  on  many  occasions  when 
these  met  armed  English  vessels,  as  when  the  Psyche  was  taken  by 
the  English  frigate  San  Fiorenzo.  But  all  these  efforts  did  nothing 
beyond  inflicting  heavy  private  losses,  and  left  the  Company's 
position  in  India  untouched,  while  the  reoccupation  of  the  Cape  by 
the  English  in  1805  deprived  the  French  islands  of  their  nearest 
supplies  of  foodstuffs. 

1  Prentout,  op.  cit.  pp.  374-7.  a  Wellesley  Despatches,  m,  663. 

*  Prentout,  op.  cit.  pp.  460  sqq. 


GARDANE'S  MISSION  331 

In  Europe  Napoleon  planned  eastern  expeditions — in  1805  three 
squadrons  and  20,000  men;1  in  1807  a  triple  plan  which  was  to  have 
combined  land  expeditions  through  Central  Asia  and  Egypt  with  a 
sea  expedition  round  the  Cape2 — but  these  fell  through,  in  part 
because  of  the  English  command  of  the  sea,  in  part  because  of 
Napoleon's  continental  preoccupations.  It  was  in  preparation  for  the 
second  of  these  that  the  embassy  of  General  Gardane  to  Persia  was 
arranged.  In  1803  war  had  broken  out  between  Persia  and  Russia; 
and  in  1805  the  latter  power  had  joined  England  in  the  Third 
Coalition.  Persia  naturally  turned  to  France  for  help,  and  on  4  May, 
1807,  was  signed  the  Treaty  of  Finkenstein,  by  which  Napoleon 
guaranteed  the  integrity  of  Persia,  engaged  to  use  every  effort  to 
compel  Russia  to  evacuate  Georgia,  and  promised  supplies  of  field 
guns  and  small  arms;  while  the  shah  engaged  to  break  off  all  relations, 
political  and  economic,  with  the  English  (thus  subscribing  to  the 
Continental  System)  and  to  give  all  facilities  and  assistance  to  French 
military  and  naval  forces  on  their  way  to  attack  the  British  in  India. 
On  this  agreement,  Gardane  was  sent  to  Teheran,  to  promote  Persian 
hostility  against  England  and  Russia,  and  to  collect  information  about 
routes  and  resources  for  the  projected  expedition.  But  Gardane's 
mission,  like  Decaen's,  was  foredoomed  to  failure.  When  the  Treaty 
of  Finkenstein  was  signed  Napoleon  was  already  contemplating  peace 
and  even  alliance  with  Russia;  and  when  he  realised  these  ideas  by 
the  Treaty  of  Tilsit  and  the  entente  with  Alexander,  he  was  no  longer 
willing  to  do  anything  to  support  the  Persians  against  his  new  ally. 
Here  was  one  more  example  of  the  way  in  which  the  interests  of  a 
world  power  are  apt  to  diverge  and  become  irreconcilable.  So  long 
as  the  Persians  could  hope  for  French  support  in  the  recovery  of 
Georgia,  they  remained  willing  to  exclude  the  English  from  Persia, 
as  Malcolm  found  in  1808,  when  he  was  sent  by  Minto  to  counter  the 
French  mission  but  failed  even  to  get  a  footing  in  the  country, 
although  backed  by  an  armed  force;  but  when  in  the  autumn  of  that 
year  the  Persians  perceived  that  they  would  have  to  negotiate  with 
Russia  direct,  and  that  the  French  would  not  even  act  as  mediators, 
they  concluded  naturally  that  the  advantages  of  the  French  alliance 
were  all  on  one  side;  on  the  arrival  of  Harford  Jones  to  replace 
Malcolm,  not  even  Gardane's  threats  of  departure  could  prevent  the 
reception  of  the  new  English  mission;  and  so,  early  in  1809,  Harford 
Jones  replaced  Gardane  at  Teheran,  while  Napoleon,  involved  in 
continental  interests,  abandoned  his  schemes  of  emulating  the  exploits 
of  Alexander  the  Great.8 
i ;  The  time  had  now  come  also  for  the  complete  expulsion  of  the 

1  Prentout,  op.  rit.  pp.  402  sqq. 

1  Gardane's  Instructions,  10  May,  1807,  ap.  Gardane,  Mission  du  General  Gardane, 
pp.  81  sqq. 

1  Gardane,  Mission  du  Central  Gardane;  Kaye,  Life  of  Malcolm,  i,  395,  etc.,  Minto  in  India, 
PP-  55  W- 


33*          EXCLUSION  OF  THE  FRENCH,  1784-1815  • 

French  from  the  East.  The  English  squadrons  at  the  Cape  and  in 
India  were  strengthened.  The  French  islands  were  blockaded  by 
English  vessels;  and  although  over-rashness  on  the  part  of  their 
commanders  led  to  the  loss  of  two  sunk  and  two  taken,  in  the  course  of 
1 8 10  both  the  Isle  of  France  and  the  fie  Bonaparte  (as  Bourbon  had 
been  renamed)  were  compelled  to  surrender  to  Admiral  Bertie  and 
General  Abercromby;  while  in  the  next  year  another  expedition 
occupied  Java,  to  which  island  a  French  regiment  had  been  sent  some 
time  before  by  Decaen.  These  captures  brought  to  an  end  the  activities 
of  the  privateers,  who  thus  lost  the  bases  at  which  they  had  refitted, 
revictualled,  and  sold  their  prizes;  and  wiped  out  the  French  reputa- 
tion in  India.  The  settlement  brought  by  the  treaties  of  1814  and  1815 
confirmed  the  position  established  by  force  of  arms.  The  French  and 
the  Dutch  recognised  for  the  first  time  British  sovereignty  over  the 
Company's  possessions;  the  French  agreed  to  maintain  no  troops  and 
erect  no  fortresses;  and  so  the  Company  was  at  last  completely  freed 
from  European  menace  just  at  the  moment  when  it  was,  under  the 
leadership  of  Lord  Hastings,  about  to  establish  an  unquestioned 
predominance  in  India. 


CHAPTER  XX 

TIPU  SULTAN,   1785-1802 

-DY  that  "humiliating  pacification"  (as  Hastings  called  it),  the 
Treaty  of  Mangalore,  Tipu  appeared  as  a  conqueror.  Grant  Duff, 
years  afterwards,  asserted  that  the  governor-general  was 

only  prevented  from  disavowing  and  annulling  it  by  the  confusion  which  mus 
have  resulted  to  the  Company's  affairs  in  consequence  of  the  fulfilment  of  a  part 
of  the  terms,  before  it  could  have  been  possible  to  obtain  their  ratification.1 

There  is  no  doubt,  indeed,  that  Hastings  regarded  it  with  the  dislike 
and  disapproval  with  which  he  viewed  almost  the  whole  of  the  policy 
and  actions  of  the  rulers  of  Madras;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  when  he 
wrote  his  Memoirs  relative  to  the  State  of  India  during  the  long  journey 
home  which  began  on  5  February,  1 785,  he  seemed  not  to  anticipate 
any  immediate  consequences  of  danger. 

It  is  not  likely  that  Tipoo  should  so  soon  choose  to  involve  himself  in  a  new  war 
with  us,  deprived  of  all  his  confederates,  and  these  become  his  rivals ;  nor  that, 
whenever  he  shall  have  formed  such  a  design,  he  will  suffer  it  to  break  out  in  petty 
broils  with  our  borderers. 2 

None  the  less  it  was  quite  evident  that  war  was  pending  between 
Tipu  and  the  Marathas.  The  Nizam  and  Nana  were  known  to  be 
in  negotiation  if  not  in  alliance:  the  power  of  Sindhia  cast  its  mantle 
of  supremacy  over  the  Moghul.  The  claim  which  Tipu,  as  it  seemed 
with  unjustifiable  audacity,  advanced  upon  Bijapur — which  mean- 
while Nana  had  promised  to  surrender  to  the  *Nizam — may  have 
been  based  on  an  imperial  grant  to  Hyder  of  a  portion  of  the  Deccan, 
and  was  certainly  not  one  which  in  1 785  could  be  confirmed  or  made 
effective.  But,  while  wisdom  would  have  persuaded  Tipu  to  be  content 
with  the  successes  he  had  won,  his  inherent  passion  and  restlessness 
urged  him  to  new  aggression.  Thomas  Munro,  when  he  summed  up 
his  career  in  1799,  said  "a  restless  spirit  of  innovation,  and  a  wish  to 
have  everything  to  originate  from  himself,  was  the  predominant 
feature  of  his  character".8  Upon  the  success  of  the  war  which  ended 
in  1784  he  formed  the  designs  first  of  crushing  the  Nizam  and  the 
Marathas  and  then  turning,  flushed  with  victory,  upon  the  English. 
This  project  he  avowed  to  the  French.4  Early  in  1785  he  attacked 
the  hill-post  of  Nargund,  belonging  to  a  Brahmin  desai,  with  whom 
he  had  already  had  unfriendly  relations,  the  one  making  extravagant 

1  Grant  Duff,  n,  460. 

2  Forrest,  Selections  from  the  State  Papers  of. . .  Warren  Hastings,  n,  54. 


w.  233. 

Wilts',  Historical  Skctdies  of  Southern  India,  11,  535  sqq. 


334  TIPU  SULTAN,  1785-1802 

demands,  the  other  claiming  tribute.1  In  vain  the  Marathas  inter- 
vened to  save  Nargund  and  Kittur:  by  guile  as  well  as  force  Tipu 
made  a  successful  conquest.  Nana,  alarmed,  looked  for  help  from 
the  English  in  the  conquest  which  he  foresaw.  He  appealed  to  the 
Treaty  of  Salbai  and  asked  for  aid  against  Tipu:  Macpherson,  in  the 
cautious  spirit  of  the  non-intervention  policy  which  was  now  ascendant 
in  the  counsels  of  the  Company,  replied  that  the  treaty 

did  not  stipulate  that  the  friends  and  enemies  of  the  two  States  should  be  mutual, 
but  that  neither  party  should  afford  assistance  to  the  enemies  of  the  other,  and  that 
by  the  treaty  of  Mangalore  the  English  were  bound  not  to  assist  the  enemies  of 
Tipu. 

Thus  he  gave  the  sultan  of  Mysore  reason  to  think  that  he  could 
proceed  undisturbed. 

But  Nana  was  not  going  to  fall  without  a  struggle.  He  applied 
to  Goa  for  alliance:  a  step  which  alarmed  Macpherson  into  estab- 
lishing a  resident  (C.  W.  Malet)  at  Poona. 

By  the  fifth  month  of  1786  the  Marathas  were  in  alliance  with  the 
Nizam  and  ready  to  move.  Their  forces  joined  on  i  May,  and  on 
20  May  they  took  Badami.  Against  Tipu  also  were  Holkar  and 
Mudaji  Bhonsle:  Kittur  was  recovered:  the  victors  returned  home 
flushed  with  success :  Hari  Pant  advanced,  and  relieved  Adoni,  while 
Tipu  captured  Savanur.  The  end  was  a  peace  which  hardly  modified 
the  status  quo.  The  Marathas  retained  important  districts  (Nargund, 
Kittur,  Badami)  and  Tipu  recovered  others.  His  brother-in-law 
regained  Savanur,  and  a  kinsman  of  the  Nizam  Adoni.  On  the  whole 
the  treaty  of  1 787  was  a  rebuff  for  Tipu.  He  had  begun  to  perceive 
that  the  English  were  more  dangerous  than  he  had  thought.  Malet 
-  at  Poona  and  the  military  preparations  of  Cornwallis  gave  him  pause. 

Hardly  had  Cornwallis  arrived  in  India  when  his  attention  was 
turned  to  Tipu.  His  knowledge  of  international  politics  made  him 
consider  India  as  a  vital  point  in  the  enduring  rivalry  between 
England  and  France:  perhaps  he  was  the  first  English  statesman  in 
India  who  fully  grasped  its  importance.  A  letter  of  March,  I788,2 
shows  that  he  had  considered  the  situation  in  all  its  bearings. 

"I  look  upon  a  rupture  with  Tipu  as  a  certain  and  immediate  consequence  of 
a  war  with  France",  he  wrote  to  Malet,  "and  in  that  event  a  vigorous  co-operation 
of  the  Marathas  would  certainly  be  of  the  utmost  importance  to  our  interests  in 
this  country." 

The  settlement  of  the  Guntoor  Sarkar  affair  caused  a  new  settlement 

with  the  Nizam,  and  this,  embodied  in  a  curiously  disingenuous 

message — which  kept  the  non-intervention  order  of  the  act  of  1784 

-in  the  letter  but  broke  it  in  the  spirit — brought  about  the  war  which 

1  See  Kirkpatrick's  Letters  of  Tipu,  referred  to  by  Wilks,  Historical  Sketches,  n,  535, 
1  Cornwallis  Correspondence,  i,  345. 


THE  WAR  OF  1790  335 

Cornwallis  had  foreseen.  Wilks,1  the  historian  of  Southern  India  at 
this  period,  sardonically  remarks  that 

it  is  highly  instructive  to  observe  a  statesman,  justly  extolled  for  moderate  and 
pacific  dispositions,  thus  indirectly  violating  a  law,  enacted  for  the  enforcement  of 
these  virtues,  by  entering  into  a  very  intelligible  offensive  alliance. 

Cornwallis,  of  course,  knew  well  what  he  was  doing,  and  was  con- 
vinced that  he  could  do  nothing  else  with  any  regard  for  the  safety 
of  the  English  in  Madras:  he  expressed  himself  strongly  to  Malet2  on 
the  danger  of  having  to  make  war  without  efficient  allies. 

The  actual  ignition  of  the  flame  (foreseen  by  Tipu,  who  had  long 
ago  promised  the  French  to  attack  the  English,  as  well  as  by  Corn- 
wallis) was  caused  by  Tipu's  attack  on  Travancore,  29  December, 
1789.  The  ostensible  reason  for  this  was  the  sale  of  Jaikottai  and 
Kranganur  to  the  raja  by  the  Dutch,  Tipu  asserting  that  they 
belonged  to  his  feudatory  the  raja  of  Cochin.  The  raja  of  Travancore 
said  that  the  Dutch  had  held  them  so  long  ago  as  1654  and  acquired 
them  from  the  Portuguese,  and  he  applied  to  Hollond,  the  governor 
of  Madras,  for  aid.  It  seems  probable  that  Hollond  was  already  warned 
of  what  was  about  to  happen,  and  had  taken  a  bribe  from  Tipu;  he 
certainly  delayed  preparations  and  endeavoured  to  persuade  the 
governor-general  that  they  were  unnecessary.8  Then  when  Tipu 
attacked  Travancore,  the  raja,  though  included  by  name  among 
England's  allies  in  the  Treaty  of  Mangalore,  was  left  to  his  fate. 
Tipu  carried  all  before  him  till  Cornwallis,  indignant  at  the  dis- 
graceful sacrifice  "that  had  been  made  of  British  honour",  intervened 
in  person,  preluding  his  action  by  a  letter  condemning  the  conduct 
of  the  Madras  Government  in  the  most  vigorous  terms.4  Orders  had 
been  disobeyed,  preparations  not  made,  and  allies  betrayed.  Now 
the  resources  of  the  Carnatic  must  be  exploited :  even  the  sums  set 
apart  for  the  payment  of  the  nawab's  enormous  debts  must  be 
seized;  at  the  same  time  the  necessary  alliances  with  the  Marathas 
and  the  Nizam  must  be  immediately  stabilised;  Cornwallis  hoped, 
that  "the  common  influence  of  passion  and  the  considerations  of 
evident  interest"  would  draw  them  to  his  side.  And  so  it  proved. 
On  i  June,  and  4  July,  1 790,  treaties  were  made  with  the  Marathas 
and  the  Nizam  in  view  of  the  imminent  war  with  Tipu.  These  formed 
"the  Triple  Alliance";  and  the  war  began  in  May,  1790. 

Briefly  the  objects  may  be  expressed  as  follows.  Tipu  was  continuing 
his  father's  attempt  to  win  supremacy  in  Southern  India.  The  Nizam 
and  the  Marathas  were  in  greater  fear  of  him  than  of  the  English. 
Cornwallis  saw  danger  near  and  far,  to  all  British  interests  in  India, 
and  in  the  wider  international  spheres  of  Europe  and  America.  His 
experience  had  accustomed  his  mind  to  world-wide  maps. 

.  cit.  ra,  58.  *  Cornwallis  Correspondence,  i,  406. 

-1-" ,  Political  History  of  India,  i,  72.  4  Cornwallis  Correspondence  t 1,  491. 


336  TIPU  SULTAN,  1785-1802 

The  war  lasted  for  nearly  two  years,  and  the  result  was  both 
disastrous  to  Tipu  and  the  prelude  to  greater  and  final  disaster.  It 
fell  into  three  campaigns.  The  first  was  commanded  by  General 
Medows,  whose  devotion  to  duty  and  universal  popularity  were 
contrasted  by  Cornwallis1  with  the  qualities  and  estimation  of  the 
late  governor  of  Madras.  Transferred  from  Bombay  (where  Ralph 
Abercromby  replaced  him)  to  Madras,  this  gallant  but  precipitate 
officer  was  to  lead  the  principal  force  of  the  Carnatic  to  seize  the 
Coimbatore  district  and  then  to  penetrate  through  the  Gazzalhatti 
pass  to  the  heart  of  Mysore.  Colonel  Kelly  was  to  watch  over  the 
safety  of  the  Carnatic  and  the  passes  that  led  into  it  most  directly  from 
Mysore.  To  General  Abercromby  with  the  army  of  Bombay  was  given 
the  task  of  subjugating  the  territory  of  Tipu  on  the  Malabar  Coast, 
a  task  which  he  accomplished  in  a  few  weeks.  Medows  was  less 
immediately  successful.  A  chain  of  forts  stretched  from  the  Coro- 
mandel  Coast  to  the  Gazzalhatti  Gorge;  all  these  were  eventually 
captured  and  by  July,  1790,  Medows  stood  at  Coimbatore  sixty  miles 
from  his  nearest  support  and  ninety  from  the  farthest.  Then  Tipu 
suddenly  descended  the  famous  pass  and  with  rapidity  and  skill 
inflicted  sharp  blows  on  the  British  troops  in  different  quarters.  On 
10  November  he  was  narrowly  prevented  Arom  destroying  the  force 
of  Colonel  Maxwell,  successor  to  Kelly;  six  days  later  Medows  came 
up  and  the  British  force  was  saved.  But  Tipu,  moving  rapidly,  was  still 
a  source  of  considerable  danger,  and  it  was  thought  well  that  Corn- 
wallis himself  should  come  to  the  scene  of  action.  The  Marathas  and 
the  Nizam,  however,  were  giving  useful  aid,  and  the  capture  of 
Dharwar  added  greatly  to  the  allies'  security  and  power. 

The  year  1791  found  Cornwallis  in  command,  and  in  politics  the 
project  broached  of  deposing  the  usurper  Tipu  in  favour  of  the  heir 
of  the  old  Hindu  rajas  of  Mysore.  The  governor-general  recovered 
in  India  not  a  little  of  the  military  reputation  he  had  lost  in  America; 
it  is  not  insignificant  that  the  favourite  portrait  of  him  shows  a  back- 
ground of  eastern  tents  and  turbaned  soldiery.  Taking  a  new  point 
of  attack  he  moved  by  Vellore  and  Ambur  to  the  capture  of  Bangalore, 
which  he  achieved  on  21  March,  1791 ;  and  by  13  May  he  was  within 
nine  miles  of  Seringapatam.  But  the  campaign  ended  in  disappoint- 
ment. Tipu  showed  unexpected  generalship,  and  Cornwallis  when 
the  rains  came  was  compelled  to  retreat  by  the  utter  failure  (as  Wilks 
reports)  of  all  the  equipments  of  his  army:  Madras,  incompetent  and 
sluggish,  again  at  fault.  It  seemed  necessary  to  open  negotiations 
with  Mysore,  but  Cornwallis  was  not  disposed  to  yield,  and  when 
Tipu  sent  a  propitiatory  offering,  it  was  with  delight  that  "the  whole 
army  beheld  the  loads  of  fruit  untouched  and  the  camels  unaccepted 
returning  to  Seringapatam". 

When  the  fighting  was  resumed,  though  Tipu  succeeded  in  cap- 

1  Cornwallis  Correspondence,  I,  429. 


TREATY  OF  SERINGAPATAM  337 

turing  Coimbatore  (3  November,  1791),  which  had  been  most 
gallantly  defended,  the  troops  of  Cornwallis,  gradually  removing  all 
obstacles,  and  after  arduous  efforts  (recounted  with  enthusiastic 
vigour  by  Wilks),  occupying  the  chain  efforts  which  was  interposed, 
drew  near  to  the  capital;  and  on  5  February,  1792,  the  lines  were 
drawn  round  Seringapatam.  Cornwallis's  letters  give  graphic  descrip- 
tions of  the  attacks  which  followed.  Tipu  displayed  much  military 
and  diplomatic  skill,  the  native  allies  were  urgent  with  Cornwallis  to 
conclude  the  war  by  negotiation,  and  the  governor-general  was  never 
keen  completely  to  crush  an  enemy.  Three  days  before  peace  was  signed 
he  wrote  to  Sir  Charles  Oakeley,  governor  of  Madras,  that  "an 
arrangement  which  effectually  destroys  the  dangerous  power  of  Tipu 
will  be  more  beneficial  to  the  public  than  the  capture  of  Seringapatam, 
and  it  will  render  the  final  settlement  with  our  Allies,  who  seem  very 
partial  to  it,  much  more  easy'5;  and  the  Secret  Committee  had 
anticipated  such  an  arrangement  with  approval.1  Half  Tipu's  terri- 
tory was  surrendered,2  and  a  large  portion  of  this  went  to  the  Nizam 
(from  the  Krishna  to  beyond  the  Pennar  river  with  the  forts  of  Ganj- 
kottai  and  Cuddapah)  and  to  the  Marathas  (extending  their  boundary 
to  the  Tungabhadra) ;  while  the  English  secured  all  his  lands  on  the 
Malabar  Coast  between  Travancore  and  the  Kaway,  the  Baramahal 
district  and  that  of  Dindigul,  and  Tipu  was  obliged  to  grant  inde- 
pendence to  the  much  persecuted  raja  of  Coorg.  At  home  great 
interest  was  aroused  by  one  provision :  two  sons  of  Tipu  were  sur- 
rendered as  hostages  for  his  good  faith.  A  popular  picture  represents 
them  being  presented  to  Cornwallis  amid  an  assemblage  of  perturbed 
Muhammadans.  They  were  nurtured  carefully  at  Calcutta:  their 
portraits,  not  uninteresting,  are  still  at  Government  House.  In 
England  also  the  treaty  seemed  a  most  satisfactory  example  of  "  our 
old  and  true  policy",3  presumably  one  of  deliberate  avoidance  of 
territorial  acquisitions  beyond  the  necessities  of  safety — for  it  was  on 
this  ground  in  his  letters  home  that  Cornwallis  justified  his  seizures; 
but  he  was  utterly  deceived  in  thinking  that  Tipu  recognised  defeat  or 
ceased  to  plan  renewed  aggression.  Yet  the  English  alliance  with  the 
Nizam  undoubtedly  received  a  new  accession  of  strength;  it  may 
be  said  to  have  now  reached  something  of  the  traditional  stability 
which  in  Europe  linked  Portugal  and  England  in  unbroken  alliance. 
The  jealous  Poona  Marathas  "saw  with  regret  the  shield  of  British 
power  held  up  between  them  and  the  Nizam":  new  seeds  for  future 
war  were  planted  though  they  did  not  grow  up  for  some  years.  Corn- 
wallis was  not  blind  either,  though  he  did  not  go  much  beyond 
declaring4  (to  Sir  C.  Malet  at  Poona)  that  the  allies  were  bound 
mutually  to  guarantee  what  each  had  won  from  Tipu.  But  before  he 
left  India  a  cloud  was  beginning  to  rise  on  the  horizon  towards 

1  Cornwallis  Correspondence,  H,  159.        *  Idemy  p.  537. 

8  Annual  Register,  1792.  *  Cornwallis  Correspondence,  n,  176  sqq. 


22 


338  TIPU  SULTAN,  1785-1802 

Mysore.1  Early  in  October,  1793,  the  governor-general  returned  to 
England,  and  his  successor  had  none  of  his  military  interests  or  inter- 
national experience,  and  little  of  his  political  sagacity. 

The  war  between  the  Marathas  and  the  Nizam  (1794-5),  *m  which 
Shore  not  unnaturally  avoided  intervention,  ended  in  the  Nizam's 
defeat  and  in  Sir  John  Shore's  belief  that  he  was  a  less  valuable  ally 
than  his  conquerors,  with  the  inept  anticipation  that  there  was  "no 
immediate  probability  that  we  shall  be  involved  in  war".2  He  had, 
says  his  biographer,3  anticipated  no  danger  from  the  union  of  the 
Marathas  and  Tipu  against  the  Nizam,  and  contemplated  without 
apprehension  the  total  collapse  of  the  latter's  government.  It  is 
sufficient  comment  on  Sir  John  Shore's  political  wisdom  that  it,  alone 
of  the  three,  survives  to-day. 

The  results  of  Shore's  non-intervention  were  speedily  seen.  The 
Nizam  dismissed  his  English  troops  and  increased  the  French,  and 
but  for  his  son's  rebellion,  which  the  English  had  remained  long 
enough  to  suppress,  would  have  thrown  himself  entirely  on  the  French 
side,  and  thus  have  come  inevitably  into  alliance  with  Tipu.  Shore 
returned  to  England  in  1798.  A  very  careful  and  conscientious 
administrator,  he  was  succeeded  by  a  man  of  genius,  who  became 
one  of  the  makers  of  British  India.  Himself  without  Indian  experience, 
Richard  Wellesley,  Earl  of  Mornington  (who  arrived  on  26  April, 
1798),  approached  the  problems  of  the  East  with  a  mind  unbiassed 
though  not  uninformed.  He  was  already  on  the  Board  of  Control 
and  had  studied  the  history,  politics  and  government  of  India 
assiduously.  He  had  accepted  the  governorship  of  Madras,  and  had 
therefore  observed  the  difficulties  of  Southern  India  particularly, 
on  Lord  Cornwallis  being  appointed  governor-general  a  second 
time  (i  February,  1797);  but  when  Cornwallis  accepted  the  lord- 
lieutenancy  of  Ireland  a  few  months  later,  Wellesley  was  sent  on 
instead  to  Calcutta.  His  earliest  letters  to  Dundas,4  on  his  way  out 
to  India,  evince  a  remarkable  knowledge  of  Indian  affairs,  and  on 
28  February,  1798,  though  he  did  not  know  of  Tipu's  recent  nego- 
tiations with  France,  he  saw  that  in  the  power  of  Mysore  lay  the  key 
to  the  whole  position.  Since  Cornwallis  had  left  India  the  fruits  of 
his  successes  had  disappeared. 

"The  balance  of  power  in  India",  he  wrote,  "no  longer  exists  upon  the  same 
footing  on  which  it  was  placed  by  the  peace  of  Seringapatam.  The  question  there- 
fore must  arise  how  it  may  best  be  brought  back  to  the  state  in  which  you  have 
directed  me  to  maintain  it." 

But  he  soon  saw  that  the  balance  of  power,  if  such  there  were  to  be, 
must  stand  on  a  very  different  footing  from  that  on  which  Cornwallis, 
or  Shore,  or  even  Dundas,  believed  that  it  would  rest  securely. 

Cornwallis  Correspondence,  n,  219. 

"iistory,  n,  App.  n,  xuv 
ife,  i,  320. 

rellesley  Papers,  vol.  i. 


CAUSES  OF  WAR  339 

An  admirable  paper  written  years  after  by  the  Duke  of  Wellington 
— Mornington's  younger  brother  Arthur,  who  arrived  in  India  in 
January,  1797 — describes  the  condition  of  the  country  when  the  new 
governor-general  arrived.  To  Wellesley,  actively  though  he  intervened 
in  the  affairs  of  other  countries,  especially  those  of  the  Nizam,  the 
centre  of  interest  was  Mysore.  He  landed  on  26  April,  1798,  and 
immediately  learnt  of  the  negotiations  of  Tipu  with  France  and  her 
dependency  Mauritius.1  Tipu  had  sent  envoys  to  Versailles  (where 
they  were  received  with  almost  as  much  mirth  as  satisfaction),  called 
himself  "Citoyen",  and  addressed  the  most  urgent  and  flattering 
applications  to  Malartic,  the  governor  of  Mauritius,  for  alliance  and 
aid.  In  the  name  of  the  French  Republic  one  and  indivisible,  the 
governor  of  the  Isles  of  France  and  Bourbon  issued  a  vigorous 
proclamation  to  the  "citoyens  de  couleur  libres",  announcing  Tipu's 
desire  for  an  offensive  and  defensive  alliance,  and  welcoming  his 
assistance  to  expel  the  English  from  India.  Tipu's  ambassadors 
returned  home  and  landed  at  Mangalore  accompanied  by  a  small 
French  force  on  the  very  day  (26  April,  I7g8)2  that  Sir  John  Shore 
received  a  letter  from  him  desiring  uto  cultivate  and  improve  the 
friendship  and  good  understanding  subsisting  between  the  two  states 
and  an  inviolable  adherence  to  the  engagements  by  which  they  are 
connected".  The  new  governor-general  was  not  deceived.  He 
addressed  a  friendly  letter  to  Tipu  and  received  an  effusive  reply; 
but  he  left  no  ground  for  doubt  as  to  the  seriousness  of  his  intentions, 
of  which  he  desired  the  sultan  to  be  aware.  On  18  October  he  heard 
of  Bonaparte's  landing  in  Egypt,  and  two  days  later  he  ordered 
Lord  Clive,  governor  of  Madras,  to  prepare  for  war.  He  was  now 
secure  on  the  side  of  Hyderabad8,  and  he  began  a  series  of  exploratory 
operations  (as  surgeons  might  say)  in  the  direction  of  Mysore.  He 
wrote:  Tipu  replied:  more  than  once:  the  governor-general  courteous 
with  a  touch  of  imperiousness,  the  Muhammadan  despot  evasive  and 
deceitful.  At  first  Mornington's  plan  was  merely  to  require  a  re- 
pudiation of  the  French  alliance;  it  developed,  through  increasing 
requirements  of  territory,  into  a  determination  utterly  to  annihilate 
the  power  of  the  usurper  of  Mysore. 

The  Mysore  War  with  the  destruction  of  Tipu  has  often  been 
criticised  as  unjustifiable  and  unjust,  precipitate  and  unwarranted  by 
the  conduct  of  the  vanquished.  The  great  majority  of  contemporary 
opinion  is  entirely  against  this  view.  Indeed  it  may  be  said  that 
hardly  a  single  writer  or  speaker  who  had  personal  knowledge  of 
India  doubted  that  the  war,  and  its  object,  were  absolutely  necessary. 
England  was  already  in  danger  from  France,  and  the  danger  for 
several  years  grew  greater;  how  much  greater  would  it  have  been 
had  the  life  and  death  struggle  been  carried  on  in  India  as  well  as  in 
Europe !  Already  a  French  force  was  in  Egypt.  Did  not  the  classical 

1  Wellesley  Despatches,  I,  213.          2  Idem,  i,  App.  pp.  viii-xi.  »  Cf.  p.  328  supra. 


340  -     TIPU  SULTAN,  1785-1802 

models  which  the  ambitious  pedants  of  the  Revolution  delighted  to 
follow  point  towards  the  creation  of  a  new  western  dominion  in  the 
East?  The  armies  of  Tipu,  daily  growing  in  numbers  and  efficiency, 
were  ready  implements  to  make  this  achievement  possible.  "His 
resources",  said  the  Madras  Government  to  Mornington,  "are  more 
prompt  than  our  own. "  Yet  war  was  embarked  on  by  the  English 
only  after  serious  attempts  at  negotiation,  and  it  seemed  to  the 
governor-general  that  it  needed  the  vindication  which  the  course  of 
events  would  afford. 

"It  will  soon  be  evident",  he  said,  "to  all  the  powers  of  India  that  the  funda- 
mental principle  of  our  policy  is  invariably  repugnant  to  every  scheme  of  conquest, 
extension  of  dominion,  aggrandisement  or  ambition  either  for  ourselves  or  our 
allies." 

It  may  be  wondered  whether  the  serious  attempts  at  negotiation 
were  ever  regarded  by  Tipu  as  anything  but  endeavours  to  gain  time. 
His  letters  to  Lord  Mornington  were  no  doubt  amusing  from  their 
fulsome  professions  of  sincerity  and  friendship  mingled  with  de- 
nunciations of  the  French,  to  one  who  already  possessed  authentic 
information  of  all  that  had  happened  in  the  Isle  of  France.  They 
continued  all  through  the  winter  of  1798-9,  and  were  in  no  way 
influenced  by  the  vigorous  letter  sent  from  Constantinople  by  the 
sultan,  Selim  III,  urging  the  necessity  of  opposing  the  faithless  French, 
enemies  of  the  Muhammadan  faith.  Mornington  suffered  them  to 
continue,  for,  as  early  as  12  August,  1798,*  he  had  drawn  up  a  minute 
in  the  Secret  Department  sketching  measures  necessary  for  "frustrating 
the  united  efforts  of  Tipoo  Sultaun  and  of  France".  Yet  he  was  still 
anxious  to  defend  himself  against  any  charge  of  aggressiveness.  "The 
rights  of  states  applicable  to  every  case  of  contest  with  foreign  powers  ", 
he  asserted,2  "are  created  and  limited  by  the  necessity  of  preserving 
the  public  safety. "  This  necessity  was  now  obvious.  By  the  beginning 
of  1 799  both  sides  were  ready  for  the  contest.  Tipu  retorted  to  Con- 
stantinople the  charges  made  against  his  .allies  (10  February): 
Mornington  issued  to  General  Harris  at  Madras  his  instructions  for 
the  political  conduct  of  the  inevitable  war  (22  February).  A  com- 
mission was  appointed  to  negotiate  with  any  neighbouring  chiefs, 
to  conciliate  the  population  and  to  watch  over  the  family  of  the 
ancient  Hindu  rajas,  whom  the  governor-general  already  thought  of 
restoring  to  the  throne  of  Mysore.  On  this  commission  Colonel 
Arthur  Wellesley  served.  It  was  the  first  important  political  work 
of  one  who  was  to  become  England's  prime  minister  as  well  as 
commander-in-chief.  On  the  same  day  there  was  issued  from  Madras 
a  declaration  by  the  Governor-General  in  Council  of  the  causes  of 
the  war,  and  Mornington  addressed  from  Fort  St  George  an  order 
to  General  Harris  not  to  delay  the  march  of  the  army  one  hour,  but 
to  enter  Mysore  and  march  upon  Seringapatam. 

1  Wellesley  Despatches,  i,  159.  *  Idem,  p.  171. 


FALL  OF  SERINGAPATAM  *  341 

The  circumstances  were  favourable.  The  armies  of  the  Nizam  and 
the-Peshwa  might  be  useful,  and  relations  with  the  Nizam  at  least 
were  cordial.  But  the  chief  dependence  was  on  the  British  troops. 
The  army  of  the  Carnatic  was  believed  to  be 

the  best  appointed,  the  most  completely  equipped,  the  most  amply  and  liberally 
supplied,  the  most  perfect  in  point  of  discipline,  and  the  most  fortunate  in  the 
acknowledged  experience  and  abilities  of  its  officers  in  every  department  which 
ever  took  the  field  of  India, 

and  the  Malabar  force  was  also  efficient.  The  object  of  the  war  was 
plain:  the  general  in  command  had  full  powers,  and  the  country  was 
well  known  from  the  experience  of  the  earlier  war.  British  ships  were 
at  sea,  successfully  scouring  it  of  French  vessels.  The  governor-general 
himself  was  at  Madras  masterfully  directing  every  step  in  advance, 
and  acting  in  cordial  association  with  the  governor,  the  son  of  the 
great  Clive.  On  3  February  General  Harris  moved  from  Vellore, 
and  General  Stewart  from  Kannanur.  On  8  March  Stewart  defeated 
Tipu  at  Sedasere,  and  on  the  27th  he  was  again  defeated  at  Mallavelly, 
by  Harris.  The  raja  of  Goorg,1  Tipu's  bitter  enemy,  witnessed  the 
achievements  of  Stewart  with  enthusiasm.  Arthur  Wellesley  was  in 
command  of  the  contingent  from  Hyderabad,  largely  troops  of  the 
Nizam.  Tipu  was  utterly  out-generalled,  and  could  do  no  more  than 
turn  to  bay  in  his  capital.  The  English  armies  met  before  Seringa- 
patam  early  in  April,  and  on  1 7  April  the  siege  began.  The  English 
were  compelled  to  hurry  operations  owing  to  the  lateness  of  the  season 
and  the  inadequacy  of  supplies — then  a  common  fault  in  the  organisa- 
tion of  all  South  Indian  campaigns.  A  letter  of  General  Harris  dated 
7  May  describes  the  siege,  and  the  assault  and  capture  on  4  May. 
By  the  evening  of  the  3rd  the  walls  were  so  battered  that  a  practicable 
breach  was  made,  and  the  assault  was  decided  on  for  the  4th  in  the 
heat  of  the  day.  At  one  o'clock  the  English  troops,  with  two  hundred 
men  from  the  Nizam's  forces,  crossed  the  Kavari  under  very  heavy 
fire,  passed  the  glacis  and  ditch  and  stormed  the  ramparts  and  the 
breaches  made  by  the  artillery;  Major-General  David  Baird,  who 
had  been  a  prisoner  of  Tipu's  till  the  Treaty  of  Mangalore,  was  in 
command.  Tipu's  body  was  found  in  a  heap  of  hundreds  of  dead. 
His  son,  formerly  a  hostage,  surrendered  himself,  and  the  Muham- 
madan  dynasty  was  at  an  end. 

Tipu  was  regarded  by  ignorant  pamphleteers  in  England  as  a 
martyr  to  English  aggression,  and  James  Mill  in  later  years  attempted 
to  vindicate  his  ability  if  not  his  character.  But  his  Indian  contem- 
poraries rejoiced  at  his  fall.  He  was  a  man  of  savage  passions  and 
vaulting  ambition,  whose  capacities  were  not  equal  to  his  own 
estimation  of  his  powers.  He  ruled,  as  a  convinced  Muhammadan, 
over  a  population  of  Hindus,  whose  ancient  sovereigns  his  father  had 

*  See  Wilks's  Sketch**,  m,  493. 


342  *    TIPU  SULTAN,  1785-1802 

dispossessed  and  whom  he  had  bitterly  persecuted.  The  district 
around  Mysore  abhorred  him,  and  though  the  English  found  signs 
of  prosperity  within  his  dominions  these  were  certainly  due  to  no 
inspiration  of  his  own.  His  character  was  a  contrast  to  that  of  his 
father,  who  was  wise  and  tolerant. 

"Hyder",  says  Colonel  Wilts,1  "was  seldom  wrong  and  Tipu  seldom  right  in 
his  estimate  of  character. .  ..Unlimited  persecution  united  in  detestation  of  his 
rule  every  Hindu  in  his  dominions.  In  the  Hindu  no  degree  of  merit  was  a  passport 
to  his  favour;  in  the  Mussulman  no  crime  could  ensure  displeasure. .  ..Tipu  in 
an  age  when  persecution  only  survived  in  history  revived  its  worst  terrors . . .  .He 
was  barbarous  where  severity  was  vice,  and  indulgent  where  it  was  virtue.  If  he 
had  qualities  fitted  for  Empire  they  were  strangely  equivocal;  the  disqualifications 
were  obvious  and  unquestionable,  and  the  decision  of  history  will  not  be  far 
removed  from  the  observation  almost  proverbial  in  Mysore, '  that  Hyder  was  born 
to  create  an  Empire,  Tipu  to  lose  one  . 

In  a  letter  from  Thomas  Munro  to  his  father2  facts  are  given  which 
support  a  judgment  fully  as  severe.  It  is  shown  that  through  the 
means  Tipu  had  taken  to  strengthen  his  power,  by  employing  men  of 
different  races  and  being  himself  responsible  for  their  payment,  and 
by  keeping  the  families  of  his  chief  officers  as  hostages  at  Seringa- 
patam,  he  had  made  the  stability  of  his  government  depend  entirely 
upon  himself,  and  with  him  it  collapsed;  and  "also  he  was  so  sus- 
picious and  cruel  that  none  of  his  subjects,  none  probably  of  his 
children,  lamented  his  fall". 

At  the  fall  of  Seringapatam  practically  the  entire  sovereignty  of 
Mysore  fell  into  the  English  hands.  How  was  this  power  to  be 
exercised?  Mornington  was  not  disposed  to  annex  the  whole,  as  he 
might  well  have  done.  Nor  did  he  desire  to  add  to  obligations  which 
it  was  not  easy  either  to  estimate  or  to  discharge.  He  wrote  that 

owing  to  the  inconveniences  and  embarrassments  which  resulted  from  the  whole 
system  of  government  and  conflicting  authorities  in  Oudh,  the  Garnatic  and  Mysore, 
I  resolved  to  reserve  to  the  Company  the  most  extensive  and  indisputable  powers. 

Thus  the  family  of  Tipu  was  swept  into  obscurity  but  with  ample 
provision  and  dignity.  Then  came  provision  for  all  the  territory  that 
had  been  conquered.  Mornington  set  himself  at  once  to  the  'serious 
task  of  providing  for  the  future  government  of  the  country.  He 
decided 

that  the  establishment  of  a  central  and  separate  government  in  Mysore,  under  the 
protection  of  the  Company,  and  the  admission  of  the  Marathas  to  a  certain 
participation  in  the  division  of  the  conquered  territory,  were  the  expedients  best 
calculated  to  reconcile  the  interests  of  all  parties,  to  secure  to  the  Company  a  less 
invidious  and  more  efficient  share  of  revenue,  resources,  commercial  advantage 
and  military  strength  than  could  be  obtained  under  any  other  distribution  of 
territory  or  power,  and  to  afford  the  most  favourable  prospect  of  a  general  and 
permanent  tranquillity  in  India. 

1  Wilks,  op.^cit.  111^464. 

q. :  a  most  interesting  and  valuable  letter. 


ENGLISH  GAINS  343 

Thus  Tipu's  territory  was  divided,  leaving  only  a  small  and  compact 
possession  for  the  descendants  of  the  ancient  Hindu  rajas,  of  which 
the  Company  was  to  undertake  the  defence,  occupying  any  forts  it 
might  choose.  Beyond  that,  the  division  of  territory  had  results  of 
considerable  political  as  well  as  geographical  importance.  To  the 
English  dominions  were  added  the  province  of  Kanara,  the  districts 
of  Coimbatore,  Wynad  and  Dharapuram,  and  all  the  land  below 
the  Ghats  between  the  coast  of  Malabar  and  the  Carnatic,  "securing", 
said  Wellesley,  "an  uninterrupted  tract  of  territory  from  the  coast  of 
Goromandel  to  that  of  Malabar,  together  with  the  entire  sea-coast  of 
the  kingdom  of  Mysore".  The  fortresses  commanding  all  the  heads 
of  the  passes  above  the  Ghats  were  also  secured,  and,  in  addition, 
the  fortress  of  Seringapatam.  Thus  it  was  made  certain  that  no  ruler 
should  arise  in  Mysore  like  Tipu  who  could  intervene  in  a  contest  of 
sea-power,  or  hold  out  a  hand  to  European  enemies  of  England  to 
give  a  landing  for  troops  which  might  threaten  British  power  in  the 
south  of  India,  as  it  had  been  threatened  in  the  days  of  La  Bourdonnais 
and  Dupleix. 

This  rearrangement  greatly  increased  the  responsibilities  of  the 
presidency  of  Madras,  a  fact  which  the  directors  of  the  East  India 
Company  did  not  at  once  appreciate.  The  governors  and  the 
council  were  not  generally  men  of  wide  vision  or  practical  sagacity. 
Lord  Clive  was  a  useful  subordinate  to  the  governor-general ;  not 
so  much  could  have  been  said  of  all  his  successors.  Nor  was  the 
military  organisation  of  Madras  satisfactory ;  it  took  a  long  time  to 
provide  a  permanent  system  of  recruiting,  commissariat,  and  com- 
mand. Sir  Hilaro  Barlow,  afterwards  governor-general,  had  a 
difficult  task  with  regard  to  the  army,  and  it  may  at  least  be  said  that 
he  discharged  it  with  greater  wisdom  than  several  of  his  contem- 
poraries. In  Sir  Thomas  Munro,  however,  the  Company  soon  found 
a  servant  of  the  very  highest  ability,  and  so  long  as  he  was  in  authority 
in  the  province  of  Madras  the  improvement  was  rapid  and  continuous. 

"Perhaps  there  never  lived  a  European  more  intimately  acquainted",  says  his 
biographer,  Gleig,1  "with  the  characters,  habits,  manners  and  institutions  of  the 
natives  of  India,  because  there  never  lived  a  European  who  at  once  possessed  better 
opportunities  of  acquiring  such  knowledge,  and  made  better  use  of  them." 

It  was  not  till  twenty  years  later  than  the  conquest  of  Mysore  that 
he  became  governor  of  Madras,  but  his  growing  influence  over 
Southern  India  can  be  traced  in  all  the  years  which  intervene.  On 
the  acquisition  of  Kanara  he  was  its  governor,  and  he  made  a  deep 
impression  on  the  inhabitants  of  that  rugged  and  wild  district  which 
stood  between  the  Portuguese,  the  Marathas,  and  the  sea.  It  was  a 
time  when  the  power  of  the  Marathas  began  visibly  to  decline.  The 
share  of  Tipu's  territory  which  was  offered  them  they  refused,  the 
Peshwa  already  scheming  for  an  occasion  of  attack  upon  the  English ; 

1  Preface  to  Lafe,  p.  xii. 


344  TIPU  SULTAN,  1785-1802 

the  land  then  was  divided  between  the  English  and  the  Nizam.  As 
the  Marathas  became  more  clearly  alienated  from  the  English- 
though,  as  will  be  seen  later,  the  process  was  not  continuous,  the 
Nizam — again  with  interruptions — became  more  definitely  their  ally. 
The  Treaty  of  Hyderabad,  Mornington's  first  achievement  in  con- 
structive statesmanship,  had  brought  the  Nizam  close  to  the  English 
government  in  India;  his  aid  in  the  Mysore  War  had  not  been 
inconsiderable  and  now  his  position  was  consolidated  by  the  acquisi- 
tion of  the  districts  of  Gurramkonda  and  Gooty  and  the  land  down  to 
Chitaldrug,  and  other  border  fortresses  of  Mysore.  Thus  the  process 
begun  in  the  Treaty  of  Hyderabad  was  continued  after  the  overthrow 
of  Tipu,  and  the  Nizam  was  established  as  a  strong  and  independent 
support  of  the  English  in  the  south.  In  the  words  of  Arthur  Wellesley 
a  few  years  later,  "our  principal  ally,  the  Nizam,  was  restored  to  us" ; 
and  affairs  in  the  south  were  placed  "on  foundations  of  strength 
calculated  to  afford  lasting  peace  and  security". 

Towards  this  security  the  settlement  of  Mysore  was  an  essential 
factor.  Mornington  had  for  some  time  considered  the  wisest  course 
to  adopt.  He  felt  that  a  native  state  must  remain;  but  that  it  should 
be  unable  to  embroil  itself  and  its  neighbours  with  the  Company. 
When  Mornington  announced  the  results  of  the  war  and  the  peace 
to  the  directors  of  the  Company,  he  said  : 

Happily  as  I  estimate  the  immediate  and  direct  advantages  of  revenue  and  of 
commercial  and  military  resources,  I  consider  the  recent  settlement  of  Mysore  to 
be  equally  important  to  your  interests,  in  its  tendency  to  increase  your  political 
consideration  among  the  native  powers,  together  with  your  means  of  maintaining 
internal  tranquillity  and  order  among  your  subjects  and  dependents,  and  of 
defending  your  possessions  against  any  enemy  whether  Asiatic  or  European. 

And  the  settlement  was  this.  The  family  of  the  ancient  Hindu  rajas 
was  searched  for,  discovered,  restored.  There  was  a  story  years  before 
of  how  Hyder  selected  the  fittest  child  of  a  baby  family  to  be  its  head, 
though  he  had  never  given  him  real  power.  Among  the  children  he 
threw  a  number  of  baubles,  of  fruits  and  ornaments,  and  among  them 
concealed  a  dagger :  the  child  who  chose  this  was  to  be  the  chief. 

"In  1799  the  future  raja",  says  Colonel  Wilks,1  "was  himself  a  child  of  five  years 
of  age,  but  the  widow  of  that  raja  from  whom  Hyder  usurped  the  government  still 
remained,  to  confer  with  the  commissioners  and  to  regulate  with  distinguished 
propriety  the  renewed  honours  of  her  house." 

By  the  change  of  dynasty  the  sentiments  of  the  Hindu  people  of 
Mysore  were  attached  to  the  British  power  which  had  restored  to 
them  the  representatives  of  their  ancient  religion  and  government, 
and  the  stability  of  tfce  new  government  was  secured  by 

the  uncommon  talents  of  Purniya  (the  very  able  financial  minister  of  Hyder)  in 
the  office  of  minister  to  the  new  raja,  and  that  influence  was  directed  to  proper 
objects  by  the  control  reserved  to  the  English  Government  by  them  in  the  provisions 
of  the  treaty. 

1  Wilks,  Historical  Sketches,  ra,  470. 


TREATY  OF  SERINGAPATAM  345 

By  the  treaty  of  Seringapatam,  i  September,  1798,  between  the 
Company  and  "Maharaja  Mysore  Krishnaraja  Udayar  Bahadur, 
Raja  of  Mysore"  the  raja  was  to  pay  an  annual  subsidy,  and  if  this 
were  unpaid  the  Company  might  order  any  internal  reforms  and 
bring  under  its  own  direct  management  any  parts  of  his  country; 
and  the  raja  undertook  to  refrain  from  correspondence  with  any 
foreign  state  and  not  to  admit  any  European  to  his  service. 

The  Earl  of  Mornington,  for  this  achievement,  was  created  Marquis 
Wellesley  in  the  peerage  of  Ireland,  an  honour  which  he  described 
as  a  "double-gilt  potato".  He  was  indeed  highly  indignant  at  so 
slight  a  recognition  of  such  considerable  services. 

The  settlement  of  the  territory  newly  acquired  by  the  British,  and 
the  establishment  of  the  government  of  Krishnaraja,  the  new  ruler, 
a  child  of  seven,  proceeded  apace.  On  24  February,  1800,  the  governor- 
general  sent  Dr  Francis  Buchanan  to  make  an  extensive  survey  of 

the  dominions  of  the  present  raja  of  Mysore,  and  the  country  acquired  by  the 
Company  in  the  late  war  from  the  Sultan,  as  well  as  that  part  of  Malabar  which 
the  Company  annexed  to  their  own  territories  in  the  former  war  under  Marquis 
Cornwallis.1 

Drawn  up  by  the  Marquis  Wellesley  himself,  who  during  all  his  rule 
was  keenly  interested  in  Indian  agriculture,  the  instructions  show  the 
care  with  which  the  governor-general  provided  for  his  successors 
full  information  as  to  the  condition  of  the  country.  Agriculture  was 
the  chief  subject  investigated,  in  such  detail  as  "esculent  vegetables" 
and  the  methods  of  their  cultivation,  including  irrigation,  the  different 
breeds  of  cattle,  the  farms  and  the  nature  of  their  tenure,  the  natural 
products  of  the  land,  the  use  of  arts,  manufactures,  medicine, 
mines,  quarries,  minerals,  the  climate  and  the  ethnology  of  the 
country.  The  record  of  the  investigation  is  a  work  of  very  great  value 
and  extraordinary  minuteness,  and  throws  considerable  light  on  the 
cruel  and  erratic  government  of  Tipu  as  well  as  on  the  just  and  well- 
organised  system  introduced  by  Colonel  Close,  the  British  Resident 
at  Seringapatam.  The  thoroughness  of  the  investigation,  with  the 
large  tracts  of  country  it  covered,  shows  the  spirit  in  which  the  English 
rulers  entered  on  their  task,  and  justifies  the  statement  made  by 
Arthur  Wellesley2  six  years  later. 

The  state  in  which  their  government  is  to  be  found  at  this  moment,  the  cordial 
and  intimate  unity  which  exists  between  the  Government  of  Mysore  and  the  British 
authorities,  and  the  important  strength  and  real  assistance  which  it  has  afforded  to 
the  British  Government  in  all  its  recent  difficulties,  afford  the  strongest  proofs  of 
the  wisdom  of  this  stipulation  of  the  treaty, 

namely,  "the  most  extensive  and  indispu table  <powers"  which  the 
governor-general  had  reserved  to  the  Company  by  the  provision  "for 
the  interference  of  the  British  Government  in  all  the  concerns"  of 

1  The  results  were  published  in  1807  in  three  volumes. 

1  Mem.  by  Sir  A.  Wellesley  1806,  ap.  Owen's  edition  of  Wellesley  Despatches,  p.  Ixxxii. 


346  TIPU  SULTAN,  1785-1802 

the  Mysore  state  "when  such  interference  might  be  necessary".  This 
satisfactory  result,  however,  was  not  achieved  immediately  or  without 
a  period  of  difficult  guerrilla  warfare.  Accounts  of  this  are  to  be  found 
in  the  letters  of  Arthur  Wellesley  and  Thomas  Munro. 

Though  Tipu's  sons  remained  in  retirement  and  Seringapatam  was 
tranquil  under  the  wise  government  of  Colonel  Close,  the  districts  at 
a  distance  from  control  were  soon  overrun  by  freebooting  bands.  The 
chief  of  these  was  led  by  Dundia  Wagh,  a  Maratha  by  birth  but 
born  in  Mysore.  This  vigorous  and  savage  personage  had  been  trusted 
by  Hyder,  but  degraded,  compulsorily  converted  to  Islam,  and 
imprisoned,  till  the  very  day  of  the  capture  of  Seringapatam,  by 
Tipu.  When  he  escaped  he  collected  a  band  of  desperate  men  and 
thought  to  establish  for  himself,  as  Hydcr  had  done,  a  kingdom  in 
the  south.  Arthur  Wellesley  pursued  him,  step  by  step,  taking  and 
destroying  forts,  clearing  districts,  endeavouring  to  force  the  bandit 
into  the  open  field.  The  private  letters  of  Colonel  Wellesley  to  Thomas 
Munro  show  the  difficulty  of  the  task  which  he  at  last  successfully 
accomplished,  and  the  determined  sagacity  with  which  he  achieved 
it.  Dundia  had  almost  established  a  kingdom :  he  was  extraordinarily 
energetic,  capable,  and  acute.  But  he  was  no  match  for  the  persistent 
vigilance  of  Wellesley.  Employing  troops  from  Goa,  the  pledge  of  the 
firm  alliance  with  Portugal  which  he  was  afterwards  to  vindicate  and 
cement,  Wellesley  pursued  the  foe  till  he  was  defeated  and  killed. 
Alike  in  the  personal  letters  to  his  friends  and  in  the  official  dispatches 
Wellesley  showed  the  calm  unbroken  perseverance  which  was  to 
make  him  the  greatest  English  general  of  his  age.  The  tranquillity  of 
the  Mysore  kingdom,  which  has  been  practically  unbroken  for  a 
century,  was  due  to  him,  it  may  well  be  said,  more  than  to  any  other 
man.  Without  the  brilliancy  and  the  political  genius  of  his  elder 
brother,  Arthur  Wellesley  had  qualities  which  endured  longer  and 
which  brought  him  at  length  to  the  highest  place  in  his  country's 
service.  When  he  became  famous  in  the  Spanish  Peninsula  the  portrait 
painted  of  him  as  a  young  general  in  India  was  early  sought  for 
reproduction;  and  this  in  a  figure  represented  the  beginnings  of  his 
great  military  career.  The  rough  work  of  Indian  warfare  supplied 
lessons  which  he  never  forgot,  and  a  study  of  it  is  indispensable  to 
the  understanding  of  his  later  achievements. 

The  governor-general  as  a  statesman,  David  Baird  and  Harris  as 
soldiers,  Close  as  administrator,  played  great  parts  in  the  story  of 
conquest  and  settlement,  but  Arthur  Wellesley  is  the  real  hero  of  the 
re-establishment  of  Mysore  as  a  Hindu  state. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

OUDH  AND  THE  CARNATIC,   1785-1801 

I.  OUDH,  1785-1801 

A  HE  condition  of  Oudh  under  Sir  John  Macpherson  very  speedily 
aroused  the  suspicion  and  then  the  indignation  of  Cornwallis.  Cor- 
ruption was  rife,  perhaps  even  more  flagrantly  than  in  the  Carnatic. 
Cornwallis  vented  his  anger  in  a  letter  to  Dundas.1  "His  govern- 
ment", he  said,  was  "a  system  of  the  dirtiest  jobbing — a  view  shared 
by  Sir  John  Shore2 — and  his  conduct  in  Oudh  was  as  impeachable, 
and  more  disgusting  to  the  Vizier  than  Mr  Hastings'."  To  Lord 
Southampton  he  wrote  a  year  later3  that  as  soon  as  he  arrived  in 
India  he  had  in  Macpherson's  presence  tied  up  his  hands  "against  all 
the  modes  that  used  to  be  practised  for  providing  for  persons  who 
were  not  in  the  Company's  service,  such  as  riding  contracts,  getting 
monopolies  in  Oudh,  extorting  money  for  them  from  the  Vizier,  etc,". 
Of  his  honest  determination  there  could  be  no  question,  but  he 
did  not  find  it  easy  to  carry  out.  Asaf-ud-daula  was  as  corrupt  as  any 
native  prince  of  his  time  could  possibly  be,  and,  so  far  as  it  was 
possible  for  foreigners  to  judge,  as  popular.  He  was  certainly  as 
cunning  and  as  determined.  In  1787*  Cornwallis  wrote  a  description 
of  him  to  Dundas  as  extorting 

every  rupee  he  can  from  his  ministers,  to  squander  in  debaucheries,  cock-fighting, 
elephants  and  horses.  He  is  said  to  have  a  thousand  of  the  latter  in  his  stables 
though  he  never  uses  them.  The  ministers  on  their  part  are  fully  as  rapacious  as 
their  master;  their  object  is  to  cheat  and  plunder  the  country.  They  charge  him 
seventy  lacs  for  the  maintenance  of  troops  to  enforce  the  collections,  the  greater 
part  of  which  do  not  exist,  and  the  money  supposed  to  pay  them  goes  into  the 
pockets  of  Almas  Ali  Khan  and  Hyder  Beg. 

It  was  with  no  favourable  ear,  therefore,  that  the  governor-general 
listened  to  the  request  of  the  wazir  for  the  alteration  of  the  arrange- 
ments made  by  Hastings.  The  claim  was  that  the  temporary  quartering 
of  the  British  (Fatehgarh)  brigade  should  be  withdrawn,  leaving 
only  one  brigade  of  the  Company's  troops  in  Oudh,  and  that  his 
"oppressive  pecuniary  burdens"  should  be  reduced.  Cornwallis  had 
a  conference  with  the  wazir's  minister,  Haidar  Beg,  and  then  ( 15  April, 
1787)  addressed  a  letter  to  him  in  which  he  offered  to  reduce  the 
tribute  from  seventy-four  to  fifty  lakhs,  if  this  should  be  punctually 
paid,  but  he  refused  to  withdraw  the  troops  from  Fatehgarh.  The 

1  Cornwallis  Correspondence)  i,  371. 

2  Life  of  Lord  Teignmouth,  i,  128. 

3  Cornwallis  Correspondence,  i,  445. 
*  Idem,  p.  247. 


348  OUDH  AND  THE  CARNATIC,  1785-1801 

condition  of  the  nawab's  own  troops  was  a  standing  menace  to  the 
security  of  the  British  territory ;  Cornwallis  demanded  that  they  should 
be  greatly  reduced. 

"I  was  obliged",  wrote  Cornwallis  to  the  Directors,1  "by  a  sense  of  public  duty 
to  state  to  him  my  clear  opinion  that  two  brigades  in  Oudh  would  be  indispensably 
necessary  for  the  mutual  interest  and  safety  of  both  governments.  The  loss  of 
Colonel  Baillie's  and  several  other  detachments  during  the  late  war  has  removed 
some  part  of  that  awe  in  which  the  natives  formerly  stood  at  the  name  of  British 
troops.  It  will  therefore  be  a  prudent  maxim  never  to  hazard,  if  it  can  be  avoided, 
so  small  a  body  as  a  brigade  of  Sepoys  with  a  weak  European  regiment  at  so  great 
a  distance  as  the  Doab ;  and  from  the  confused  state  of  the  upper  provinces  it  would 
be  highly  inadvisable  for  us  to  attempt  the  defence  of  the  Vizier's  extensive  territory 
without  a  respectable  force." 

His  minute  on  the  subject,  rightly  regarded  by  Sir  John  Malcolm2 
as  a  very  clear  view  of  the  connection  between  the  Company  and  the 
wazir,  states  his  opinion  that  it  "now  stands  upon  the  only  basis 
calculated  to  render  it  permanent".  He  relied  for  the  continuance 
of  the  condition  of  affairs,  which  he  viewed  so  optimistically,  upon 
the  fidelity  and  justice  of  the  nawab's  very  able  minister,  exposed 
though  he  was  "to  the  effects  of  caprice  and  intrigue".  Sir  John 
Malcolm  regarded  the  arrangement  "as  happy  as  the  personal 
character  of  Asaf-ud-daula  admitted  of  its  being".  So  it  remained 
in  outward  tranquillity  at  least,  unshaken  by  an  insurrection  by  the 
Afghans  still — in  spite  of  the  first  Rohilla  War,  so  greatly  exaggerated 
in  England — remaining  in  Rohilkhand.  There  was  a  sharp  contest, 
in  which  British  forces  supported  the  nawab.  The  end  was  the  restora- 
tion of  their  possessions  to  the  Afghans  under  Hamid  5Ali  Khan.  The 
restoration  of  tranquillity  tended  to  the  maintenance  of  the  nawab's 
administration  undisturbed  by  the  very  necessary  intervention  of  the 
Company;  but  Sir  John  Shore  was  fully  aware  of  the  condition  of 
affairs.  He  wrote  to  Dundas  (12  May,  I795)3  that  the  dominions  of 
Asaf-ud-daula  were 

in  the  precise  condition  to  tempt  a  rebellion.  Disaffection  and  anarchy  prevail 
throughout;  and  nothing  but  the  presence  of  our  two  brigades  prevents  insurrec- 
tion. The  Nawab  is  in  a  state  of  bankruptcy,  without  a  sense  of  his  danger,  and 
without  a  wish  to  guard  against  it.  The  indolence  and  dissipation  of  his  character 
are  too  confirmed  to  allow  the  expectation  of  any  reformation  on  his  part; 

and  the  death  of  Haidar  Beg  in  1 794  had  put  an  end  to  all  hopes  of 
reform.  In  1797  Asaf-ud-daula  died.  Early  in  the  year  Sir  John 
Shore  had  paid  a  visit  to  Lucknow,  of  which  a  letter  of  his  aide-de- 
camp and  brother-in-law  preserves  a  vivid  impression.4  The  nawab 
seemed  still  to  be  "the  most  splendid  emanation  of  the  Great  Mogul 
now  remaining",  but  he  had  "an  open  mouth,  a  dull  intellect,  a 
quick  propensity  to  mischief  and  vice",  and  "the  amusements  of 
Tiberius  at  Capua  must,  in  comparison  with  those  of  their  feasts,  have 


1  Cornwallis  Correspondence,  i,  276.  a  History  of  India,  i,  no. 

*  Life,  i,  332. 

4  Bengal  Past  and  Present,  xvi,  pt  11,  105  sqq. 


THE  OUDH  SUCCESSION  '     349 

been  elegant  and  refined".  He  had  still  an  able  minister  who  acted 
for  him  at  Calcutta,  had  translated  Newton's  Principia  into  Arabic, 
was  a  great  mathematician,  and  if  he  had  had  sufficient  influence 
with  the  nawab  could  have  "made  his  country  a  paradise". 

Lucknow  at  the  time  Shore  visited  it  contained  at  least  two  persons 
of  peculiar  interest.  The  nawab  himself,  Asaf-ud-daula,  with  all  the 
faults  of  idleness  and  luxury,  in  many  respects  ignorant,  and  in  all 
subtle,  cruel  and  unsound,  was  yet,  after  the  fashion  of  his  age,  a  man 
of  cultured  tastes.  The  remarkable  building,  the  great  Imambarah, 
whose  stucco  magnificence  still,  after  long  years  and  many  dangers, 
remains  impressive,  was  built  by  him  in  1784,  its  great  gate  after 
the  model  (it  is  said)  of  the  gate  of  the  Sublime  Porte  at  Constantinople, 
which  it  far  surpasses  in  dignity.  In  the  great  hall  the  remains  of  the 
nawab  still  lie  under  a  plain  uninscribed  slab.  Another  memorial  of 
that  time  is  the  Martintere,  the  college  founded  by  General  Claude 
Martin,  which  was  his  own  house  till  he  died  and  for  which  Asaf-ud- 
daula  is  said  to  have  paid  him  a  million  sterling.  Martin  from  1776 
had  been  in  the  service  of  the  nawabs  of  Oudh;  he  had  made  a  fortune 
out  of  their  necessities;  he  had  been  a  maker  of  ordnance  and  a 
speculator  in  indigo,  and  he  still  retained  his  position  in  the  Company's 
military  service;  he  lived  till  1800,  and  was  buried,  with  plainness 
equal  to  the  nawab's,  in  the  house  he  had  built. 

The  nawab  died  a  few  weeks  after  Shore's  visit,  which  might  seem 
to  have  been  in  vain.  At  first  the  governor-general  recognised  Wazir 
'Ali,  in  spite  of  some  doubts  as  to  his  legitimacy,  as  his  successor. 
Asaf-ud-daula  had  acknowledged  him  as  his  son;  there  was  also  the 
sanction  of  the  late  nawab's  mother,  and  appearance  of  satisfaction 
among  the  people.  But  it  was  not  long  before  all  these  appearances 
were  reversed.  Shore  re-examined  the  question  of  right,  and  came 
to  an  opposite  conclusion.  "Ali",  his  biographer  says,  "was  sur- 
rounded by  a  gang  of  miscreants."  Other  and  more  important  old 
ladies  shrieked  their  protests  into  the  governor-general's  ears.  The 
good  man  was  terribly  confused. 

"In  Eastern  countries",  he  said,  "as  there  is  no  principle  there  can  be  no  con- 
fidence. Self-interest  is  the  sole  object  of  all,  and  suspicion  and  distrust  prevail 
under  the  appearance  and  profession  of  the  sincerest  intimacy  and  regard." 

General  Craig,  who  had  for  some  time  commanded  the  British  forces 
in  Oudh,  and  Sir  Alured  Clarke,  the  commander-in-chief,  warned 
him  of  the  danger  he  was  in  if  he  changed  his  decision,  and  Tafazzul 
Hussain  Khan,  with  agitated  emphasis,  told  him  "this  is  Hindustan, 
not  Europe:  and  affairs  cannot  be  done  here  as  there".  Lucknow 
showed  every  sign  of  an  outbreak,  and  in  the  city  were  "many 
respectable  families  who  live  under  the  protection  of  British  influence  ". 
But  Shore  took  the  risks,"  declared  the  deposition  of  JAli  and  the 
substitution  of  his  uncle,  Sa'adat,  and  escorted  him  through  the 


350  OUDH  AND  THE  CARNATIC,  1785-1801 

city  mounted  on  his  own  elephant.  Not  content  with  declaring  the 
spuriousness  of  *Ali,  he  included  in  the  same  disgrace  all  the  other  sons 
of  Asaf-ud-daula.  On  21  January,  1798,  Sa'adat  'Ali,  now  on  the 
masnad,  entered  into  a  treaty  which  considerably  strengthened  the 
English  power.  This  seemed  to  be  necessary  through  the  recurring 
threats  of  an  invasion  from  Afghanistan  by  Zaman  Shah,  of  whose 
power  and  ferocity  the  English  letters  of  the  time  are  full.  He  had 
already  occupied  Lahore,  and,  though  this  had  not  been  followed  up, 
it  showed  the  weakness  of  the  northern  frontier.  At  home  as  well  as 
in  India  the  danger  was  thought  to  be  grave,  Dundas,  writing  on 
1 8  March,  1799,  regarded  it  as  of  the  first  importance  to  guard 
against  it,  and  proposed  to  encourage  and  foment  "distractions  and 
animosities5'  in  his  own  territory  to  keep  Zaman  Shah  employed,  and 
was  tempted,  he  said,  to  direct  that  our  own  forces  and  those  of  the 
wazir  should  never  go  beyond  his  territories  and  our  own,  so  as  to  be 
ready  to  repel  any  attack. 

The  treaty  may  have  been  necessary  and  just;  but  it  was  certainly 
a  departure  from  the  policy,  if  not  the  principles,  associated  with  its 
author.  Yet  the  directors  evidently  approved  it,  and  the  ministry 
gave  Shore  an  Irish  peerage,  as  Lord  Teignmouth — a  precedent 
followed,  and  bitterly  resented,  in  the  case  of  his  successor.  The  terms 
of  the  treaty  included  an  increase  to  seventy-six  lakhs  of  the  annual 
payment  to  the  Company  by  the  wazir  of  Oudh;  the  placing  of  an 
English  garrison  in  the  great  city  of  Allahabad;  the  increase  of  British 
troops  to  10,000,  who  were  given  the  exclusive  charge  of  the  defence 
of  the  country,  and  the  strict  limitation  of  the  wazir's  own  troops;  and 
finally  the  nawab  agreed  to  have  no  dealings  with  other  powers  without 
the  consent  of  the  English. 

The  praise  of  the  treaty  was  not  universal.  Burke  seemed  for  a 
while  to  be  taking  the  war-path  again.  There  was  a  threat  of  impeach- 
ment; and,  indeed,  Shore  seemed  to  have  been  at  least  as  autocratic 
as  Hastings.  "I  am  playing,  as  the  gamesters  say,  le  grand  jeu",  he 
said,  "and  with  the  same  sensation  as  a  man  who  apprehends  losing 
his  all. "  But  nothing  came  of  it.  Wazir  'Ali  had  undoubtedly  been 
overawed  by  force :  a  proceeding  against  which,  in  the  case  of  the 
Carnatic,  Shore  had  himself  piously  protested,  and  Sa'adat,  equally 
under  pressure,  agreed  to  pay  for  any  increase  of  English  troops 
that  might  be  necessary.  It  was  the  last  act  of  Lord  Teignmouth 
as  governor-general,  and  certainly  the  most  vigorous,  but  it?was  no 
more  effective  than  his  less  emphatic  actions. 

When  Mornington  arrived  in  India  the  condition  of  Oudh  was 
represented  to  him  as  tranquil.  The  directors  in  May,  1799,  thought 
that  Shore's  settlement  bade  fair  to  be  permanent.  They  were  not 
disturbed  by  the  subsidy,  during  the  first  year  of  Sa'adat  'Ali,  being 
in  arrear;  yet  this  was  the  very  eventuality  for  which  Shore's  treaty 
had  provided  a  remedy.  They  were  ready  even  to  counter-order  the 


OUDH  IN  1798  351 

augmentation  of  the  English  force.  Shore  had  infected  them  with  his 
roseate  confidence.  Mornington  very  soon  saw  more  clearly.  He  had 
in  1 798  found  it  necessary  to  station  an  army  of  20,000  men  in  Oudh 
under  the  command  of  Sir  J.  Craig,  to  be  ready  for  the  anticipated 
invasion  by  Zaman  Shah.  The  new  wazir  had  complained  that  his 
own  troops  could  not  be  trusted  and  had  demanded  an  English  force 
as  a  security  against  them.  For  this  an  increase  of  the  subsidy  of  fifty 
lakhs  was  considered  necessary.  This  was  a  heavy  burden  but  the 
protection  could  not  be  had  for  nothing,  and  Mornington's  keen  eye 
saw  that  the  internal  dangers  of  Oudh  were  pressing.  There  was  the 
Doab:  what  was  to  become  of  it?  There  was  the  danger  that  would 
come  on  the  death  of  Ilmas,  its  possessor;  how  was  it  to  be  guarded 
against?  And  there  was  the  state  of  the  nawab's  own  troops,  which 
it  soon  became  a  fixed  custom  to  describe  as  a  "rabble  force":  there 
was  no  other  way  to  meet  this  but  by  an  increase  of  the  British  con- 
tingent. But  more  than  this:  there  was  the  civil  disorder,  still 
unremedied,  in  every  branch  of  the  nawab's  administration. 

With  respect  to  the  Wazir's  civil  establishments,  and  to  his  abusive  systems  for 
the  extortion  of  revenue,  and  for  the  violation  of  every  principle  of  justice,  little 
can  be  done  before  I  can  be  enabled  to  visit  Lucknow.  (December,  1 798.) 

Mornington  had  no  misconception  of  the  character  of  oriental 
sovereigns.  Shore  seemed  satisfied  that  Sa'adat  would  be  a  great  im- 
provement on  the  nephew  whom  he  had  dispossessed.  But  Amurath 
to  Amurath  succeeds;  and  a  leopard  cannot  change  his  spots. 

Mornington's  gaze,  like  that  of  Cornwallis,  was  concentrated  also 
on  the  English  locusts  in  Oudh.  Shore,  almost  as  much  as  Macpherson 
whom  he  so  sternly  condemned,  had  seemed  to  be  content  to  leave 
them  alone.  Mornington  regarded  their  presence  as  "  a  mischief  which 
requires  no  comment".  And  he  determined  "to  dislodge  every 
European  except  the  Company's  servants".  Nor  was  his  anxiety  at 
this  time  restricted  to  the  Englishmen  in  the  country.  The  deposed 
Wazir  'Ali,  residing  near  Benares,  with  a  handsome  pension  from  his 
uncle,  apparently  on  a  momentary  impulse,  but  more  probably  by 
a  premeditated  scheme,  murdered  Cherry,  the  British  Resident,  and 
soon  received  "active  and  general  support":  it  needed  a  British  force 
to  pursue  and  capture  him.  He  was  kept  at  Fort  William  in  captivity 
and  lived  till  1817.  The  confusion  with  which  Mornington  had  to  deal 
was  even  more  entangling  than  that  of  the  Carnatic,  and,  for  the 
moment  at  least,  more  actively  dangerous.  Whether  Sa'adat  'Ali  had 
a  better  right  to  rule  than  his  nephew  or  not,  he  certainly  was  no 
more  capable  of  doing  so.  He  was  as  incompetent  as  he  was  incon- 
sistent: at  one  time  crying  for  protection  against  his  own  troops,  at 
another  refusing  to  disband  them.  He  protested  that  he  could  not 
rule:  he  volunteered  to  abdicate:  he  withdrew  his  offer.  It  was 
impossible  from  a  distance  to  understand  his  manoeuvres  and 


352  OUDH  AND  THE  CARNATIC,  1785-1801 

tergiversations.  Mornington  supplemented  the  Resident  by  a  military 
negotiator,  Colonel  Scott,  who  came  to  Lucknow  in  June,  1 799.  He  did 
not  act  precipitately :  he  made  as  careful  an  investigation  of  the  country 
and  the  circumstances  as  time  would  permit.  He  found  that  the  wazir 
was  unpopular  to  an  extreme  degree:  the  durbar  was  deserted:  the 
administration  was  hopelessly  corrupt.  The  nawab's  object  was  only 
to  temporise  and  delay.  Colonel  Scott  soon  convinced  himself  that 
what  he  really  wanted  was  to  obtain  entire  control  of  the  internal 
administration  and  the  exclusion  of  the  English  from  any  share  in  it. 
Then  corruption  would  grow  more  corrupt,  and  the  English  would 
be  responsible  for  the  maintenance  of  a  system  which  was  thoroughly 
immoral,  inefficient  and  dangerous.  And  the  wazir  assured  the  envoy 
that  he  had  a  secret  and  personal  proposal  in  reserve.  What  was  it? 
Ultimately  it  appeared  to  be  his  resignation,  which  was  offered, 
accepted,  and,  as  soon  as  it  was  accepted,  withdrawn. 

To  Mornington  and  his  advisers  the  first  necessity  appeared  to  be 
military  security,  the  second  civil  reform;  and  neither  of  these  was 
possible  under  a  vicious  and  incompetent  government.  The  establish- 
ment of  a  strong  military  force  was  essential,  as  strong  in  peace  as 
war.  Mill,1  thirty  years  afterwards,  considered  that  "a  more  mon- 
strous proposition  never  issued  from  human  organs'*.  The  fact  is  that 
the  ceaseless  oriental  procrastination  increased  the  external  danger 
and  the  internal  oppression  day  by  day.  Coercion  at  last  became  the 
only  remedy.  The  condition  of  Oudh,  then  and  for  fifty  years  after- 
wards, proves  that  the  action  of  the  governor-general  was  neither 
precipitate  nor  unwise. 

On  12  November,  1799,  the  wazir  announced  to  Colonel  Scott  his 
intention  to  abdicate.  He  desired  that  one  of  his  sons  should  succeed 
him.  On  the  2ist  the  governor-general  expressed  his  satisfaction  with 
the  decision. 

The  proposition  of  the  Wazir  is  pregnant  with  such  benefit,  not  only  to  the  Com- 
pany, but  to  the  inhabitants  of  Oudh,  that  his  lordship  thinks  it  cannot  be  top  much 
encouraged ;  and  that  there  are  no  circumstances  which  shall  be  allowed  to  impede 
the  accomplishment  of  the  grand  object  which  it  leads  to.  This  object  his  lordship 
considers  to  be  the  acquisition  by  the  Company  of  the  exclusive  authority,  civil  and 
military,  over  the  dominion  of  Oudh. 

The  cat  was  out  of  the  bag. 

But  then  there  was  the  most  tedious  and  exasperating  delay.  Sa'adat 
would  and  he  would  not.  Wellesley  could  with  difficulty  restrain  his 
irritation.  Colonel  Scott  had  a  difficult  task,  between  the  two,  to  carry 
out  any  arrangement  which  should  secure  the  prosperity  of  the  country. 

Mornington's  proposal  was  similar  to  that  arrived  at  in  the  south, 
at  Tanjore:  that  is,  the  establishment  of  a  native  ruler  with  a  fixed 
income  and  all  the  paraphernalia  of  sovereignty,  the  administration 
being  placed  in  the  hands  of  British  officials.  But  this  by  no  means 

1  History  of  India,  vi,  142. 


WELLESLEY'S  NEGOTIATIONS  353 

suited  Sa'adat.  The  control  of  the  internal  administration,  with  the 
fruits  of  peculation  and  oppression,  was  the  apple  of  his  eye.  He 
withdrew  his  abdication  and  retired,  metaphorically,  into  his  tent. 
He  thought,  like  the  nawab  of  the  Carnatic,  that  he  could  sit  tight  and 
wait.  But  Wellesley  had  now  full  experience  of  this  process,  and  he 
would  no  longer  endure  it.  He  ordered  several  regiments  to  move 
into  the  north  of  Oudh  and  required  the  nawab  to  maintain  them. 
The  wazir  replied  that  this  was  contrary  to  the  treaty  with  Shore, 
that  the  British  force  should  only  be  augmented  in  case  of  necessity, 
and  that  the  nawab  should  have  control  of  his  household  treasure. 
Sir  John  Malcolm1  rightly  rejects  this  argument,  which  English  critics 
of  Wellesley  have  accepted.  As  to  the  wazir's  consent  being  necessary, 
he  says  that 

if  this  assertion  had  not  been  refuted  by  the  evidence  of  the  respectable  nobleman 
who  framed  the  treaty,  it  must  have  been  by  its  own  absurdity;  for  the  cause  of  the 
increase  is  said  to  be  the  existence  of  external  danger — of  which  one  party — the 
English  Government — can  alone  be  the  judge,  as  the  other,  the  Wazir,  is  precluded 
by  one  of  the  articles  of  this  treaty  from  all  intercourse  or  communication  whatever 
with  foreign  states. 

In  a  masterly  letter  to  the  wazir  from  Fort  William,  9  February, 
1800,  Mornington  exposed  the  inconsistencies  of  his  conduct,  and 
sternly  told  him  that  the  means  he  had  taken  to  delay  the  execution 
of  all  reform  were  calculated  to  degrade  his  character,  to  destroy  all 
confidence  between  him  and  the  British  Government,  to  produce 
confusion  and  disorder  in  his  dominions,  and  to  injure  the  important 
interests  of  the  Company  to  such  a  degree  as  might  be  deemed  nearly 
equivalent  to  positive  hostility.  It  was  a  long,  severe,  eviscerating 
epistle.  But  a  year  passed  and  nothing  happened  that  pointed  to  a 
conclusion.  On  22  January,  1801,  Wellesley  wrote  to  Colonel  Scott, 
exonerating  him  from  any  responsibility  for  the  delay,  analysing  the 
condition  of  the  country  and  the  government,  and  insisting  that  the 
time  had  now  come  for  "the  active  and  decided  interference  of  the 
British  Government  in  the  affairs  of  the  country",  and  that  the  wazir 
must  now  be  required 

to  make  a  cession  to  the  Company  in  perpetual  sovereignty  of  such  a  portion  of 
his  territory  as  shall  be  fully  adequate,  in  their  present  impoverished  condition, 
to  repay  the  expenses  of  the  troops. 

The  treaty  was  to  be  drawn  up  on  the  same  terms  as  those  already 
concluded  with  the  Nizam  and  with  Tanjore.  And  so  within  ten 
months  it  was. 

Wellesley  associated  in  the  drawing  up  of  the  treaty  his  brother 
Henry,  the  astute  diplomatist  afterwards  famous  as  Lord  Cowley. 
The  date  of  the  treaty  was  November,  1801.  The  required  territory 
was  ceded.  It  "formed  a  barrier  between  the  dominions  of  the  Wazir 
and  any  foreign  enemy".  And  the  wazir  promised  to  establish  such 
an  administration  in  his  own  dominions  as  should  conduce  to  the 

1  History  of  India,  i,  275-6. 
crav  23 


354  OUDH  AND  THE  CARNATIC,  1785-1801 

happiness  and  prosperity  of  his  people.  From  Wellesley's  explanation 
of  the  treaty  to  the  directors,  and  from  the  Duke  of  Wellington's 
justification  of  it,  may  be  drawn  the  grounds  on  which  it  was  con- 
sidered necessary  and  effectual  at  the  time.  The  subsequent  history 
of  Oudh  up  to  the  Sepoy  War  shows  that  it  did  not  fully  meet  the 
intentions  of  its  framers.  But  at  the  moment  there  was  the  obvious 
advantage  of  getting  rid  of  a  useless  and  dangerous  body  of  troops 
ready  at  all  times  to  join  an  enemy  of  the  Company — the  extinction 
indeed  of  the  nawab's  military  power.  Obviously  important,  too,  was 
the  obtaining  responsibility  by  the  Company  for  the  general  defence 
of  the  nawab's  dominions.  By  the  renewed  security  for  the  payment 
of  the  subsidy  the  continual  disputes  with  the  court  of  Lucknow 
were  ended.  Commerce  grew,  in  consequence  of  the  new  security, 
enormously.  The  Jumna  was  made  navigable  for  large  vessels: 
Allahabad  became  a  great  emporium  of  trade,  and  indeed  started  on 
its  modern  career  of  prosperity.  A  real  improvement  in  the  condition 
of  the  people  was  soon  evident.  Wellesley  had  seen  elsewhere  the 
enormous  benefits  of  the  British  rule  in  the  "flourishing  and  happy 
provinces"  which  he  had  already  visited,  and  Wellington  a  few  years 
later  pointed  to  "the  tranquillity  of  those  hitherto  disturbed  countries 
and  the  loyalty  and  happiness  of  their  hitherto  turbulent  and  dis- 
affected inhabitants".  The  settlement  of  the  ceded  districts  was 
managed  by  a  commission  under  Henry  Wellesley.  His  appointment 
was  the  subject  of  severe  criticism.  The  bitterest  charges  of  nepotism 
were  launched  against  the  governor-general.  But  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that,  in  entrusting  such  important  work  to  his  brothers  Arthur  and 
Henry,  Wellesley  chose  the  best  means  at  his  command,  and  materially 
benefited  the  people  who  were  entrusted  to  their  protection. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  Oudh  assumption  was  the  most  high- 
handed of  all  Wellesley's  despotic  actions.  He  would  hardly  have 
denied  this,  but  he  would  have  justified  it.  The  tangle  of  conflicting 
interests  could  only  be  cut  by  the  sword:  and  he  did  not  hold  the 
sword  in  vain.  Honest  administration  turned  the  ceded  districts  from 
almost  a  desert  to  a  prosperous  and  smiling  land. 

But  in  this,  and  the  other  subsidiary  treaties,  it  must  be  observed  that 
there  were  grave  defects.  The  Company  was  made  responsible  for 
the  maintenance  of  a  government  which  it  was  impossible  for  its 
representatives,  as  foreigners,  entirely  to  control.  The  Carnatic  no 
doubt  had  a  new  and  happy  future:  but  in  Oudh  the  snake  of 
oppression  was  scotched,  not  killed.  The  progress  of  amelioration 
under  English  rule — often  stern  as  well  as  just,  and  unpopular  because 
not  fully  understood — was  always  slow,  often  checked,  often  incom- 
plete. But  of  the  great  aims,  the  high  conscientiousness,  the  keen 
insight,  and  the  impressive  wisdom,  of  the  Marquis  Wellesley,  in 
these,  the  most  characteristic  expressions  of  his  statesmanship,  there 
can  be  no  doubt. 


THE  ARGOT  DEBT  355 


II.  THE  CARNATIC,  1785-1801 

The  condition  of  the  province  of  Madras  had  been  a  constant 
anxiety  to  succeeding  governors-general,  and  indeed  a  danger  to  the 
British  position  in  India.  So  far  back  as  1776  the  Tanjore  question 
had  been  complicated  by  the  gravest  disagreements  between  the 
governor  and  his  council,  leading  up  to  the  arrest  of  Lord  Pigot  and 
his  removal  from  the  government  of  Fort  St  George.  The  numerous 
papers,  published  in  two  large  volumes  in  1777,  are  concerned  not 
a  little  with  the  affairs  of  the  nawab  of  the  Carnatic,  and  form  indeed 
an  indispensable  preliminary  to  the  understanding  of  his  position  in 
1785.  A  smaller  volume  published  in  the  same  year  deals  more 
directly  with  this  subject,  and  claims  to  explain  fully  the  right  of  the 
nawab  to  Tanjore  and  to  refute  all  the  arguments  of  Lord  Pigot's 
adherents  "and  the  authors  of  the  unjust  and  impolitic  order  for  the 
restoration  of  Tanjore".  It  was  declared  by  those  who  were  in  favour 
of  Muhammad  'Ali,  nawab  of  Arcot,  "the  old  faithful  and  strenuous 
ally  of  the  British  nation",  that  the  raja  of  Tanjore  was  the  hereditary 
enemy  of  the  nawab  and  of  the  British,  "destitute  of  morality,  but 
devoted  to  superstition",  and  that  the  nawab  was  heart  and  soul  in 
English  interests,  and  "without  power  to  emancipate  himself  from 
English  control  even  if  he  wished  to  do  so". 

Are  not  his  forts  garrisoned  with  our  troops?  His  army  commanded  by  our 
officers?  Is  not  his  country  open  to  our  invasion?  His  person  always  in  our  power? 
Is  not  he  himself,  are  not  his  children,  his  family,  his  servants,  under  the  very  guns 
of  Fort  St  George?1 

This  argument  was  repeated  as  strongly  in  1785.  But  it  was  urged, 
in  reality,  on  behalf  of  the  British  creditors  of  the  nawab,  of  whom 
the  notorious  Paul  Benfield,  now  caricatured  as  "Count  Rupee"  with 
a  black  face  riding  in  Hyde  Park  on  a  stout  cob,  was,  if  not  the  great 
original,  at  least  the  most  successful  and  the  richest.  It  was  the  nawab's 
creditors,  some  at  least  of  whom  were  actually  members  of  the  Madras 
Council,  who  kept  him  so  long  in  possession  of  his  throne  and  with 
the  trappings  of  independence.  A  crisis,  it  may  be  said,  was  reached 
when  the  English  legislature  endeavoured  to  deal  with  the  nawab  of 
Arcot's  debts.  But  such  crises  were  recurrent.  Dundas's  bill,  Fox's 
bill,  Pitt's  bill,  took  up  the  matter,  and  the  Act  of  1 784  ordered,  in 
regard  to  the  claims  of  British  subjects,  that  the  Court  of  Directors 
should  take  into  consideration  "the  origin  and  justice  of  the  said 
demands";  but  the  Board  of  Control  itself  intervened,  divided  the 
loans  into  three  classes  and  gave  orders  for  the  separate  treatment 
of  each.  This  was  challenged  by  the  Company. 

There  was  a  motion  by  Fox  and  a  famous  speech  by  Burke, 
February,  1785,  in  which  the  ministry  was  denounced  as  the 

1  Original  Papers  relative  to  Tanjore^  p.  40. 

23-2 


356  OUDH  AND  THE  CARNATIC,  1785-1801 

submissive  agent  of  Benfield,  a  "coalition  between  the  men  of  intrigue 
in  India  and  the  ministry  of  intrigue  in  England'5.  The  orator 
threaded  his  way  through  a  network  of  intrigue :  he  could  not  dis- 
entangle it.  He  used  it  as  an  instrument  for  belabouring  the  English 
ministry.  It  was  to  form  another  scourge  for  the  back  of  Hastings. 
The  governor-general  had  ordered  the  assignment  of  all  the  revenues 
of  the  Carnatic  during  the  war  with  Hyder  to  British  control,  and 
the  government  of  Madras  had  negotiated  it.  This  plan  left  the 
nawab  with  one-sixth  of  the  whole  for  his  own  maintenance  and 
thereby  made  him  richer  than  before.  The  creditors  were  deter- 
mined to  obtain  more:  they  raised  vehement  cries  of  protest:  they 
partially  convinced  Hastings:  they  wholly  convinced  the  Board  of 
Control;  and  Dundas  ordered  restitution  of  the  entire  revenues  to 
the  nawab.  In  vain  Lord  Macartney,  in  a  letter  from  Calcutta 
(27  July,  1785),  proclaimed  that  the  assignment  was  "the  rock  of 
your  strength  in  the  Carnatic55,  and  on  his  return  to  England,  after 
declining  the  government  of  Bengal,  he  pressed  his  views  very  strongly 
upon  Pitt  and  Dundas.  In  vain.  Restitution  was  ordered.  There  was 
no  provision  in  Pitt's  Act  which  could  prevent  new  loans,  and  so  the 
nawab  plunged  deeper  than  ever  into  debt. 

Thus  Cornwallis  found  the  relations  of  the  Company  with  the 
nawab  more  complicated  than  ever.  The  new  governor  of  Madras, 
Sir  Archibald  Campbell,  made  a  new  arrangement  with  him,  moved 
it  would  seem  by  his  crocodile  tears  and  "a  very  pathetic  remon- 
strance "  that  he  could  not  live  on  what  was  left  him  after  contributing 
to  the  payment  of  his  debts  and  the  expense  of  the  state.  A  treaty, 
24  February,  1787,  assigned  nine  lakhs  of  pagodas  to  the  state  and 
twelve  to  the  creditors:  and  the  nawab  was  supposed  to  be  "more 
sincerely  attached  to  the  prosperity  of  the  Honourable  Company" 
than  "any  prince  or  person  on  earth".  Special  provisions  were  made 
in  view  of  possible  war,  and  the  sole  military  power  was  placed  in 
the  hands  of  the  Company.  But  the  conditions  were  no  better  fulfilled 
than  others.  When  war  came  in  1790  Cornwallis  was  obliged  to  take 
possession  of  the  Carnatic,1  in  order,  says  Sir  John  Malcolm,2  "to 
secure  the  two  states  [the  Carnatic  and  Madras]  against  the  dangers 
to  which  he  thought  them  exposed  from  the  mismanagement  of  the 
Nawab's  officers".  It  was  quite  clear  that  it  was  impossible  to  leave 
the  "sword  in  one  hand,  the  purse  in  another".  By  the  control  now 
assumed  the  success  of  the  war  with  Tipu  was  made  much  more  easy, 
and  it  became  obvious  that  a  new  treaty  to  stabilise  this  condition 
of  affairs  had  become  necessary.  In  1 792  this  was  concluded.  By 
this  the  Company  was  to  assume  entire  control  of  the  Carnatic 
during  war,  but  to  restore  it  when  war  ended.  It  was  to  occupy 
specified  districts  if  the  nawab's  payments  should  fall  into  arrear;  the 

1  See  Cornwallis  Correspondence,  n,  2,  3. 
8  History  of  India,  i,  94. 


CORNWALLIS'S  TREATY  357 

poligars  of  Madura  and  Tinnevelly,  whose  resistance  to  the  feeble 
government  of  the  nawab  rendered  the  collection  of  revenue  im- 
possible, were  transferred  to  the  rule  of  the  Company;  and  the  nawab's 
payments,  for  which  these  terms  were  a  security,  were  to  be  nine 
lakhs  for  the  peace  establishment  and  four-fifths  of  his  revenues  for 
war  expenses,  his  payment  to  his  creditors  being  reduced  from  twelve 
to  six  lakhs.  From  this  treaty  Cornwallis  hoped  for  a  new  and  stable 
settlement  of  the  most  puzzling,  if  not  the  most  dangerous  problem, 
with  which  successive  representatives  were  confronted.  In  nothing 
did  he  show  more  clearly  his  lack  of  political  sagacity  than  in  this 
hope.  The  fact  that  the  moment  any  war  broke  out  the  control  of  the 
country  should  change  hands  made  confusion  worse  confounded,  and 
an  efficient  native  administration  became  impossible.  The  nawab  too 
was  left  exposed  to  all  the  schemes  and  intrigues  which  had  enmeshed 
him  of  old.  The  pavement  of  good  intentions  left  Paul  Benfield  and 
his  companions  more  secure  than  before.  English  management  for 
a  limited  period  gave  no  opportunity  for  the  detailed  knowledge 
which  is  essential  to  good  government,  and  the  people  naturally 
preserved  their  allegiance  to  the  rule  to  which  they  were  soon  to 
return.  The  Board  of  Control  saw  the  weakness  of  the  scheme  and 
soon  determined  that  new  arrangements  must  be  made :  but  nothing 
was  done,  perhaps  nothing  could  have  been  done,  so  long  as  Muham- 
mad 'Ali  lived.  He  died  13  October,  1 795,  at  the  age  of  seventy-eight, 
an  astute  intriguer,  never  a  serious  foe,  but  always  a  serious  trouble, 
to  the  Company.  He  had  played  on  ruler  after  ruler  with  the  skill 
of  an  expert,  and  he  had  continually  succeeded  in  obtaining  terms 
much  better  than  he  deserved,  if  not  always  all  that  he  desired. 

The  time  of  his  death  seemed  propitious.  A  year  before,  7  Sep- 
tember, 1 794,  Lord  Hobart,  an  honourable  and  intelligent  personage, 
had  become  governor  of  Madras;  and  in  a  minute  immediately  after 
the  nawab's  death  recording  the  ruinous  results  of  the  policy  of  the 
past  and  tracing  all  to  the  usurious  loans  which  had  been  effected  by 
Europeans  for  mortgages  on  the  provinces  of  the  Carnatic,  he  declared 
that  the  whole  system  was  "  destructive  to  the  resources  of  the  Carnatic 
and  in  some  degree  reflecting  disgrace  upon  the  British  Government". 
In  the  letter  appears  an  early  expression  of  English  concern  for  the 
welfare  of  the  poorest  class,  a  protest  against  that  oppression  of  the 
ryots  which  the  misgovernment  and  financial  disorder  inevitably 
produced.  British  power,  it  seemed,  had  actually  increased  the 
capacity  for  evil-doing  which  native  governments  had  never  been 
slow  to  exercise.  The  Europeans  to  whom  control  of  this  mortgaged 
district  was  allowed  came  to  terms  with  the  military  authorities,  and 
enforced  their  claims  by  their  aid:  the  cultivators  had  recourse  to 
money-lenders,  who  completed  their  ruin. 

The  accession  of  'Umdat-ul-Umara  determined  Lord  Hobart  to 
press  his  views  of  needed  reform  on  the  new  nawab  and  on  the  English 


358  OUDH  AND  THE  CARNATIC,  1785-1801 

Government.  He  proposed  to  assume  the  whole  military  and  civil 
administration  of  the  districts  pledged  for  the  payment  of  the  tribute, 
and  the  cession  of  the  sovereignty  over  the  poligars  and  of  some 
specified  forts.  He  declared  that  the  treaty  of  1 792  was  a  total  failure. 
But  he  found  the  new  nawab  immovable.  He  "sat  tight "  and 
appealed  to  the  dying  injunctions  of  his  flagitious  parent.  Hobart 
felt  that  he  could  wait  no  longer.  He  proposed  to  annex  Tinnevelly. 
Sir  John  Shore,  now  governor-general,  considered  such  a  course 
impolitic,  unauthorised  and  unjust.  He  wrote1  to  his  predecessor 
declaring  that  nothing  could  be  more  irreconcileable  than  Lord 
Hobart's  principles  and  his  own.  The  governor  of  Madras  seemed  to 
him  to  be  "pursuing  objects  without  any  regard  to  the  rectitude  of 
the  means  or  ultimate  consequence".  Shore's  principles,  regarded 
by  many  as  the  cause  of  future  wars,  could  not  be  better  expressed 
than  in  one  sentence  of  this  letter2 — 

That  the  territories  of  the  Nawab  of  Arcot . . .  may  be  mismanaged  in  the  most 
ruinous  manner,  I  doubt  not;  that  he  [Hobart]  should  be  anxious  to  correct  those 
evils  which,  from  personal  observation,  may  be  more  impressive,  I  can  readily 
admit ;  but  the  existing  treaties  propose  limits  even  to  mismanagement,  and  let  it 
be  as  great  as  is  asserted,  which  I  do  not  deny,  these  people  are  not  to  be  dragooned 
into  concessions. 

In  fine,  let  the  nawab  go  on,  and  let  us  hope  that  our  goodness, 
without  pressure,  will  make  other  people  good.  The  Evangelical 
idealist  lost  all  touch  with  fact,  and  thus  all  power  to  succour  the 
oppressed.  So,  as  James  Mill,  for  once  not  too  severe,  expresses  it,8 

by  the  compound  of  opposition  of  the  Supreme  Government  and  of  the  powerful 
class  of  individuals  whose 
no  reform  could  be  intro 


class  of  individuals  whose  profit  depended  upon  the  misgovernment  of  the  country, 
roduced. 


A  change  in  the  directing  principle  was  necessary;  and  it  came.  Lord 
Hobart,  defeated  and  discouraged,  resigned  his  post.  Lord  Clive,  his 
successor,  arrived  at  Madras  on  21  August,  1798.  Meanwhile  Lord 
Mornington  had  succeeded  Sir  John  Shore.  The  new  governor-general 
had  not  only  studied  Indian  affairs  in  general  with  more  industry 
and  insight  than  any  of  his  predecessors  before  their  arrival  in  the 
country,  but  as  the  intimate  friend  of  Pitt  was  well  acquainted  with 
the  bitter  criticisms  directed  against  the  India  Act  in  its  bearing  upon 
the  affairs  of  the  Carnatic.  He  saw  the  condition  of  the  country  from 
much  the  same  point  of  view  as  was  described  by  his  brother  Arthur 
in  1806.  The  evils  of  the  alliance,  begun4  "in  the  infancy  of  the  British 
power  in  the  peninsula  of  India",  centred  on  the  non-interference  of 
the  Company  in  the  nawab's  internal  affairs,  the  prominent  feature 
in  the  policy  of  the  directors,  while  such  interference  was  constantly 
proved  to  be  absolutely  necessary,  and  in  the  necessity  of  borrowing 

1  To  Cornwallis,  Life  of  Lord  Teignmouth,  i,  371  sqq.  a  Idem,  p.  373. 

8  History  of  India,  vi,  49.  *  Wellington  Supplementary  Despatches,  rv,  893**' 


WELLESLEY'S  VIEWS  359 

money  to  pay  the  tribute  from  those  who  had  given  assignments  of 
territory  and  had  no  interest  in  anything  beyond  the  security  of  their 
own  interests.  Thence  came,  as  Arthur  WeJlesley  said, 

a  system  which  tended  not  only  to  the  oppression  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  country, 
to  the  impoverishment  of  the  Nawab,  and  to  the  destruction  of  the  revenues  of  the 
Carnatic,  but  was  carried  into  execution  by  the  Company's  civil  and  military 
servants,  and  by  British  subjects. 

It  had  become  an  evil  of  enormous  magnitude.  Arthur  Wellesley 
acutely  observed  that,  apart  from  its  other  results,  it  created  in  Madras 
a  body  of  men  who,  though  in  the  Company's  service,  were  directly 
opposed  to  its  interests;  and  these  men  gave  advice  to  the  nawab 
which  was  necessarily  contrary  to  the  requirements  of  the  British 
Government  and  encouraged  him  in  his  maintenance  of  a  condition 
of  affairs  which,  though  it  kept  him  in  wealth  and  nominal  power, 
tended  directly  to  the  impoverishment  of  his  country.  The  payment 
of  interest  to  private  persons  at  36  per  cent,  meant  ruin  even  in  India; 
and  in  order  to  discharge  it  assignments  had  been  given  on  the 
districts  especially  secured  to  the  Company,  in  case  of  failure  to  pay 
the  subsidy  due  to  the  government.  This  was  in  direct  contradiction 
to  the  terms  of  Cornwall's  treaty  of  1792. 

Not  a  month  elapsed  that  did  not  afford  matter  of  speculation  as  to  whether  he 
could  continue  to  pay  his  stipulated  subsidy;  and  not  one  in  which  [the  Nawab] 
did  not  procure  the  money  on  loan  at  a  large  interest  by  means  which  tended  to 
the  destruction  of  the  country. 

In  vain  did  Hobart,  Mornington,  and  Clive  endeavour  to  win 
the  nawab's  consent  to  a  modification  of  the  treaty:  persistent  im- 
mobility and  trickery  had  been  displayed  to  the  full  by  Muhammad 
'Ali,  and  'Umdat-ul-Umara,  his  son,  followed  in  his  steps.  It  is  more 
than  probable  that  Mornington,  masterful,  determined,  and  im- 
partial though  he  was,  might  have  failed  like  his  predecessors  to 
cleanse  the  Augean  stable  if  the  nawab's  rash  treachery  had  not 
delivered  him  into  the  governor-general's  hands. 

Impartial  and  uninfluenced  by  underground  intrigue  was  Morning- 
ton:  the  directors  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  deserved  this  praise. 
Though  not  personally  corrupt,  as  were  not  a  few  of  their  representa- 
tives in  India,  they  were  obsessed  with  the  idea  that  it  was  necessary 
to  maintain  treaties  in  permanence  which  were  proved  to  have  been 
drawn  up  on  inadequate  knowledge.  They  thought  that  Cornwallis 
had  established  this  "honourable  principle".  They  declared  to 
Mornington  that,  while  they  agreed  with  the  proposals  of  Hobart, 
they  could  not  authorise  the  use  of  "any  powers  than  those  of 
persuasion"  to  induce  the  nawab  to  form  a  new  arrangement. 
Mornington  replied,  4  July,  1798,  that  he  had  taken  immediate  steps 
to  negotiate  but  that  there  was  no  hope  at  present  of  obtaining  the 
nawab's  consent.  His  father's  injunctions  and  his  usurers'  disapproval 
Were  the  ostensible  and  the  real  reasons  of  his  obduracy. 


360  OUDH  AND  THE  CARNATIC,  1785-1801 

Then  came  the  war  with  Tipu,  in  which  the  nawab  behaved 
rather  as  an  enemy  than  a  friend.  Negotiations  were  conducted  with 
scrupulous  courtesy  but  no  success.  Then  suddenly  the  whole  position 
changed.  The  Home  Government  had  begun  to  see  through  the 
nawab's  disguises:  the  government  of  Fort  St  George  still  hesitated: 
Mornington  thought  that  the  rapid  progress  of  the  war  made  the 
seizure  of  the  pledged  territories,  though  ordered  by  the  directors, 
unnecessary.  He  was  soon  to  discover  that  it  was  pressingly  urgent. 

For  the  moment  he  was  turned  aside  from  what  was  already  his 
object,  as  it  had  been  that  of  Cornwallis  and  Hobart,  to  assume  entire 
control  of  the  Carnatic,  by  affairs  in  the  district  about  which  Lord 
Pigot  and  Muhammad  *Ali  had  been  embroiled — Tanjore.  There  in 
1 786  Amir  Singh  had  been  appointed  regent  for  Sarboji,  the  nephew 
by  adoption  of  his  late  brother  the  raja.  A  council  of  pandits  to  whom 
the  question  of  right  was  referred  by  the  Madras  Government  decided 
against  the  claims  of  the  nephew.  Sir  John  Shore  was  as  usual  con- 
scientious and  dissatisfied.  He  found  that  the  pandits  had  been 
corruptly  influenced.  He  summoned  more  pandits,  especially  those 
of  Benares — a  body,  it  might  be  thought,  not  less  amenable  to  monetary 
influence.  They  decided  in  favour  of  Sarboji.  It  was  clear  that  the 
land  was  grievously  oppressed  by  Amir  Singh's  minister,  Siva  Rao, 
and  that  the  districts,  mortgaged,  like  those  in  the  Carnatic,  for  debt 
to  the  Company,  were  on  the  verge  of  ruin.  Hobart  persuaded  the 
raja  to  surrender  his  territory.  But  Shore  would  none  of  it.  His 
biographer1  says  that  the  prize  did  not  tempt  him  to  forget  what  he 
conceived  to  be  the  undue  pressure  by  which  it  had  been  won. 

He  observed  that  the  raja  had  been  intimidated  into  compliance  by  the  repeated 
calling  out  of  British  troops,  even  after  he  had  consented  to  the  dismissal  of  his 
minister — that  the  employment  of  Mr  Swartz,  the  avowed  protector  of  the  raja's 
competitor  and  public  impeacher  of  his  life,  as  interpreter  in  the  transaction,  had 
been  injudicious — that  the  punctuality  of  the  raja's  payments  had  precluded  all 
pretext  for  taking  possession  of  his  territory — that  if  maladministration  of  mort- 
gaged districts  could  justify  the  forfeiture  of  them  the  British  Government  might 
lay  claim  equally  to  Oudh  and  Travancore;  and  he  concluded  by  declaring  that 
justice  and  policy  alike  prescribed  the  recission  of  the  treaty  and  the  restoration  of 
the  ceded  district  to  the  Nawab,  whatever  embarrassments  might  result  from  the 
proceeding. 

Lord  Hobart,  the  man  on  the  spot,  naturally  protested,  and  Shore, 
writing  to  the  omnipotent  Charles  Grant2  at  the  Board  of  Directors, 
was  equally  emphatic  on  the  error  of  Madras,  which  he  attributed 
to  want  of  judgment  and  to  ignoring  his  opinion  "that  honesty  is,  in 
all  situations,  the  best  policy".  But  that  same  honesty  made  him 
temper  his  criticism  by  a  warm  eulogy  of  the  missionary,  Swartz,  one 
of  the  greatest  of  the  men  whose  services  were  at  that  time  given 
unreservedly  to  Southern  India.  Shore  was  indeed,  one  cannot  but 

1  His  son,  the  second  Lord  Teignmouth,  Life,  i,  356. 

1  Idem,  pp.  374  sqq.  ^ 


SERINGAPATAM  PAPERS  361 

feel  as  one  reads  the  documents,  completely  muddled  over  the  affair, 
It  needed  a  Wellesley  to  straighten  out  the  problem. 

In  October,  1797,  the  directors  requested  Lord  Mornington  to 
"make  a  short  stay  at  Madras".  He  did  so,  and  he  studied  the  cases 
of  Tanjore  and  Arcot  on  the  spot.  On  21  March,  1799,  Dundas  wrote 
hoping  that  in  the  former  case  a  settlement  might  be  made  by  which 
there  could  be  expected  from  the  raja  "a  pure  and  virtuous  adminis- 
tration of  the  affairs  of  his  country".1  Mornington  went  into  all 
the  questions  involved  most  thoroughly,  and  brought  "the  several 
contending  parties  to  a  fair  discussion  (or  rather  to  a  bitter  contest) " 
in  his  own  presence.  Finally,  25  October,  1799,  a  treaty  drawn  up 
by  him  was  signed  by  which  Sarboji  was  recognised  as  raja,  but  the 
whole  civil  and  military  administration  of  the  country  was  placed  in 
British  hands,  and  the  raja  was  given  an  allowance  of  £40,000,  and 
Amir  Singh  £10,000.  The  arrangement  was  undoubtedly  beneficial 
to  English  interests,  but  it 

was  far  more  beneficial  to  the  people  of  Tanjore.  It  delivered  them  from  the  effects 
of  native  oppression  and  European  cupidity.  It  gave  them  what  they  had  never 
before  possessed — the  security  derived  from  the  administration  of  Justice.2 

From  this  settlement  we  pass  to  one  much  more  difficult  to  achieve, 
which  was,  as  we  have  said,  secured  by  the  discovery  of  the  treachery 
of  the  nawab  of  Arcot. 

At  the  capture  of  Seringapatam  a  mass  of  secret  correspondence, 
hitherto  entirely  unknown,  between  Muhammad  *Ali  and  his  son  and 
the  ruler  of  Mysore,  fell  into  British  hands.  It  was  investigated  by 
Colonel  Close  and  Air  Webbe  and  submitted  to  the  Board  of  Control 
and  the  Court  of  Directors.  Wellesley  would  run  no  risk  of  again  being 
the  victim  of  ingeniously  manufactured  delays.  This  investigation 
was  thorough.  Witnesses  as  well  as  documents  were  most  carefully 
examined  and  a  report3  was  signed  at  Seringapatam,  18  May,  1800. 
The  conclusion  was — and  it  is  reiterated  in  calm  judicial  terms  by 
Arthur  Wellesley — that  by  their  correspondence  with  the  Company's 
enemies  the  rulers  of  the  Carnatic  had  broken  their  treaties  with  the 
English  and  forfeited  all  claim  to  consideration  as  friends  or  allies. 
The  timely  death  of  'Umdat-ul-Umara,  15  July,  1801,  gave  further 
facilities  for  the  change  of  system  which  the  English  had  long  believed 
to  be  necessary  and  inevitable.  The  succession  was  offered  to  the 
"son,  or  supposed  son"  of  the  nawab,  3Ali  Husain,  if  he  would  accept 
the  terms  offered — a  sum  sufficient  for  his  maintenance  in  state  and 
dignity  and  the  transference  of  the  government  to  the  Company.  He 
rashly  refused.  Accordingly  the  nephew  of  the  late  nawab,  'Azim- 
ud-daula,  was  approached.  He  was  the  eldest  legitimate  son  of  Amir- 

1  Wellesley  Despatches,  n,  no. 

2  Thornton,  History  of  India,  in,  103-4. 
<&                                   *  Wellesley  Despatches,  n,  515. 


362  OUDH  AND  THE  CARNATIG,  1785-1801 

ul-Umara,  who  was  the  second  son  of  Muhammad '  All  and  brother  of 
'Umdat-ul-Umara. 

"This  prince",  in  Wellington's  words,  "having  agreed  to  the  arrangement,  a 
treaty  was  concluded  by  which  the  whole  of  the  civil  and  military  government  of 
the  Carnatic  was  transferred  for  ever  to  the  Company,  and  the  Nawab,  Azim-ud- 
daula,  and  his  heirs  were  to  preserve  their  title  and  dignity  and  to  receive  one-fifth 
of  the  net  revenues  of  the  country." 

An  arrangement  was  also  made  for  the  gradual  liquidation  of  the 
long-standing  and  enormous  debt. 

Wellesley's  justification  of  the  treatment  of  'AH  Husain1  falls  into 
four  divisions,  which  sum  up  the  whole  history  of  the  last  fifty  years, 
The  nawabs  were  not  independent  princes  but  the  creatures  of  the 
Company,  established  and  maintained  by  their  assistance.  Muham- 
mad 'Ali  and  'Umdat-ul-Umara  had  by  their  treachery  forfeited  all 
claim  to  consideration  for  themselves  or  their  line.  The  condition  of 
the  Carnatic  was  a  standing  menace  to  the  British  position  in  Southern 
India,  and  a  scandalous  blot  on  the  principles  of  peace,  justice  and 
prosperity  which  English  rulers  had  endeavoured  to  introduce. 
A  definite  settlement  was  absolutely  demanded.  And  no  injustice 
was  done  to  'Ali  Husain,  for  he  rejected  the  terms  offered  which  his 
successor  accepted.  Thus  a  stable  and  honest  government  was  at  last 
given  by  Wellesley  to  the  land  which  had  been  the  earliest  to  enter 
into  close  association  with  England.  And  the  political  errors  of  earlier 
statesmen  were  put  aside.  The  nawab  of  Arcot  was  in  truth  ko  in- 
dependent prince.2  He  was  merely  an  officer  of  the  subahdar  of  the 
Deccan  of  whom  he  had  been  rendered  independent,  ignorantly 
or  generously,  by  the  English.  A  political  error  had  been  committed 
in  ever  treating  him  as  independent;  and  political  errors,  however 
generously  originated,  are  often  as  dangerous  as  intentional  crimes. 
Wellesley,  in  the  annexation  of  the  Carnatic,  vindicated  political 
justice  as  well  as  political  wisdom. 

1  Declaration  of  the  Annexation  of  the  Carnatic.  2  Idem. 


CHAPTER   XXII 

THE   FINAL   STRUGGLE  WITH   THE    MARATHAS, 

1784-1818 

J.HE  Treaty  of  Salbai,  which  was  signed  17  May,  1782,  and  was 
ratified  by  the  Peshwa  in  February  of  the  following  year,  assured 
peace  between  the  East  India  Company  and  the  Maratha  power  for 
the  next  twenty  years,  and  marked  a  stage  in  the  acquisition  by  the 
English  of  a  controlling  voice  in  Indian  politics.  The  treaty  left 
Mahadaji  Sindhia,  through  whom  it  was  negotiated,  in  a  virtually 
independent  position,  and  the  history  of  the  decade  preceding  his 
death  in  1794  is  largely  the  story  of  his  efforts  to  re-establish  Maratha 
control  over  Northern  India  and  to  outwit  the  design  of  Nana 
Phadnavis,  who  sought  to  maintain  the  Peshwa's  hegemony  over  the 
whole  Maratha  confederacy.  While  the  mutual  jealousy  of  these  two 
able  exponents  of  Maratha  policy  and  power  prevented  their  acting 
wholeheartedly  in  unison,  they  were  restrained  from  overt  antagonism 
by  a  natural  apprehension  of  the  growing  power  of  the  English,  this 
apprehension  in  Mahadaji  Sindhia's  case  being  augmented  by  his 
experience  of  the  military  ability  displayed  by  the  English  in  1 780 
and  1781.  These  views  and  considerations  determined  their  attitude 
towards  the  transactions  of  the  English  with  Mysore.  An  attempt  to 
force  Tipu  Sultan  to  comply  with  the  terms  of  the  Treaty  of  Salbai 
ended  with  the  unfortunate  Treaty  of  Mangalore,  concluded  between 
the  English  in  Madras  and  the  sultan  in  March,  1 784,  which  provided 
for  the  mutual  restitution  of  conquests  and  left  Tipu  free  to  mature 
fresh  plans  for  the  expulsion  of  the  English  from  India.  The  Marathas, 
who  wished  Tipu  Sultan  to  be  regarded  as -their  dependent  and 
tributary,  disapproved  of  the  terms  of  the  treaty  quite  as  strongly  as 
Warren  Hastings,  who  had  no  little  difficulty  in  persuading  Sindhia 
and  other  leaders  that  he  was  in  no  way  responsible  for  the  compact. 
But,  desirous  of  prosecuting  their  own  policy  and  intrigues  in  other 
parts  of  India,  the  Marathas  gave  a  grudging  assent  to  the  fait 
accompli  and  reverted  for  the  time  being  to  matters  of  more  immediate 
importance. 

Sindhia's  political  influence  in  Northern  India  synchronised  with 
an  enhancement  of  his  military  power,  which  resulted  from  his  em- 
ployment of  Count  Benoit  de  Boigne  and  other  European  military 
adventurers  to  train  and  lead  his  infantry.1  With  these  forces,  drilled 
and  equipped  on  European  lines,  he  obtained  the  surrender  of  the 
fortress  of  Gwalior,  made  an  incursion  into  Bundelkhand,  and  secured 
complete  control  of  affairs  at  Delhi,  whither  he  had  been  invited  in 

1  Gompton,  European  Military  Adventurerers  in  Hindustan,  pp.  i*>sqq*  and ^23 sqq. 


364        FINAL  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  MARATHAS 

the  name  of  the  emperor,  Shah  'Alam,  to  assist  in  quelling  the  revolt 
of  Muhammad  Beg,  governor  of  the  province  of  Agra.  Chaos  reigned 
in  the  Moghul  capital  in  October,  1784;  and  the  emperor,  powerless 
to  assert  his  will  and  anxious  to  secure  by  any  means  the  tranquillity 
to  which  he  had  long  been  a  stranger,  permitted  Sindhia  to  assume 
full  control  of  affairs  at  Delhi,  appointed  him  deputy  of  the  Peshwa, 
who  was  formally  honoured  in  absentia  with  the  tide  of  Wakil-i-mutlak 
or  vice-regent  of  the  empire,  and  bestowed  upon  him  the  command 
of  the  Moghul  army  and  the  administrative  charge  of  Agra  and  Delhi 
provinces.  In  return  for  these  official  honours,  which  gave  him 
executive  authority  over  Hindustan  and  a  rank  superior  to  that  of 
the  Peshwa's  other  ministers,  Sindhia  undertook  to  contribute  65,000 
rupees  monthly  towards  the  expenses  of  the  imperial  household,  and 
subsequently  such  additional  amount  as  the  increasing  revenues  of 
the  two  provinces  might  justify.  By  the  close  of  1 785  Sindhia  had 
secured  the  submission  of  Muhammad  Beg  and  had  recovered  by  force 
of  arms  the  Doab,  Agra,  and  Aligarh,  which  had  flouted  the  authority 
of  the  titular  emperor.1  In  the  first  flush  of  his  success  and  emboldened, 
perhaps,  by  the  disappearance  of  Warren  Hastings,  who  had  retired 
from  office  in  February,  1785,  Sindhia  demanded,  in  the  name  of  the 
Moghul,  the  tribute  of  the  British  provinces  in  Bengal.  But  he  met  with 
a  flat  denial  of  the  claim  from  Sir  John  Macpherson,  who  endeavoured 
to  counteract  Sindhia's  influence  by  making  overtures  through  the 
Bombay  Government  to  Mudaji  Bhonsle,  raja  of  Berar,  and  by  sug- 
gesting to  Nana  Phadnavis  the  substitution  for  Sindhia  of  a  British 
Resident  as  representative  of  the  Company's  interests  at  the  court  of 
the  Peshwa. 

Meanwhile  Nana  Phadnavis,  who  viewed  Sindhia's  ascendancy 
in  Northern  India  with  disfavour,  had  been  prosecuting  his  designs 
against  Mysore,  as  part  of  his  policy  of  recovering  the  territories  south 
of  the  Narbada,  which  once  formed  part  of  the  Maratha  possessions. 
After  issuing  a  formal  demand  upon  Tipu  for  arrears  of  tribute,  he 
concluded  a  general  treaty  of  alliance  with  the  Nizam  in  July,  1 784, 
to  which  Tipu  replied  by  overt  preparations  for  the  invasion  of  the 
Nizam's  territory  south  of  the  Krishna.  Hostilities  were,  however, 
postponed  by  mutual  agreement,  as  Tipu  was  conscious  of  his  own 
incapacity  to  support  a  lengthy  campaign  and  the  Nizam  was  unable 
to  count  for  the  moment  on  the  active  support  of  the  Marathas.  Nana 
Phadnavis's  attention  was  wholly  engaged  in  countering  a  plot  to 
depose  the  Peshwa,  Madhu  Rao  Narayan,  in  favour  of  Baji  Rao 
son  of  Raghunath  Rao,  who  had  died  in  retirement  at  Kopargaon 
on  the  Godavari  a  few  months  after  the  Treaty  of  Salbai.  The 
minister  succeeded  without  difficulty  in  quashing  the  movement, 
which  had  possibly  been  secretly  fomented  by  Mahadaji  Sindhia,  in 
pursuance  of  his  general  policy  of  restricting  Nana's  influence. 

-1  Francklin,  The  History  of  the  Reign  of  Shah-Aulum,  pp.  1 19-37. 


GHULAM  KADIR  365 

Nana  Phadnavis  was  thus  free  to  commence  hostilities,  when  Tipu 
made  an  unprovoked  attack  in  1785  on  the  desai  of  Nargund,  and 
aroused  Maratha  anger  still  further  by  forcibly  circumcising  and 
otherwise  maltreating  many  Hindu  inhabitants  of  the  districts  south 
of  the  Krishna.  Believing  that  the  Mysore  troops  were  superior  to  those 
of  the  Peshwa  and  the  Nizam,  and  being  doubtful  of  the  aid  of  the 
latter,  Nana  sought  the  help  of  the  English,  but  without  success;  and 
consequently  the  Maratha  army,  which  left  Poona  at  the  close  of 
1 785  under  the  command  of  Hari  Pant  Phadke,  had  to  depend  upon 
the  co-operation  of  Tukoji  Holkar  and  the  raja  of  Berar,  and  on  the 
dubious  assistance  of  the  Nizam.  After  a  series  of  comparatively  futile 
operations,  which  were  rather  more  favourable  to  the  Marathas  than 
to  Tipu,  the  latter,  assuming  that  the  appointment  of  Charles  Malet 
as  Resident  at  Poona  and  certain  military  preparations  in  Bombay 
and  elsewhere  betokened  the  intention  of  the  English  to  intervene, 
persuaded  the  Marathas  to  conclude  peace  in  April,  1787.  By  this 
pact  Tipu  agreed  to  pay  forty-five  lakhs  of  rupees  and  to  cede  the 
towns  of  Badami,  Kittur,  and  Nargund  to  the  Peshwa,  who  on  his 
side  restored  to  Mysore  the  other  districts  overrun  by  the  Maratha 
forces.1 

During  the  progress  of  these  events  in  the  south,  Mahadaji  Sindhia 
found  his  position  in  Northern  India  far  from  secure.  His  decision 
to  organise  a  regular  standing  army  on  the  European  model  necessi- 
tated the  sequestration  of  many  of  the  jagirs  bestowed  in  the  past 
for  military  service — a  course  which  alienated  their  Muhammadan 
holders;  while  his  pressing  need  of  money  obliged  him  to  demand 
a  heavy  tribute  from  the  Rajput  chiefs,  who  resisted  the  claim  and, 
aided  by  the  disaffected  Muhammadan  jagirdars,  drove  his  forces 
from  the  gates  of  Jaipur.  His  difficulties  were  aggravated  by  the 
faction  in  Delhi,  which  supported  the  invertebrate  emperor,  and  by 
the  hostility  of  the  Sikhs.  When  he  finally  gave  battle  to  the  united 
Rajput  forces,  he  witnessed  the  desertion  to  the  enemy  of  a  large 
contingent  of  the  Moghul  forces  under  Muhammad  Beg  and  his 
nephew  Ismail,  and  was  consequently  obliged  to  beat  a  hasty  retreat 
to  Gwalior.  His  flight  emboldened  a  young  Rohilla,  Ghulam  Kadir, 
to  renew  the  claims  of  his  father,  Zabita  Khan,  upon  the  Moghul 
emperor  and  obtain  for  himself  the  dignity  of  Amiru'l-umara.  Having 
seized  Aligarh  and  repulsed  an  attack  by  Sindhia  and  a  Jat  army 
under  Lestineau2  near  Fatehpur  Sikri,  the  Rohilla  took  possession  of 
Delhi  in  June,  1788,  plundered  the  palace,  and  treated  the  wretched 
Shah  'Alam,  whom  he  blinded,  and  his  household  with  barbaric 
cruelty.  His  crimes,  however,  were  speedily  avenged.  Nana  Phad- 
navis, who  had  no  wish  to  see  a  permanent  diminution  of  Maratha 
influence  in  Hindustan,  dispatched  reinforcements  from  Poona  under 
'Ali  Bahadur  and  Tukoji  Holkar.  With  these  and  his  own  battalions 

1  Grant  Duff,  History  oftfo  Mahrattas,  chap,  xxxii.          *  Compton,  op.  cit.  p.  368. 


366        FINAL  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  MARATHAS 

under  de  Boigne  and  Appa  Khande  Rao,  Sindhia  succeeded  in 
recovering  Delhi  in  1789,  and,  after  taking  a  bloody  revenge  upon 
the  usurper,  reseated  the  blind  emperor  upon  the  throne.1 

These  events  resulted  in  the  jagir  of  Ghulam  Kadir,  the  greater 
part  of  the  Doab,  and  the  provinces  of  Delhi  and  Agra  being  annexed 
to  the  Maratha  dominions;  while  Sindhia  had  leisure  to  organise  his 
army  with  the  help  of  de  Boigne,  who  ultimately  commanded  three 
brigades  of  eight  battalions  each,  equipped  in  European  style  and 
composed  of  both  Rajputs  and  Muhammadans,  with  the  necessary 
complement  of  cavalry  and  artillery.  With  these  forces  Sindhia  finally 
defeated  Ismail  Beg  at  Patan  (Rajputana)  in  1790,  and  the  Rajput 
allies  of  that  chief  at  Mirtha  (Mairta)  in  Jodhpur  territory  in  the 
following  year.  Sindhia's  supremacy  in  Northern  India  still  suffered, 
however,  from  the  hostile  intrigues  of  Holkar,  who  declined  overtures 
of  conciliation  and,  in  sympathy  with  the  secret  policy  of  Nana 
Phadnavis,  showed  little  inclination  to  assist  his  rival  to  impose  his 
authority  upon  the  Sikhs  and  Rajputs.  The  veiled  enmity  between 
the  two  Maratha  chiefs  burst  into  open  hostilities  after  Ismail  Beg's 
submission  to  Perron,  Sindhia's  second-in-command,  atcKanund 
Mohendargarh.  Their  armies,  which  at  the  moment  wefe  jointly 
devastating  Rajput  territory,  suddenly  attacked  one  another  and 
fought  a  battle  at  Lakheri  (Kotah)  in  September,  1792,  which  ended 
in  the  complete  defeat  of  Holkar's  troops  under  the  command  of  a 
French  adventurer  named  Dudrenec.2  This  success  finally  assured 
Sindhia's  predominance  in  Northern  India. 

At  the  close  of  December,  1789,  war  between  the  Company  and 
Mysore  was  precipitated  by  Tipu  Sultan's  attack  upon  the  lines  of 
Travancore.  Hostilities  had  been  preceded  by  curious  negotiations 
between  Lord  Cornwallis  and  the  Nizam,  which  resulted  in  the 
cession  to  the  Company  of  the  Guntoor  district  and  in  a  promise  by 
Cornwallis  that  in  certain  future  circumstances  he  would  sanction 
the  restoration  to  the  Nizam  and  the  Marathas  of  the  Carnatic  uplands 
(balaghai),  which  were  at  that  date  included  in  the  Mysore  state.  On 
the  outbreak  of  hostilities  with  Tipu,  Nana  Phadnavis  made  imme- 
diate overtures  to  the  governor-general,  and  in  the  names  of  both  the 
Peshwa  and  the  Nizam  concluded  an  offensive  and  defensive  alliance 
with  the  Company  against  Tipu  in  June,  1 790.  The  support  afforded 
by  the  Marathas  and  the  Nizam  was,  however,  of  little  value;  and  it 
was  not  until  March,  1792,  that  Lord  Cornwallis  succeeded  in  forcing 
Tipu  to  sign  the  Treaty  of  Seringapatam,  which  gave  the  Company 
possession  of  districts  commanding  the  passes  to  the  Mysore  table-land, 
and  handed  over  to  the  Nizam  and  the  Marathas  territory  on  the 
north-east  and  north-west  respectively  of  Tipu's  possessions.  This 
policy  of  partial  annexation,  in  lieu  of  the  complete  subjugation  of 

1  Francklin,  Shah-Aulum,  pp.  141-86;  Scott,  History  of  Dekkan,  n,  280-307. 
1  Malcolm,  A  Memoir  of  Central  India,  i,  171-2. 


DEATH  OF  MAHADAJI  367 

Mysore,  was  forced  upon  Lord  Cornwallis  by  the  desire  of  the 
directors  for  immediate  peace,  and  by  a  disinclination  to  displease 
the  Nizam  and  the  Marathas,  neither  of  whom  were  wholly  loyal  to 
their  alliance  with  the  Company.1 

Mahadaji  Sindhia  had  offered  to  join  the  confederacy  against  Tipu 
on  terms  which  the  governor-general  was  not  prepared  to  accept, 
and  he  therefore  seized  the  opportunity  of  this  enforced  neutrality 
to  pursue  his  private  object  of  establishing  his  authority  at  the  Peshwa's 
capital  against  all  rivals,  including  the  English,  and  of  checking 
Holkar's  interference  with  his  position  and  plans  in  Hindustan. 
Shortly  after  his  defeat  of  Ismail  Beg,  he  obliged  Shah  'Alam  to  issue 
a  fresh  patent,  making  the  Peshwa's  office  of  Wakil-i-mutlak,  as  well 
as  his  own  appointment  as  deputy,  hereditary.  The  delivery  of  the 
imperial  orders  and  insignia  of  office  to  the  Peshwa  gave  him  the 
desired  excuse  for  a  personal  visit  to  Poona,  where  he  duly  arrived 
with  a  small  military  escort  in  June,  1792.  His  arrival  caused  great 
dissatisfaction  to  Nana  Phadnavis,  who  made  every  effort  to  prevent 
the  investiture  of  the  Peshwa.  Sindhia,  however,  while  avoiding  an 
open  rupture  with  the  minister,  won  his  object,  after  obtaining  the 
formal  consent  of  the  raja  of  Satara  to  the  Peshwa's  acceptance  of 
the  honour;  and  then  directed  all  his  efforts  towards  ingratiating 
himself  with  the  young  Peshwa,  Madhu  Rao,  allaying  the  anti- 
pathy shown  against  himself  by  the  Brahman  entourage  of  Nana 
Phadnavis  and  the  leading  Maratha  jagirdars,  and  securing  open 
recognition  by  the  Poona  Government  of  his  paramount  position  in 
Northern  India.  The  rivalry  between  Sindhia  and  Nana  Phadnavis 
was,  however,  summarily  terminated  by  the  sudden  death  of  the 
former  at  Poona  in  February,  1794,  and  the  Brahman  minister  was 
thus  left  in  practically  sole  control  of  Maratha  policy  and  affairs. 
A  thirteen-year-old  nephew,  Daulat  Rao,  succeeded  to  the  possessions 
of  Mahadaji,  who  left  no  direct  male  issue.2 

The  constitutional  position  of  the  Maratha  confederacy  at  this 
date  has  been  described  as  "a  curious  and  baffling  political  puzzle". 
While  the  powers  of  the  raja  of  Satara,  the  nominal  head  of  the  con- 
federacy, who  was  virtually  a  prisoner  in  his  palace,  had  long  been 
usurped  by  the  Peshwa,  the  subordinate  members  of  the  confederacy 
had  thrown  off  all  but  the  nominal  control  of  the  Brahman  govern- 
ment in  Poona.  Among  these  virtually  independent  leaders,  who 
ranked  as  hereditary  generals  of  the  Peshwa,  was  Raghuji  Bhonsle, 
raja  of  Berar,  whose  possessions  stretched  in  a  broad  belt  from  his 
capital  Nagpur  to  Cuttack  on  the  Bay  of  Bengal.  After  the  death  of 
his  father  Mudaji  in  1 788,  Raghuji  and  his  younger  brothers  quarrelled 
about  the  succession ;  but  the  death  of  one  of  the  latter  and  the  bestowal 
upon  the  other  of  the  Chanda  and  Chattisgarh  districts  enabled 

1  Grant  Duff,  History  of  the  Makrattas,  chap,  xxxiv. 
*  /</i7?2,  chap.  xxxv. 


368        FINAL  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  MARATHAS 

Raghuji  to  secure  public  recognition  of  his  claim  to  rule  Berar,  and 
by  the  date  of  Mahadaji  Sindhia's  death  he  was  in  undisturbed 
possession  of  his  inherited  fief.  Holding,  as  he  did,  the  hereditary 
post  of  Sena  Sahib  Subah  of  the  Maratha  army,  Raghuji  should  have 
complied  with  the  Peshwa's  orders  to  participate  in  the  operations 
against  Tipu  in  1791,  but  on  his  personal  representation  that  the 
intrigues  of  his  brother  Khanduji  obliged  him  to  remain  in  Nagpur, 
he  was  permitted  by  Nana  Phadnavis  to  purchase  exemption  from 
the  campaign  by  a  contribution  of  ten  lakhs  to  the  Maratha  war- 
chest.1 

Another  important  member  of  the  confederacy  was  the  Gaekwad, 
whose  ill-defined  territories  roughly  included  Gujarat  and  the 
Kathiawad  peninsula.  The  ruler,  Sayaji,  being  imbecile,  the  territory 
was  administered  from  1771  to  1789  by  his  younger  brother  Fateh 
Singh,  who  died  in  the  latter  year.  A  conflict  for  the  regency  then 
ensued  between  his  brothers  Manaji  Rao,  whose  claim  was  admitted 
by  the  Peshwa,  and  Govind  Rao,  who  secured  the  support  of  Mahadaji 
Sindhia.  In  1792,  while  the  dispute  was  still  undecided,  the  imbecile 
Sayaji  Rao  died,  and  Govind  Rao,  who  had  been  allowed  by  the 
Peshwa  to  purchase  the  title  of  Sena  Khas  Khel,  sought  the  approval 
of  the  Poona  Government  to  his  succession  to  the  throne.  His  rival, 
Manaji,  also  died  in  1 793 ;  but,  despite  this  fact,  the  price  of  his 
recognition,  demanded  by  the  Peshwa,  was  so  heavy  that  the  British 
Government  was  compelled  to  intervene,  in  order  to  prevent  the  dis- 
memberment of  Baroda  territory.  Eventually,  in  December,  1793, 
owing  to  the  representations  of  the  British  Resident,  the  Peshwa 
waived  his  demands  and  assented  to  Govind  Rao's  assumption  of  full 
authority  over  the  state.  His  rule,  which  terminated  with  his  death 
in  1800,  was  disturbed  by  the  rebellious  intrigues  of  his  illegitimate 
son,  Kanhoji,  and  by  the  hostility  of  Aba  Selukar,  who  had  been 
granted  by  the  Peshwa  the  revenue  management  of  the  Ahmadabad 
district.  After  several  engagements  Aba  was  captured  and  imprisoned, 
and  in  1799  the  Peshwa  consented  to  lease  Ahmadabad  to  the 
Gaekwad.2 

The  territories  of  Holkar,  which  embraced  the  south-western  part 
of  Malwa,  were  ruled  at  this  date  by  the  widow  of  Malhar  Holkar, 
the  famous  Ahalya  Bai,  who  assumed  the  government  as  sole  repre- 
sentative of  her  husband's  dynasty  in  1766  and  ruled  with  exceptional 
wisdom  until  her  death  in  1795.  Tukoji  Holkar,  who  was  no  relation 
of  the  reigning  family,  though  a  member  of  the  same  class,  was  chosen 
by  Ahalya  Bai  to  bear  titular  honours  and  command  her  armies,  and 
in  that  capacity  co-operated  loyally  with  the  queen  and  established 
the  first  regular  battalions  with  the  help  of  the  Chevalier  Dudrenec, 
the  American  soldier,  J.  P.  Boyd,  and  others.  Ahalya  Bai's  internal 

1  Grant  Duff,  History  of  the  Mafirattas,  chap,  xxxvi. 
*  Idem,  chap.  xlii. 


THE  PIRATE  STATES  369 

administration  of  the  state  was  described  by  Sir  John  Malcolm  as 
"altogether  wonderful".  During  her  reign  of  thirty  years  the  country 
was  free  from  internal  disturbance  and  foreign  attack;  Indore,  the 
capital,  grew  from  a  village  to  a  wealthy  city;  her  subjects  enjoyed  in 
full  measure  the  blessings  of  righteous  and  beneficent  government. 
It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  she  was  regarded  by  her  own 
subjects  as  an  avatar  or  incarnation  of  divinity,  and  by  an  experienced 
foreigner  as  "within  her  limited  sphere  one  of  the  purest  and  most 
exemplary  rulers  that  ever  existed5'.  She  was  succeeded  by  the  aged 
Tukoji,  who  strove  to  administer  the  state  according  to  her  example 
until  his  death  two  years  later  (1797)  at  the  age  of  seventy-two.  With 
his  departure  chaos  and  confusion  supervened,  which  lasted  until  the 
final  settlement  imposed  by  the  British  power  in  iSiS.1 

Among  the  minor  figures  of  the  Maratha  confederacy  were  the 
piratical  chiefs  of  Western  India.  When  Raghuji  Angria,  who  held 
Kolaba  fort  as  a  feudatory  of  the  Peshwa,  died  in  1793,  he  was 
succeeded  by  an  infant  son,  Manaji,  who  was  deposed  and  imprisoned 
four  years  later  by  Daulat  Rao  Sindhia.  His  place  was  usurped  by 
Baburao  Angria,  the  maternal  uncle  of  Sindhia.2  The  Company 
suffered  considerable  annoyance  from  the  piratical  habits  of  both 
Angria  and  the  Sidi  or  Abyssinian  chief  of  Janjira.  On  the  death  of 
Sidi  Abdul  Rahim  in  1 784,  a  dispute  for  the  succession  arose  between 
his  son  Abdul  Karim  Khan  alias  Balu  Mian  and  Sidi  Johar.  Lord 
Cornwallis,  to  whom  the  matter  was  referred,  was  at  first  disposed 
to  leave  the  task  of  settling  the  dispute  to  the  Peshwa,  who  had  already 
befriended  Balu  Mian;  but  a  premature  attempt  on  the  part  of  the 
Maratha  Government  to  seize  Janjira  by  stealth  caused  him  to  re- 
consider the  matter.  A  compromise  was  not  reached  until  1791,  when 
the  Peshwa,  in  return  for  the  grant  to  Balu  Mian  of  a  tract  of  land 
near  Surat — the  modern  Sachin  state — was  recognised  as  superior 
owner  of  the  Janjira  principality.3  His  rights  over  the  island,  how- 
ever, were  never  acknowledged  by  Sidi  Johar,  who,  repelling  all 
efforts  to  oust  him,  was  still  master  of  the  principality  at  the  date  of 
the  Peshwa' s  downfall.  The  third  principal  instigator  of  piracy  was 
Khem  Savant  of  Wadi,  who  had  married  a  niece  of  Mahadaji  Sindhia 
and  was  on  that  account  created  Raja  Bahadur  by  the  Moghul 
emperor  in  1763.  His  rule,  which  lasted  till  1803,  was  a  tale  of 
continuous  piracies  by  his  seafaring  subjects  in  Vengurla  and  of 
conflict  with  the  British,  the  Peshwa,  and  the  raja  of  Kolhapur. 
Eventually  in  1812  the  Bombay  Government  forced  his  successor  to 
enter  into  a  treaty  and  cede  the  port  of  Vengurla.4  They  also  in  the 
same  year  obtained  the  cession  of  the  port  of  Malwan,  an  equally 
notorious  stronghold  of  pirates,  from  the  raja  of  Kolhapur.  Owing 

1  Malcolm,  A  Memoir  of  Central  India,  i,  156-05. 

*  Bombay  Ga&tteer,  xi,  157.  *  Idem,  pp.  448-9. 

«  Idem,  x,  443-3. 

CHI  V  24 


370        FINAL  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  MARATHAS 

to  the  constant  losses  inflicted  on  British  vessels,  the  Company  had 
dispatched  an  expedition  against  the  raja  in  1792  and  forced  him  to 
pay  compensation  and  to  permit  the  establishment  of  factories  at 
Malwan  and  Kolhapur;  and  during  the  following  decade  internal 
dissension  and  wars  with  neighbouring  territorial  chiefs  so  weakened 
the  Kolhapur  state  that  in  1812  the  raja  was  glad  to  sign  a  permanent 
treaty  with  the  British,  under  the  terms  of  which  his  territory  was 
guaranteed  against  foreign  attack,  in  return  for  the  cession  of  several 
strong  places  and  an  undertaking  to  refer  all  disputes  with  other 
powers  to  the  Company's  arbitration.1 

Mutual  distrust  and  selfish  intrigue  effectually  prevented  the 
leaders  of  the  Maratha  confederacy  from  offering  a  united  front  to 
their  opponents,  though  they  were  not  averse  from  temporary  com- 
bination for  any  special  object  which  offered  a  chance  of  gratifying 
their  personal  avarice.  In  1 794  the  renewal  by  the  Peshwa  of  Maratha 
claims  upon  the  Nizam  for  arrears  ofchauth  and  sardesmukhi,  in  which 
all  the  chiefs  expected  to  share,  offered  them  an  occasion  for  acting 
in  concert  with  the  Poona  Government.  The  Nizam,  alarmed  at  the 
imminence  of  the  combined  Maratha  attack,  appealed  to  the  governor- 
general,  Sir  John  Shore,  for  the  military  assistance  which  he  had 
been  led  to  expect,  and  had  certainly  earned,  by  his  cession  of  Guntoor. 
But  Sir  John  Shore,  who  dreaded  a  war  with  the  Maratha  confederacy, 
sheltered  himself  behind  the  words  of  the  act  of  parliament  of  1 784 
and  declared  his  neutrality,  leaving  the  Nizam  to  bear  the  whole 
brunt  of  the  Maratha  attack.2  The  issue  was  not  long  in  doubt.  In 
March,  1795,  the  Nizam's  army,  which  had  been  trained  by  the 
Frenchman  Raymond,  was  overwhelmed  by  the  Marathas  and  their 
Pindari  followers  at  Kharda,  fifty-six  miles  south-cast  of  Ahmadnagar, 
and  the  Nizam  was  forced  to  conclude  a  humiliating  treaty,  which 
imposed  upon  him  heavy  pecuniary  damages  and  deprived  him  of 
considerable  territory. 

This  victory,  coupled  with  the  spoils  distributed  among  the 
Maratha  chiefs,  restored  for  the  moment  the  prestige  of  the  Peshwa's 
government  and  placed  Nana  Phadnavis  at  the  height  of  his  power. 
It  was,  however,  the  last  occasion  on  which  "  the  chiefs  of  the  Mahratta 
nation  assembled  under  the  authority  of  their  Peshwa",  and  the 
inevitable  domestic  dissensions,  which  shortly  followed,  resulted  in 
the  Marathas  forfeiting  much  of  the  results  of  their  victory.  The  young 
Peshwa,  Madhu  Rao  Narayan,  tired  of  the  control  of  Nana  Phad- 
navis and  disheartened  by  the  latter's  refusal  to  countenance  his 
friendship  with  his  cousin  Baji  Rao  Raghunath,  committed  suicide 
in  October,  1795,  by  throwing  himself  from  the  terrace  of  the  Sanivar 
Wada  at  Poona.  Baji  Rao  at  once  determined  to  secure  for  himself 
the  vacant  throne,  and  had  no  sooner  overcome  Nana's  profound  and 
instinctive  opposition  by  false  professions  of  friendship  and  loyalty 

1  Bombay  Gazetteer,  xxrv,  236.  *  Malcolm,  Political  History  of  India,  i,  127-47. 


CONTUSION  AT  POONA  371 

than  he  was  faced  with  the  hostility  of  Daulat  Rao  Sindhia  and 
another  faction,  bent  upon  opposing  Nana's  plans.  This  faction 
contrived  to  place  Chimnaji  Appa,  the  brother  of  Baji  Rao,  on  the 
throne  at  the  end  of  May,  1  796,  whereupon  Nana  took  refuge  in  the 
Konkan  and  there  matured  a  counter-stroke,  which  ended  in  Baji 
Rao's  return  as  Peshwa  and  his  own  restoration  as  chief  minister  in 
the  following  December.  In  preparing  his  plans,  Nana  secured  the 
goodwill  of  Sindhia,  Holkar,  the  Bhonsle  raja,  and  the  raja  of  Kolha- 
pur,  and  also  obtained  the  approval  of  the  Nizam  by  promising  to 
restore  to  him  the  districts  ceded  to  the  Peshwa  after  the  battle  of 
Kharda  and  to  remit  the  balance  of  the  fine  imposed  by  the  Marathas. 

The  return  of  Baji  Rao  to  Poona  was  the  signal  for  grave  disorder, 
engendered  by  his  determination  to  ruin  Nana,  to  whom  he  owed 
his  position,  and  to  rid  himself  of  the  influence  of  Sindhia,  who  had 
financial  claims  upon  him.  Nana  was  arrested,  and  his  house  plun- 
dered, by  a  miscreant  named  Sarji  Rao  Ghatke,  father-in-law  of 
Sindhia,  who  was  also  given  carte  blanche  to  extort  from  the  citizens 
of  Poona  by  atrocious  torture  the  money  which  Sindhia  claimed  from 
the  Peshwa.  The  confusion  was  aggravated  by  open  hostilities  carried 
on  in  the  Peshwa's  territories  between  Sindhia  and  the  widows  of 
Mahadaji  Sindhia,  by  the  growing  inefficiency  of  the  Peshwa's  army, 
whose  pay  was  seriously  in  arrears,  and  by  the  continuous  intrigues 
and  counter-plotting  of  Baji  Rao  and  Sindhia.  The  confirmation  by 
Baji  Rao  of  the  arrangement  made  between  Nana  and  the  Nizam, 
which  the  latter  demanded  as  the  price  of  his  assistance  against 
Sindhia,  was  immediately  followed  by  Sindhia's  release  of  Nana 
Phadnavis,  who  once  again  acquiesced  in  a  hollow  reconciliation 
with  his  avowed  enemy  and  resumed  his  old  position  at  Poona.1 

In  1  798  Lord  Wellesley  arrived  in  Calcutta,  determined  to  shatter 
for  ever  all  possibility  of  French  competition  in  India.  The  political 
outlook  was  far  from  favourable,  for,  largely  in  consequence  of  Sir 
John  Shore's  invertebrate  policy  of  non-interference  in  Indian 
politics,  Tipu  Sultan  had  regained  his  strength;  French  influence, 
supported  by  troops  under  French  commanders,  had  become  para- 
mount at  the  courts  of  Sindhia  and  the  Nizam;  the  raja  of  Berar  had* 
indulged  in  intrigues  against  British  interests;  and  the  Carnatic  was 
in  a  condition  bordering  on  anarchy.  Wellesley's  first  step  was  to 
persuade  the  Nizam  to  accept  a  form  of  "subsidiary  alliance  "  ;  and  he 
then  proceeded  to  deal  with  Tipu.  The  Peshwa  was  invited  to  send 
troops  in  support  of  the  British  and  promised  to  do  so;  but,  true  to 
his  character,  he  carried  on  secret  intrigues  with  Tipu  up  to  the  last 
and  gave  the  English  no  appreciable  help.  Surprised  by  the  rapid 
and  complete  downfall  of  the  ruler  of  Mysore,  he  endeavoured  to 
excuse  his  inactivity  by  putting  the  blame  upon  Nanfa  Phadnavis.2 


1  Grant  Duff,  op.  cit.  chaps,  xxxviii-xl. 
*  Malcolm,  Political  History  of  India,  i,  1 


96-236.      > 

24-2 


372        FINAL  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  MARATHAS 

The  state  of  his  own  territories  would  have  served  as  a  more  valid 
excuse.  The  contest  between  Sindhia  and  the  ladies  of  his  family  was 
still  being  body  pursued  on  both  sides;  the  ruler  of  Kolhapur,  a 
lineal  descendant  of  Sivaji,  who  had  always  been  in  more  or  less 
permanent  opposition  to  the  Peshwa,  was  laying  waste  the  southern 
Maratha  country,  and  was  aided  for  a  time  by  Chitur  Singh,  brother 
of  the  raja  of  Satara;  while,  more  dangerous  and  violent  than  the 
rest,  Jasvant  Rao  Holkar,  who  had  escaped  from  confinement  in 
Nagpur  during  the  feud  of  1 795  between  the  legitimate  and  natural 
sons  of  Tukoji  Rao  Holkar,  was  carrying  fire  and  sword  through 
Sindhia  Js  territory  in  Malwa,  with  a  large  force  composed  of  Indian 
and  Afghan  freebooters.1 

Such  was  the  state  of  affairs  in  March,  1800,  when  Nana  Phadnavis 
died.  "With  him",  remarked  the  Resident,  "has  departed  all  the 
wisdom  and  moderation  of  the  Mahratta  government."  He  had 
controlled  Maratha  politics  for  the  long  period  of  thirty-eight  years, 
and  his  demise  may  be  said  to  mark  the  commencement  of  the  final 
debdcle.  Nana  being  beyond  his  reach,  Baji  Rao,  who  was  the  per- 
sonification of  treachery  and  cowardice,  sought  revenge  upon  Nana's 
friends  and  agreed  to  support  Sindhia  against  Holkar,  in  return  for 
a  promise  by  Daulat  Rao  to  assist  his  policy  of  vengeance.  While 
Sindhia  was  absent  from  Poona,  endeavouring  to  protect  his  lands 
from  Holkar's  devastations,  Baji  Rao,  giving  free  rein  to  his  passions, 
perpetrated  a  series  of  atrocious  cruelties  in  Poona,  which  alienated 
his  subjects  and  brought  upon  his  head  the  implacable  wrath 
of  the  savage  Jasvant  Rao.  Among  those  whom  he  barbarously 
murdered  in  1801  was  Jasvant  Rao's  brother,  Vithuji;  and  it  was  to 
avenge  this  crime  that  Jasvant  Rao  invaded  the  Deccan  in  the 
following  year.  The  English  endeavoured  to  set  a  limit  to  this 
internecine  warfare  by  offering  terms  and  treaties  to  both  parties. 
But  their  efforts  were  of  no  avail. 

In  October,  1802,  Holkar  defeated  the  combined  forces  of  Sindhia 
and  the  Peshwa  at  Poona,  placed  on  the  throne  Amrit  Rao,  brother 
by  adoption  of  Baji  Rao,  and  then  plundered  the  capital.  Baji  Rao, 
as  pusillanimous  as  he  was  perfidious,  fled  to  Mahad  in  the  Konkan 
and  thence  to  Bassein,  whence  he  besought  the  help  of  the  English 
and  placed  himself  unreservedly  in  their  hands.  On  the  last  day  of 
the  year  (1802)  he  signed  the  Treaty  of  Bassein,  which  purported  to 
be  a  general  defensive  alliance  for  the  reciprocal  protection  of  the 
possessions  of  the  East  India  Company,  the  Peshwa,  and  their 
respective  allies.  The  Peshwa  bound  himself  to  maintain  a  subsidiary 
force  of  not  less  than  six  battalions,  to  be  stationed  within  his  do- 
minions; to  exclude  from  his  service  all  Europeans  of  nations  hostile 
to  the  English;  to  relinquish  all  claims  on  Surat;  to  recognise  the 
engagements  between  the  Gaekwad  and  the  British;  to  abstain  from 

v,  *  Malcolm,  Central  India,  x,  197-225. 


TREATY  OF  BASSEIN  373 

hostilities  or  negotiations  with  other  states,  unless  in  consultation  with 
the  English  Government;  and  to  accept  the  arbitration  of  the  British 
in  disputes  with  the-Nizam  or  the  Gaekwad.  Having  thus  persuaded 
Baji  Rao  to  sacrifice  his  independence,  the  Company  lost  no  time  in 
restoring  him  to  the  throne.  By  a  series  of  rapid  forced  marches, 
General  Arthur  Wellesley  saved  Poona  from  destruction,  obliged 
Holkar  to  retire  to  Malwa,  and  reinstalled  the  Peshwa  in  May,  1803 

The  Treaty  of  Bassein  gave  the  Company  the  supremacy  of  the 
Deccan.  Although  it  was  regarded  askance  by  some  authorities  in 
England  and  by  the  directors,  as  likely  to  involve  the  government  in 
the  "endless  and  complicated  distractions  of  the  turbulent  Maratha 
empire",  it  entirely  forestalled  for  the  moment  a  combination  of  the 
Maratha  states  against  the  Company,  and  by  placing  the  Peshwa's 
foreign  policy  under  control,  it  made  the  governor-general  really 
responsible  for  every  war  in  India  in  which  the  Poona  Government 
might  be  engaged.  In  short,  "the  Treaty  by  its  direct  and  indirect 
operations  gave  the  Company  the  empire  of  India",  in  contra- 
distinction to  the  British  Empire  in  India,  which  had  hitherto  existed. 
On  the  other  hand,  while  the  support  and  protection  of  the  English 
power  saved  the  Peshwa  from  becoming  the  puppet  of  one  of  the  other 
Maratha  leaders,  they  averted  the  fear  of  a  popular  rebellion,  which 
alone  restrains  an  unprincipled  despot  from  gratifying  his  evil 
passions,  and  inevitably  inclined  his  mind  to  substitute  intrigue 
against  his  foreign  defenders  for  the  military  excursions  which  had 
formed  the  principal  activity  of  the  Maratha  state  since  the  seventeenth 
century.  The  period  of  fifteen  years  between  Baji  Rao's  restoration 
and  his  final  surrender  is  a  continuous  story  of  oppressive  malad- 
ministration and  of  shameless  plotting  against  the  British  power  in 
India. 

The  other  Maratha  leaders  regarded  Baji  Rao's  assent  to  the  treaty 
with  open  alarm  and  anger.  Jasvant  Rao  Holkar  declared  that  the 
Peshwa  had  sold  the  Maratha  power  to  the  English;  Sindhia  and  the 
raja  of  Berar,  who  disliked  particularly  the  provisions  regarding 
British  arbitration  in  disputes  between  the  Peshwa  and  other  Indian 
rulers,  realised  that  at  last  they  were  face  to  face  with  the  British 
power,  and  that  Wellesley's  system  of  subsidiary  alliances  would 
reduce  them  to  impotence  as  surely  as  the  Maratha  claim  to  chauth 
had  ruined  the  Moghul  power.  With  the  secret  approval  of  the 
Peshwa,  the  leading  Marathas,  therefore,  addressed  themselves  to  the 
problem  of  a  joint  plan  of  defence.  But  a  general  combination  ws 
frustrated  by  the  neutrality  of  the  Gaekwad  and  the  withdrg 
Holkar  to  Malwa.  Sindhia  and  the  raja  of  Berar,  who 
the  Narbada  with  obviously  hostile  intent,  were  requc 
English  to  separate  their  forces  and  recross  the  river; 
refusal  to  comply,  war  was  declared  in  August,  1803,  wit 
object  of  conquering  Sindhia's  territory  between  the] 


374        FINAL  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  MARATHAS 

Jumna,  destroying  the  French  force  which  protected  Sindhia's 
frontier,  capturing  Delhi  and  Agra,  and  acquiring  Bundelkhand, 
Cuttack  and  Broach.  General  Wellesley  and  -General  Lake  com- 
manded the  two  major  operations  in  the  Deccan  and  Hindustan 
respectively,  while  subsidiary  campaigns  were  planned  in  Bundel- 
khand and  Orissa,  in  order  to  secure  the  southern  frontier  of  Hindustan 
and  the  districts  lying  between  the  boundaries  of  Bengal  and  Madras. 

The  operations  were  speedily  successful.  Wellesley  captured 
Ahmadnagar  in  August,  1803,  broke  the  combined  armies  of  Sindhia 
and  the  Bhonsle  raja  at  Assaye  in  September,  and  then,  after  forcing 
on  Sindhia  a  temporary  suspension  of  hostilities,  defeated  the  raja 
decisively  at  Argaon  in  November,  stormed  the  strong  fortress  of 
Gawilgarh,  and  thus  forced  the  raja  to  sign  the  Treaty  of  Deogaon, 
15  December,  under  the  terms  of  which  the  latter  ceded  Cuttack  to 
his  conquerors  and  accepted  a  position  similar  to  that  assigned  to  the 
Peshwa  by  the  Treaty  of  Bassein.  Equally  decisive  were  the  results 
achieved  by  Lake.  Marching  from  Cawnpore,  he  captured  Aligarh 
at  the  end  of  August,  causing  Perron  to  retire  in  dejection  from 
Sindhia's  service.  He  then  defeated  Perron's  successor,  Louis  Bour- 
quin,  at  Delhi  in  September;  took  possession  of  the  old  blind  emperor, 
Shah  'Alam;  made  a  treaty  with  the  raja  of  Bharatpur;  and  finally  in 
November  vanquished  Sindhia's  remaining  forces  at  Laswari  in 
Alwar  state.  Sindhia  was  thus  rendered  impotent;  his  regular  troops, 
commanded  by  French  officers,  were  destroyed;  and  he  was  conse- 
quently obliged  to  accept  a  "subsidiary  alliance"  and  sign  the  Treaty 
of  SurjiArjungaon,  30  December,  1803.  In  the  course  of  the  subsidiary 
campaign,  Broach  was  captured  and  all  Sindhia's  territories  annexed.1 
Thus  within  five  months  the  most  powerful  heads  of  the  Maratha 
confederacy  had  been  reduced  to  comparative  harmlessness. 

Holkar  alone  remained  unpacified.  At  the  end  of  1803  Lord  Lake 
opened  negotiations  with  him  without  avail;  and  on  his  preferring 
extravagant  demands  and  plundering  the  territory  of  the  raja  of 
Jaipur,  war  was  declared  against  him  in  April,  1804.  With  Lake 
operating  in  Hindustan,  Wellesley  advancing  from  the  Deccan,  and 
Murray  marching  from  Gujarat,  it  was  hoped  to  hem  in  the  Maratha 
chief*  But  the  plan  miscarried,  owing  to  the  failure  of  Colonel  Murray 
and  Colonel  Monson,  who  was  acting  under  Lord  Lake,  to  carry  out 
their  instructions.  Monson,  who  according  to  Wellesley  "advanced 
without  reason  and  retreated  in  the  same  manner",  allowed  himself 
to  be  overwhelmed  by  Holkar  in  the  Mukund  Dara  pass,  thirty  miles 
south  of  Kotah,  and  beat  a  disorderly  retreat  to  Agra  at  the  end  of 
August.  This  disaster  gave  fresh  courage  to  the  Company's  enemies. 
Sindhia  showed  a  disposition  to  fight  again,  and  the  Jat  raja  of 
Bharatpur,  renouncing  his  alliance  with  the  English,  joined  with 
Holkar  in  an  attack  on  Delhi,  which  was  successfully  repulsed  by 

;  l  Fortescue,  A  History  of  the  British  Army,  v,  1-69. 


WELLESLEY  RECALLED  375 

Ochterlony.  In  November  one  of  Holkar's  armies  was  defeated  at 
Dig,  and  another,  led  by  Holkar  himself,  was  routed  by  Lake  a  few 
days  later  at  Farrukhabad.  The  most  serious  reverse  suffered  by  the 
English  was  Lake's  failure  to  capture  Bharatpur  early  in  1805.  He 
was  eventually  obliged  to  make  peace  with  the  raja  in  April  of  that 
year,  leaving  him  in  possession  of  the  fortress,  which  had  repulsed 
four  violent  assaults  by  the  Company's  troops.1 

Monson's  disaster  and  Lake's  failure  before  Bharatpur  caused  grave 
apprehension  to  the  authorities  in  England,  who  had  watched  the 
Company's  debt  increase  rapidly  under  the  strain  of  Wellesley's 
forward  policy,  and  were  disposed  to  think  that  England's  conquests 
were  becoming  too  large  for  profitable  management.  As  a  necessary 
preliminary  to  a  change  of  policy,  they  determined  to  recall  the 
governor-general  and  to  entrust  the  task  of  making  peace  with  the 
various  Indian  powers  to  Lord  Cornwallis,  now  in  his  sixty-seventh 
year  and  physically  infirm.  They  failed  to  realise  that,  despite  the 
misfortune  of  Monson,  Wellesley's  operations  had  actually  broken 
Holkar's  power  and  had  left  no  single  Maratha  chief  strong  enough 
to  withstand  the  English.  Moreover,  as  the  resentment  felt  by  every 
Maratha  chief  towards  the  English  at  this  juncture  was  too  deep  to 
be  assuaged  by  a  policy  of  concession  and  forbearance,  the  abandon- 
ment of  Wellesley's  programme  merely  amounted  to  a  postponement 
of  the  final  hour  of  reckoning.  The  peace  concluded  with  the  Marathas 
in  1805  was  unfortunately  marked  by  a  spirit  of  weak  conciliation, 
which  caused  future  embarrassment  to  the  Company's  government 
in  India,  handed  over  weak  states  like  Jaipur,  which  relied  on  British 
support,  to  the  mercy  of  their  rapacious  neighbours,  and  ultimately 
forced  the  Marquess  of  Hastings  thirteen  years  later  to  consummate 
the  task  which  Wellesley  was  forbidden  by  the  timidity  of  the  ruling 
party  at  the  India  House  to  bring  to  a  successful  conclusion.  The 
arrangements  made  by  Lord  Cornwallis  and  his  successor,  Sir  George 
Barlow,  amounted  practically  to  a  renunciation  of  most  of  the  Com- 
pany's gains  for  the  sake  of  a  hollow  peace  and  to  the  abandonment 
of  the  Rajput  states  to  the  cruelty  of  the  Maratha  hordes  and  their 
Pindari  allies.  Sindhia  recovered  Gohad,  Gwalior,  and  other  territory, 
while  to  Holkar  were  restored  the  districts  in  Rajputana,  which  had 
been  taken  from  him  by  the  Treaty  of  Rajpurghat.  In  two  instances 
only  did  Sir  G.  Barlow  refuse  to  traverse  Wellesley's  policy.  He  declined 
to  allow  the  Nizam  freedom  to  indulge  in  anti-English  intrigue,  and 
he  rejected  a  suggestion  from  England  to  modify  the  position  of  the 
Peshwa  under  the  Treaty  of  Bassein. 

The  Gaekwad  of  Baroda  had  taken  no  part  in  the  struggle  outlined 
above.  On  the  death  of  Govind  Rao  in  1800,  the  inevitable  feud 
about  the  succession  broke  out  between  Anand  Rao,  his  legal  suc- 
cessor, who  was  of  weak  mind,  and  his  illegitimate  brother  Kanhoji, 

1  Fortescue,  op.  cit.  v,  70-137. 


376       FINAL  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  MARATHAS 

who  was  supported  by  the  restless  Malhar  Rao.  In  1802  the  Company 
sent  a  force  from  Gambay  to  support  Anand  Rao,  and  in  return 
secured  the  cession  of  a  good  deal  of  territory  and  an  acknowledg- 
ment of  their  right  to  supervise  the  political  affairs  of  the  state.  A  little 
later  they  frustrated  an  attempt  by  Sindhia  and  Holkar  to  meddle 
with  the  Gaekwad's  rights  in  Gujarat,  and  in  April,  1805,  concluded 
a  treaty  whereby  the  Gaekwad  undertook  to  maintain  a  subsidiary 
force  and  to  submit  to  British  control  his  foreign  policy  and  his 
differences  with  the  Peshwa.  In  1804  the  Peshwa  renewed  the  lease 
of  Ahmadabad  territory  to  Baroda  for  four  and  a  half  years  at  a  rent 
of  ten  lakhs  per  annum. 

The  decade  following  the  hollow  peace  of  1805  was  marked  by 
increasing  disorder  and  anarchy  throughout  Central  India  and 
Rajputana.  Internal  maladministration  and  constant  internecine 
warfare  had  produced  the  inevitable  result,  and  the  leading  Maratha 
states  were  forced  to  try  and  avert  their  impending  bankruptcy  by 
means  of  contributions  extorted  from  reluctant  tributaries.  In  Holkar's 
territories  the  peaceful  progress,  which  had  marked  Ahalya  Bai's  wfee 
rule,  had  vanished  beyond  recall.  In  1806  Jasvant  Rao  poisoned  his 
nephew  Khande  Rao  and  his  brother  Kashi  Rao,  who  were  suspected 
of  intriguing  with  his  disaffected  soldiery,  and  died  a  raving  lunatic 
at  Bhanpura  in  1811.  His  favourite  concubine,  Tulsi  Bai,  contrived 
to  place  his  illegitimate  son,  Malhar  Rao,  on  the  throne,  with  Amir 
Khan,  the  leader  of  the  Pathan  banditti,  as  regent.  Acute  ^iction 
between  this  Pathan  element  and  the  Maratha  faction  under  Tulsi 
Bai  involved  the  state  in  chaos;  revenue  was  collected  at  the  sword's 
point  from  the  territory  of  Sindhia,  the  Ponwars,  and  Holkar  himself 
indiscriminately;  the  machinery  of  administration  fell  to  pieces;  and 
a  semblance  of  authority  only  remained  with  a  vagrant  and  predatory 
court,  dominated  by  the  profligate  ex-concubine.  The  country  had 
no  respite  from  disorder,  until  the  murder  of  Tulsi  Bai  by  a  Pathan, 
20  December,  1817,  and  the  failure  of  British  overtures  for  peace 
obliged  Sir  Thomas  Hislop  to  ford  the  Sipra  river  and  extinguish  at 
Mahidpur  the  last  embers  of  anarchy  and  hostility.1 

Sindhia's  dominions  were  in  no  better  plight.  His  troops,  in  default 
of  pay,  were  forced  to  subsist  on  the  peasantry,  who  were  already 
impoverished  by  the  mutual  hostilities  of  their  own  ruler  and  Holkar. 
The  intermingled  possessions  of  these  two  chiefs  in  Malwa  became 
the  common  hunting-ground  of  every  band  of  marauders;  Amir  Khan 
and  his  Pathan  followers  overran  the  raja  of  Berar's  territory;  the 
Rajput  states  were  swept  by  Sindhia,  Holkar,  the  Pathans  and  the 
Pindaris. 

"Never"  in  the  words  of  a  modern  writer,  "had  there  been  such  intense  and 
general  suffering  in  India;  the  native  states  were  disorganised,  and  society  on  the 
verge  of  dissolution;  the  people  crushed  by  despots  and  ruined  by  exactions;  the 
1  Malcolm,  Central  India,  i,  260-324. 


THE  PINDARIS  377 

country  overrun  by  bandits  and  its  resources  wasted  by  enemies;  armed  forces 
existed  only  to  plunder,  torture  and  mutiny;  government  had  ceased  to  exist; 
there  remained  only  oppression  and  misery." 

The  one  sentiment  uniting  the  warring  units  was  hatred  of  the 
English.  All  the  Marathas,  from  the  Peshwa  downwards,  realised 
that  if  they  were  to  regain  their  independence  and  make  their 
predatory  power  supreme  in  India,  they  must  exterminate  the  foreign 
government.  It  was  to  Baji  Rao  they  all  looked  for  support  in  this 
desperate  and  ill-omened  enterprise;  and  had  the  Peshwa  shown  any 
spark  of  courage  and  statesmanship,  the  final  struggle  of  the  Company 
for  complete  supremacy  might  conceivably  have  been  more  protracted. 
But,  while  from  1803  the  Peshwa  never  ceased  to  court  disaster  by 
'intriguing  against  his  foreign  supporters,  he  alienated  the  Maratha 
feudal  nobility  by  his  tyrannous  behaviour,  as  illustrated  by  the  over- 
throw and  degradation  of  the  Pant  Pratinidhi.  He  also  failed  com- 
pletely to  protect  his  own  territory  from  Pindari  inroads  and  to  check 
the  hostilities  of  the  raja  of  Kolhapur  and  the  Savant  of  Wadi.  In  the 
case  of  the  former,  peace  was  not  assured  until  181 1 ,  when  the  English 
forced  the  raja  to  sign  the  Treaty  of  Karvir. 

The  hesitation  of  the  Company's  government  to  assert  its  authority 
as  paramount  power  resulted  between  1805  and  1814  in  the  rapid 
growth  of  the  destructive  spirit  of  the  Maratha  hordes  and  Pathan 
freebooters  and  a  dangerous  increase  of  the  power  of  the  Pindaris, 
who  were  closely  related  to  the  two  former  organisations.1  The 
Pindaris,  consisting  of  lawless  persons  of  all  castes  and  classes,  originally 
attached  loosely  to  the  Maratha  armies,  developed,  "like  masses  of 
putrefaction  in  animal  matter  out  of  the  corruption  of  weak  and 
expiring  states",  into  a  formidable  menace  to  the  whole  of  India. 
Under  their  leaders,  Chitu,  Wasil  Muhammad,  and  Karim  Khan, 
they  made  rapid  raids  across  India,  inflicting  appalling  devastation 
upon  the  countryside  and  committing  most  atrocious  outrages  upon 
all  classes  of  the  inhabitants.  In  1812  they  commenced  to  raid  the 
Company's  territory  by  harrying  Mirzapur  and  the  southern  districts 
of  Bihar;  but  it  was  not  until  1816,  when  they  attacked  the  Northern 
Sarkars,  plundering,  torturing  and  killing  the  peaceful  inhabitants, 
that  the  directors  in  England,  who  still  cherished  an  exaggerated  dread 
of  Maratha  power,  became  alive  to  the  need  for  action  and  authorised 
Lord  Hastings  in  September  of  that  year  to  extirpate  the  evil. 

The  Pindaris  would  have  met  their  doom  much  earlier  but  that 
the  governor-general  had  been  obliged  to  postpone  his  measures  for  a 
while.  A  new  power  had  been  founded  in  the  Himalayan  regions  by 
the  Gurkhas,  a  warlike  race  of  hardy  hillmen.  The  only  serious  effort 
to  check  their  progress  had  been  made  by  the  nawab  of  Bengal  in 
1762,  but  his  army  was  severely  defeated  under  the  walls  of  Mak- 
wanpur.  In  1768  they  conquered  the  Nepal  valley  and  established 

,  A  Narrative  of  the  Political  and  Military  Transactions  of  British  India,  pp.  21-32. 


378        FINAL  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  MARATHAS 

themselves  at  Kathmandu.  The  hill  chiefs  were  subdued  one  after 
another  and  the  Gurkha  kingdom  expanded  rapidly  until  it  extended 
from  Sikkim  on  the  east  to  the  Satlej  on  the  west.  In  1814  the  Gurkha 
frontier  was  conterminous  with  that  of  the  British  over  a  distance 
of  seven  hundred  miles  and  the  border  districts  suffered  terribly  from 
their  incessant  inroads.  The  concessions  of  Barlow  and  the  expostula- 
tions of  Minto  proved  equally  futile  and  Lord  Hastings  found  it 
necessary  to  take  strong  measures.  In  April,  1814,  he  sent  a  small 
force  to  occupy  the  disputed  districts  but  the  Gurkhas  suddenly  fell 
upon  the  outlying  stations  and  killed  or  captured  the  small  garrisons. 
War  was  therefore  declared  in  November  of  that  year. 

The  campaign  was  planned  by  the  governor-general  himself.  The 
main  Gurkha  army  under  Amar  Singh  Thapa  was  at  that  time 
engaged  in  an  expedition  on  the  Satlej.  It  was  decided  that  Major- 
Generals  Marley  and  Wood  should  advance  upon  the  Gurkha  capital 
from  Patna  and  Gorakhpur  respectively,  while  Major-General 
Gillespie  from  Saharanpur  and  Colonel  Ochterlony  from  Ludhiana 
were  to  close  upon  Amar  Singh  Thapa's  main  body.  A  speedy  and 
easy  victory  was  expected.  But  the  Gurkha  country  was  yet  unknown 
to  the  British  generals ;  there  was  no  good  road  and  the  difficulties  of 
transport  were  exceptionally  great.  Most  of  the  older  generals,  more- 
over, were  unfamiliar  with  hill  fighting. 

In  none  of  the  Indian  wars  had  British  arms  met  with  so  many 
reverses.  Marley  and  Wood  fell  back  after  some  feeble  demonstrations. 
Gillespie  died  in  an  assault  on  Kalanga,  and  his  successor  suffered  a 
defeat  before  the  stronghold  of  Jaitak.  The  news  of  these  defeats  spread 
widely  in  the  country  and  offered  no  small  encouragement  to  the 
Peshwa  and  his  partisans  in  their  anti-British  designs,  and  the  Gurkhas 
talked  of  invading  the  neighbouring  provinces.  Fortunately  the 
genius  of  Colonel  Ochterlony  soon  restored  the  lost  prestige  of  his 
nation.  By  a  series  of  masterly  manoeuvres  he  compelled  the  Gurkha 
general  to  give  up  two  strong  positions  and  to  withdraw  his  army  to 
his  last  retreat,  the  fort  of  Malaon.  Here  he  was  closely  besieged  and 
the  conquest  of  Kumaon  in  April,  1815,  so  demoralised  the  Gurkhas 
that  they  deserted  in  large  numbers.  The  fall  of  Malaon  on  15  May 
compelled  the  Gurkha  Government  to  sue  for  peace.  Lord  Hastings 
at  first  dejnanded  the  permanent  cession  of  the  whole  of  the  Tarai 
but  afterwards  reduced  his  demands  and  a  treaty  was  signed.  The 
Nepal  Government,  however,  refused  to  ratify  the  treaty  and  prepared 
to  renew  the  war.  All  the  main  passes  were  secured  and  strongly 
defended  by  stockades  but  their  plans  were  again  upset  by  Ochterlony 
who  penetrated  into  the  heart  of  Nepal  and  inflicted  a  severe  defeat 
upon  the  Gurkhas  at  Makwanpur  on  28  February,  1816.  The  English 
army  was  within  easy  reach  of  the  Gurkha  capital  and  there  was  no 
more  time  for  hesitation.  The  Treaty  of  Sagauli  was  promptly  ratified 
and  a  lasting  peace  was  concluded.  The  Gurkhas  ceded  Garhwal  and 


THE  GURKHA  WAR  379 

Kumaon  with  the  greater  portion  of  the  Tarai.  They  withdrew  per- 
manently from  Sikfim  and  received  a  British  resident  at  Kathmandu. 
The  Gurkha  country,  it  is  true,  has  not  yet  been  thrown  open  to  the 
English,  but  the  Nepal  Government  have  faithfully  adhered  to  their 
treaty  obligations,  and  the  British  districts  have  never  since  been 
disturbed  by  the  dreaded  hillmen  of  the  north.1 

Meanwhile  British  relations  with  the  Peshwa  were  moving  towards 
the  inevitable  denouement.  When  the  old  question  of  the  Peshwa's 
claims  upon  the  Gaekwad  was  again  raised  in  1814,  the  British 
Government,  anxious  to  secure  a  final  and  peaceful  settlement  of  the 
dispute,  arranged  for  the  dispatch  to  Poona,  under  a  safe  conduct,  of 
the  Gaekwad's  minister,  Gangadhar  Sastri.  The  Peshwa,  who  had 
refused  to  renew  the  lease  of  Ahmadabad  to  the  Gaekwad  and  had 
granted  it  to  a  vicious  favourite,  Trimbakji  Danglia,  connived  at  the 
murder  of  the  Baroda  envoy  by  Trimbakji  during  the  course  of  the 
negotiations  at  Nasik.2  After  much  prevarication,  he  was  forced  by 
Mountstuart  Elphinstone,  the  Resident,  to  deliver  the  murderer  to 
the  British  authorities  in  September,  1815.  Trimbakji,  however, 
effected  a  romantic  escape  from  custody  a  year  later,  probably  with 
the  knowledge  of  Baji  Rao,  who  was  now  engrossed  in  plans  for  a 
Maratha  combination  against  British  supremacy.  The  governor- 
general,  confronted  by  the  Pindari  menace,  the  hostile  intrigues  of 
the  Peshwa,  and  dangerous  unrest  among  other  Maratha  chiefs,  was 
glad  to  arrange  a  subsidiary  alliance  in  May,  1816,  with  Appa  Sahib  of 
Nagpur,  who  on  the  death  of  Raghuji  Bhonsle  became  regent  for  his 
imbecile  successor,  Parsaji.3  This  agreement  by  which  the  Company 
obtained  security  for  three  hundred  miles  of  frontier,  disconcerted  for 
the  moment  the  secret  plans  of  the  Peshwa  and  Sindhia,  and  secured 
a  military  position  near  the  Narbada,  whence  it  could,  if  need 
arose,  attack  Sindhia  and  intercept  Pindari  raids.  That  done,  Lord 
Hastings  turned  his  attention  to  the  Peshwa,  who  with  his  usual 
perfidy  openly  disowned  Trimbakji,  concluded  an  agreement  with 
the  Gaekwad,  and  generally  adopted  a  conciliatory  attitude.  Proof 
of  his  treachery,  however,  was  shortly  afterwards  furnished  to 
Elphinstone,  who  forced  him  by  a  hostile  military  demonstration  in 
June,  1817,  to  sign  a  compact  supplementary  to  the  Treaty  of  Bassein. 
He  thereby  explicitly  renounced  his  headship  of  the  Maratha  con- 
federacy and  ceded  the  Konkan  and  certain  other  lands  and  strong- 
holds to  the  British.  He  also  recognised  the  independence  of  the 
Gaekwad,  waived  all  claims  for  arrears,  and  granted  him  a  perpetual 
lease  of  Ahmadabad  for  an  annual  payment  of  four  lakhs.  To  the 
British  he  ceded  the  tribute  of  Kathiawad.4 

1  Fortcscue,  of.  cit.  xi,  118-62. 

2  Forrest,  Official  Writings  of  Mountstuart  Elphinstone,  pp.  119-78. 
8  Prinsep,  op.  cit.  pp.  125-34. 

4  Idemy  pp.  186-203. 


380        FINAL  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  MARATHAS 

Sindhia,  who  had  been  invited  to  assist  in  suppressing  the  Pindaris, 
was  naturally  disposed  to  side  with  the  ruffianly  hordes  who  were 
partly  under  his  protection.  Lord  Hastings,  therefore,  crossed  the 
Jumna,  marched  on  Gwalior,  and  taking  advantage  of  the  internal 
dissension  and  military  disorganisation  which  had  reduced  Sindhia's 
offensive  capacity,  secured  his  signature  in  November,  1817,  to  the 
Treaty  of  Gwalior,  which  bound  him  to  co-operate  against  the 
Pindaris  and  rescinded  the  clause  in  the  Treaty  of  Surji  Arjung'aon  re- 
stricting the  British  from  negotiation  with  the  Rajput  and  other  chiefs. 
As  a  result,  treaties  were  concluded  at  Delhi  with  Udaipur  (Mewar), 
Jodhpur  (Marwar),  Bhopal,  Kotah,  Jaipur,  Bundi  and  thirteen  other 
Rajput  states.  Negotiations  were  also  opened  with  the  Pathan  leader, 
Amir  Khan,  who  was  subsequently  granted  the  principality  of  Tonk 
as  the  price  of  his  neutrality  and  the  disarmament  of  his  followers. 

Such  was  the  position  towards  the  close  of  1817  when  the  process 
of  exterminating  the  Pindaris  commenced.  Though  outwardly 
friendly,  every  Maratha  leader,  including  even  Appa  Sahib  of  Nagpur, 
was  a  potential  enemy,  prepared  to  take  advantage  of  any  reverse 
sustained  by  the  British  during  the  campaign.  Thus  it  happened  that 
"the  hunt  of  the  Pindaris  became  merged  in  the  third  Maratha  war" 
and  struck  the  final  death-knell  of  the  Maratha  power.  Lord  Hastings's 
plan  of  campaign  was  to  surround  the  Pindaris  in  Malwa  by  a  large 
army  of  1 13,000  men  and  300  guns,  divided  into  a  northern  force  of 
four  divisions,  commanded  by  himself,  and  a  Deccan  army  of  five 
divisions  under  Sir  Thomas  Hislop,  operating  from  a  central  position 
at  Handia  in  Allahabad  district.  In  order  to  divide  the  Deccan  states 
from  those  of  Hindustan  and  prevent  the  Marathas  from  assisting 
the  Pindaris,  a  portion  of  the  army  was  interposed  as  a  cordon  between 
Poona  and  Nagpur.  The  operations  were  completely  successful.  By 
the  close  of  1817  the  Pindaris  had  been  driven  across  the  Chambal; 
by  the  end  of  January,  1818,  their  organised  bands  had  been  anni- 
hilated. Of  the  leaders,  one  was  given  land  at  Gorakhpur,  another 
committed  suicide  in  captivity,  while  the  third  and  most  dangerous 
of  them  all,  Chitu,  fled  into  the  jungles  around  Asirgarh  and  was  there 
devoured  by  a  tiger.1 

The  Maratha  danger  alone  remained  and  was  finally  precipitated 
by  the  folly  of  the  Peshwa  and  Appa  Sahib  Bhonsle.  On  the  day 
(5  November,  1817)  that  Sindhia  signed  the  supplementary  Treaty 
of  Gwalior,  the  Peshwa  rose  in  revolt,  sacked  and  bumf  the  British 
Residency  at  Poona,  and  then  attacked  with  an  army  of  about 
26,000  a  small  British  force  of  2800,  which  was  drawn  up  under 
Colonel  Burr  at  Kirkee  (Khadki).  He  was  heavily  defeated  and  fled 
southwards  from  Poona,  seizing  as  he  went  the  titular  raja  of  Satara. 
The  British  followed  in  hot  pursuit,  intending  to  prevent  his  escape 
into  Berar,  fought  two  brilliant  and  victorious  engagements  against 

1  Fortescue,  op.  cit.  xi,  177-250. 


THE  MARATHA  WAR  381 

heavy  odds  at  Koregaon  and  Ashti,  in  the  latter  of  which  the  Peshwa' s 
general,  Bapu  Gokhale,  was  slain,  and  finally  forced  the  hunted 
fugitive  to  surrender  himself  to  Sir  John  Malcolm,  1 8  June,  1818.  To 
the  annoyance  of  the  governor-general,  Malcolm,  whose  political 
judgment  was  temporarily  obscured  by  feelings  of  compassion  for 
fallen  greatness,  pledged  the  Company  to  grant  Baji  Rao  an  excessive 
annuity  of  eight  lakhs  of  rupees;  and,  the  office  of  Peshwa  having  been 
declared  extinct,  Baji  Rao  was  permitted  to  reside  at  Bithur  on  the 
Ganges,  where  he  doubtless  instilled  into  the  mind  of  his  adopted  son, 
known  later  as  Nana  Sahib,  that  hatred  of  the  English  which  bore 
such  evil  fruit  in  iSsy.1 

Meanwhile,  Appa  Sahib,  emulating  the  example  of  the  Peshwa, 
attacked  the  British  Resident  at  Nagpur,  who  had  at  his  command 
a  small  force  of  native  infantry  and  cavalry  and  four  guns.  Taking  up 
its  position  on  the  ridge  of  Sitabaldi,  the  British  force  won  a  brilliant 
victory  on  27  November,  and  with  the  aid  of  reinforcements  which 
arrived  a  few  days  later,  it  forced  the  Bhonsle  to  surrender  and  finally 
defeated  his  troops  at  Nagpur  on  16  December,  1818.  Appa  Sahib, 
who  fled  to  the  Panjab  and  eventually  died  in  Rajputana,  was  formally 
deposed  in  favour  of  a  minor  grandson  of  Raghuji  Bhonsle ;  his  army 
was  disbanded ;  and  the  portion  of  his  dominions  which  lay  to  the 
north  of  the  Narbada  was  annexed  to  British  territory  under  the 
style  of  the  Sagar  (Saugor)  and  Narbada  Territories.2 

The  tactical  arrangements  of  Lord  Hastings,  which  prevented  the 
Maratha  states  from  combining  at  the  moment  when  mutual  assistance 
was  vital  to  their  plans,  ensured  the  defeat  of  Holkar.  The  Indore 
Darbar  openly  sympathised  with  the  Peshwa's  bid  for  freedom  and 
rejected  all  offers  of  negotiation;  but  deprived  of  external  aid  and 
handicapped  by  internal  dissension,  the  state  forces  could  not  with- 
stand Sir  Thomas  Hislop's  advance.  Holkar's  defeat  at  Mahidpur 
was  followed  by  the  Treaty  of  Mandasor,  signed  on  6  January,  1818, 
under  the  terms  of  which  the  chief  relinquished  his  possessions  south 
of  the  Narbada,  abandoned  his  claims  upon  the  Rajput  chiefs, 
recognised  the  independence  of  Amir  Khan,  reduced  the  state  army 
and  agreed  to  maintain  a  contingent  to  co-operate  with  the  British, 
and  acquiesced  in  the  appointment  of  a  British  Resident  to  his  court. 

Sindhia,  who  failed  to  fulfil  his  promise  of  active  help  in  the  Pindari 
campaign  and,  in  contravention  of  the  Treaty  of  Gwalior,  had  con- 
nived at  the  retention  of  the  great  fortress  of  Asirgarh  by  his  killadar, 
Jasvant  Rao  Lad,  now  saw  that  further  opposition  would  be  fruitless, 
and,  therefore,  agreed  in  1818  to  a  fresh  treaty  with  the  Company. 
This  agreement  provided,  inter  alia,  for  the  cession  to  the  English  of 
Ajmir,  the  strategical  key  to  Rajputana,  and  for  a  readjustment  of 
boundaries.  The  Gaekwad,  Fateh  Singh,  who  acted  as  regent  for 

1  Fortesque,  op.  cit.  xi,  180-247. 
8  Utm,  pp.  189-97,  246-9. 


382        FINAL  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  MARATHAS 

Anand  Rao,  signed  a  supplementary  treaty  in  November,  1817, 
whereby  he  agreed  to  augment  his  subsidiary  force,  ceded  his  share 
of  Ahmadabad  for  a  cash  payment  representing  its  estimated  value, 
and  received  in  exchange  the  district  of  Okhamandal,  the  island  of 
Bet,  and  other  territory.  Fateh  Singh,  who  died  in  1818  a  few  months 
before  the  titular  ruler  Anand  Rao,  adhered  scrupulously  to  his 
alliance  with  the  British  during  the  operations  against  the  Pindaris 
and  the  Maratha  states.  In  return  he  was  granted  full  remission  of 
the  tribute  annually  payable  to  the  Peshwa  for  the  revenues  of 
Ahmadabad.1 

In  accordance  with  the  precedent  set  by  Wellesley  in  the  case  of 
Mysore,  the  raja  of  Satara,  who  had  been  delivered  from  the  clutches 
of  Baji  Rao  by  Colonel  Smith's  victory  at  Ashti,  was  provided  with 
a  small  semi-independent  principality  around  Satara,  and  was  en- 
throned on  1 1  April,  1818.  With  a  view  to  a  pacific  settlement  of  the 
Peshwa's  conquered  dominions,  arrangements  satisfactory  to  both 
parties  were  made  by  the  Company  with  the  Pant  Pratinidhi,  the  Pant 
Sachiv,  the  raja  of  Akalkot,  the  Patvardhans,  and  the  other  Maratha 
nobles  and  jagirdars;  while  the  piratical  chiefs  of  the  western  littoral, 
who  had  been  incompletely  chastised  in  1812,  were  completely 
reduced  in  1820  and  forced  to  cede  the  remainder  of  the  coast  between 
Kolhapur  and  Goa. 

"The  struggle  which  has  thus  ended",  wrote  Prinsep  in  his  Political  Review, 
published  in  1825,  "m  the  universal  establishment  of  the  British  influence  is  par- 
ticularly important  and  worthy  of  attention,  as  it  promises  to  be  the  last  we  shall 
ever  have  to  maintain  with  the  native  powers  of  India.  Henceforward  this  epoch 
will  be  referred  to  as  that  whence  each  of  the  existing  states  will  date  the  commence- 
ment of  its  peaceable  settlement  and  the  consolidation  of  its  relations  with  the 
controlling  power.  The  dark  age  of  trouble  and  violence,  which  so  long  spread  its 
malign  influence  over  the  fertile  regions  of  Central  India,  has  thus  ceased  from  this 
time;  and  a  new  era  has  commenced,  we  trust,  with  brighter  prospects, — an  era 
of  peace,  prosperity  and  wealth  at  least,  if  not  of  political  liberty  and  high  moral 
improvement." 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  English  and  Maratha  Governments 
could  not  co-exist  in  India;  for  the  practical  working  of  the  Maratha 
system,  which  was  inspired  more  deeply  than  has  hitherto  been 
recognised  by  the  doctrines  of  the  ancient  Hindu  text-books  of  autoc- 
racy, was  oppressive  to  the  general  mass  of  the  people,  destitute  of 
moral  ideas,  and  directly  antagonistic  to  the  fundamental  principles 
of  the  Company's  rule.  Lord  Hastings  fully  realised  that,  if  India 
was  ever  to  prosper,  orderly  government  must  be  substituted  for  the 
lawless  arid  predatory  rule  of  his  chief  antagonists,  and  he  brought 
to  the  achievement  of  his  complex  task  a  singular  combination  of 
firmness  and  moderation.  Every  chance  was  offered  to  the  treacherous 
Peshwa  and  the  raja  of  Berar  of  reforming  their  corrupt  administra- 
tion and  living  in  amity  with  the  English;  consideration  was  shown 

1  Prinsep,  op.  cit.  pp.  418-68. 


THE  SETTLEMENT  383 

to  avowed  freebooters  like  Amir  Khan  and  even  to  the  ruffians  who 
led  the  Pindari  raids  across  India;  Sindhia's  duplicity  was  treated 
with  undeserved  forbearance.  And  when  the  doom  of  Maratha  rule 
had  been  sealed,  the  governor-general's  prudence  and  knowledge 
framed  the  measures  which  converted  hostile  princes  like  Sindhia  and 
Holkar  into  staunch  allies  of  the  British  Government,  caused  new 
villages  and  townships  to  germinate  amid  the  ashes  of  rapine  and 
desolation,  created  new  and  permanent  sources  of  revenue,  and 
diffused  from  Cape  Comorin  to  the  banks  of  the  Satlej  a  spirit  of 
tranquillity  and  order  which  India  had  never  known  since  the 
spacious  days  of  Akbar 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

MARATHA  ADMINISTRATION 

JLHE  Maratha  administrative  system,  in  the  eighteenth  century  and 
the  opening  years  of  the  nineteenth,  may  be  described  as  a  compound 
of  the  principles  embodied  in  ancient  works  on  Hindu  polity,  such  as 
the  Arthasastra  of  Kautilya,  of  the  arrangements  instituted  by  Sivaji 
and  followed  to  some  extent  by  his  immediate  successors,  Sambhaji, 
Raja  Rama,  and  Shahu,  and  of  the  modifications  introduced  by  the 
Peshwas  from  the  year  1727.  In  the  various  branches  of  the  state's 
activities,  the  main  differences  between  the  system  originally  per- 
fected by  Sivaji  and  that  which  obtained  under  the  Peshwas  resulted 
naturally  from  the  change  in  the  position  of  Sivaji's  lineal  descendant, 
the  raja  of  Satara,  whose  powers  and  prestige  rapidly  declined  from 
the  moment  when  the  appointment  of  Peshwa  became  hereditary 
in  the  family  of  Balaji  Visvanath  (1714-20).  Although  the  raja 
continued  after  that  date  to  be  regarded  as  the  head  of  the  Maratha 
state,  and  in  theory  retained  the  right  to  appoint  the  Peshwa  and 
other  high  officials,  his  powers  gradually  became  little  more  than 
nominal,  and  he  was  subsequently  deprived  even  of  the  right  of 
appointing  and  dismissing  his  own  retainers.  His  personal  expenses, 
moreover,  were  closely  scrutinised  by  the  Peshwa's  secretariat,  and  he 
was  obliged  to  obtain  sanction  from  Poonaforall  expenditure  connected 
with  public  works,  private  charities,  and  the  maintenance  of  his 
household.1  Originally  one  of  Sivaji's  Ashta  Pradhan  and  holding,  like 
the  other  seven  ministers,  a  non-hereditary  appointment,  the  Peshwa 
gradually  assumed  a  position  superior  to  that  of  the  other  ministers, 
including  even  the  pratinidhi  who  had  originally  been  appointed  by 
Raja  Rama  as  his  vice-regent  at  Jinji  and  continued  to  occupy  the 
senior  position  on  the  board  until  the  genius  of  Balaji  Visvanath 
made  the  Peshwa's  office  both  hereditary  and  supreme.  The  gradual 
transformation  of  "the  mayor  of  the  palace"  of  the  raja  of  Satara 
into  the  virtual  ruler  of  the  Maratha  state  and  the  Maratha  con- 
federacy, thus  initiated  by  Balaji  Visvanath,  was  aided  by  Tara  Bai's 
imprisonment  of  Raja  Rama  in  the  Satara  fort  and  was  completed 
by  Raja  Shahu's  grant  of  plenary  powers  to  the  Peshwa  Balaji  Baji 
Rao  on  his  deathbed.2 

Thus  from  the  first  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century  until' the  final 
debacle  of  the  Maratha  power,  the  Peshwa,  though  acting  nominally 
as  the  vice-regent  of  the  raja  of  Satara  and  showing  him  on  public 
occasions  the  attentions  due  to  the  ruler,  actually  controlled  the  whole 

1  Sen,  Administrative  System  of  the  Marathas,  pp.  186-96. 
8  Idem,  pp.  196-202* 


THE  PESHWA        .  385 

administration  and  even  usurped  the  raja's  powers  and  prerogatives 
as  ecclesiastical  head  of  the  state.  This  latter  function  was  not  con- 
sequent upon  the  Peshwa's  social  position  as  a  Brahman,  for  the 
Chitpavan  sect,  to  which  the  Peshwas  belonged,  was  not  accounted 
of  much  importance  by  other  Brahmanic  sects  and  by  some,  indeed, 
was  considered  ineligible  for  inclusion  in  the  Brahmanic  category. 
As  was  the  case  with  Sivaji,  the  Peshwa's  supremacy  in  the  socio- 
religious  sphere  was  the  natural  corollary  of  his  position  as  head 
executive  power  or  chief  magistrate,  and  in  that  capacity  he  gave 
decisions  in  a  large  variety  of  matters,  including  the  appointment  of 
officiating  priests  for  non-Hindu  congregations,  the  remarriage  of 
widows,  the  sale  of  unmarried  girls,  and  arrangements  for  dowry  and 
adoption.1 

The  Peshwa's  predominant  position  was  also  recognised  by  the 
Maratha  feudal  nobility,  composed  of  estate-holders  and  chiefs,  who 
were  expected  to  provide  troops  and  render  military  service,  as 
occasion  demanded,  in  return  for  their  saranjams  or  fiefs,  and  were 
practically  independent  autocrats  within  the  boundaries  of  their  own 
lands  and  villages.  As  the  Peshwa  himself  was  originally  one  of  these 
feudal  landholders,  subject  to  the  general  control  of  the  raja  of 
Satara,  he  was  not  slow  to  realise  that  his  assumption  of  supremacy 
might  evoke  combinations  of  the  others  against  himself.  This  possi- 
bility was  largely  discounted  by  dividing  the  revenues  of  any  one 
district  between  several  Maratha  chiefs,  who  generally  considered  it 
beneath  their  dignity  as  fighting  men  to  learn  the  art  of  reading  and 
writing  their  mother-tongue  and  were  at  the  same  time  exceedingly 
resentful  of  any  supposed  infringement  of  their  financial  proprietary 
rights.  This  system  of  sub-division  of  revenues  gave  rise  to  great 
complications  in  the  state  accounts,  of  which  the  Peshwa  and  his 
Brahman  secretariat  were  not  slow  to  take  advantage:  and  it  also 
engendered  among  the  Maratha  chiefs  perpetual  feuds  and  jealousies, 
which  prevented  their  combining  whole-heartedly  against  a  common 
enemy  and  were  ultimately  responsible  in  large  measure  for  the 
downfall  of  the  Maratha  power.  The  Maratha  respect  for  the  maxim 
that  "it  is  well  to  have  a  finger  in  every  pie",  and  their  constant 
search  for  opportunities  of  extortion  and  pillage,  are  well  illustrated 
by  the  refusal  of  Sindhia,  as  recorded  in  the  private  journal  of  the 
Marquess  of  Hastings,  to  relinquish  his  share  in  certain  lands  included 
in  the  possessions  of  the  chief  of  Bundi,  although  he  was  offered 
in  exchange  more  valuable  territory,  contiguous  to  his  own 
dominions. 

The  focus  of  the  Maratha  administration  was  the  Peshwa's  secre- 
tariat in  Poona,  styled  the  Huzur  Daftar,  which  was  composed  of 
several  departments  and  bureaux.  It  dealt,  broadly  speaking,  with 
the  revenues  and  expenditure  of  all  districts,  'with  the  accounts 

1  Sen,  op.  tit.  pp.  202-4,  397-417. 
cm  v  25 


386  MARATHA  ADMINISTRATION 

submitted  by  the  district  and  village  officials,  with  all  alienations  of 
public  revenue  in  the  form  of  inams,  saranjams,  etc.,  with  the  pay  and 
privileges  of  all  grades  of  the  public  service,  and  with  the  budgets  of 
the  civil,  military  and  religious  establishments.  The  daily  registers 
(roz  kird)  of  the  various  departments  recorded  all  revenue  transac- 
*  tions,  all  grants  and  payments,  and  all  contributions  and  exactions 
levied  on  foreign  territory.  These  records,  which  included  state 
transactions  of  every  kind,  were  maintained  with  great  care  and 
efficiency  until  the  rule  of  Baji  Rao  II  (1796-1818),  when  they  became 
practically  valueless  by  reason  of  the  maladministration  and  political 
disorder  of  that  period.1 

The  foundation  of  the  Peshwa's  administrative  system  was  the 
self-contained  and  self-supporting  village  community,  which  had  its 
roots  in  an  almost  prehistoric  past.  Each  village  had  a  headman, 
thepatel  (thtpattakila  of  ancient  lithic  and  copperplate  records),  who 
combined  the  functions  of  revenue  officer,  magistrate  and  judge,  and 
acted  as  intermediary  between  the  villagers  and  the  Peshwa's  officials. 
His  office  was  hereditary  and  might  form  the  subject  of  sale  and 
purchase,  and  his  emoluments,  which  varied  slightly  from  village  to 
village,  consisted  chiefly  in  the  receipt  from  every  villager  of  a  fixed 
share  of  his  produce.  These  receipts  ranged  from  a  daily  supply  of 
betel-leaves,  provided  by  the  dealers  in  pan-supari,  to  a  tax  on  the 
remarriage  of  a  widow;  and  in  return  for  these  emoluments  and  for 
his  recognition  as  the  social  leader  of  the  village  community,  the  patel 
was  expected  to  shoulder  the  responsibility  for  the  village's  welfare 
and  good  conduct.  The  kulkarni,  or  village  clerk  and  record-keeper, 
who  was  always  a  Brahman,  was  second  in  importance  to  the  patel, 
and  like  the  latter  was  remunerated  by  a  variety  of  perquisites.  He 
was  often  expected  to  share  the  patel' s  responsibility  for  the  good 
behaviour  of  the  village  community,  and  ran  an  equal  risk  of  op- 
pression and  imprisonment  by  casual  invaders  or  tyrannous  officials. 
Excluding  the  chaugula  who  had  custody  of  the  kulkarni9 s  bundles  of 
correspondence,  assisted  the  patel,  and  was  frequently  an  illegitimate 
scion  of  the  pateUs  family,  the  communal  duties  and  wants  of  the 
village  were  performed  and  supplied  by  the  bara  balute  or  twelve 
hereditary  village  "servants,  who  received  a  recognised  share  of  the 
crops  and  other  perquisites  in  return  for  their  services  to  the  com- 
munity.2 The  personnel  of  the  bara  balute  was  not  invariably  the  same 
in  all  parts  of  the  Deccan,  and  in  some  places  they  were  associated 
with  an  additional  body  of  twelve  village  servants,  styled  bara  alute. 
Up  to  the  period  of  the  rule  of  the  Peshwa  Madhu  Rao  I  (1761-72), 
certain  classes  of  village  mechanics  and  artisans,  like  the  carpenter 
and  blacksmith,  were  liable  to  forced  labour  (begar)  on  behalf  of  the 
state — an  exaction  which  had  the  express  sanction  of  the  most  ancient 

1  Sen,  op.  cit.  pp.  267-71. 
*  Idem,  pp.  211-37,  503-21. 


THE  MAMLATDAR  387 

Hindu  law  codes  and  was  certainly  practised  by  previous  governments 
in  India.1 

The  backbone  of  the  Maratha  district  administration,  which 
perhaps  drew  its  original  inspiration  from  the  principles  laid  down 
in  Kautilya's  Arthasastra,  was  supplied  by  the  mamlatdar,  who  was  in 
charge  of  a  division  styled  sarkar>  subha,  or  prant,  and  by  the  kama- 
visdar, his  subordinate  or  deputy,  who  administered  a  smaller  terri- 
torial area  of  the  same  kind,  usually  termed  bpargana.  This  territorial 
nomenclature  had,  however,  lost  its  significance  by  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  and  the  revenue  divisions — the  sarkar,  the 
pargana,  and  the  smaller  areas  styled  mahal  and  tarf,  had  been  largely 
broken  up  as  a  result  of  internal  changes  and  confusion.  The  mam- 
latdar, who  corresponded  roughly  to  the  subhedar  or  mukhya  deshadhikari 
of  Sivaji's  day,  and  the  kamavisdar  were  directly  subordinate  to  the 
Peshwa's  secretariat  in  Poona,  except  in  the  case  of  Khandesh, 
Gujarat  and  the  Karnatak,  where  a  superior  official,  styled  sar subhedar , 
was  interposed  between  them  and  the  government.  Originally  the 
mamlatdar  and  the  kamavisdar  were  appointed  for  short  terms  only, 
but  in  practice  they  managed  frequently  to  secure  renewals  of  their 
term  of  office  in  a  district.  As  the  direct  representative  of  the  Peshwa 
they  were  responsible  for  every  branch  of  the  district  administration, 
including  agriculture,  industries,  civil  and  criminal  justice,  the  control 
of  the  sihbandis  (militia)  and  the  police,  and  the  investigation  of  social 
and  religious  questions.  They  also  fixed  the  revenue  assessment  of 
each  village  in  consultation  with  the  patel,  heard  and  decided  com- 
plaints against  the  village  officers,  and  were  responsible  for  the 
collection  of  the  state  revenue,  which  in  cases  of  recalcitrance  they 
were  accustomed  to  recover  through  the  medium  of  the  sihbandis* 

It  will  be  obvious  that  under  this  system  there  were  many  oppor- 
tunities for  peculation  and  maladministration  on  the  part  of  the 
district  officials,  while  the  only  checks  upon  the  action  of  the  mamlatdar 
were  of  a  theoretical  rather  than  a  practical  character.  The  first  of 
these  restraints  was  provided  by  the  desmukh  and  despande,  who  had 
long  ceased  to  hold  any  official  status  and  had  been  relegated  to  a 
more  or  less  ornamental  position  since  the  days  of  Sivaji.3  In  theory 
the  mamlatdar9 s  accounts  were  not  passed  by  the  secretariat  at  Poona, 
unless  corroborated  by  corresponding  accounts  from  these  local 
anachronisms,  and  in  all  disputes  regarding  land  the  desmukh  was 
expected  to  produce  his  ancient  records,  containing  the  history  of  all 
watans,  inams  and  grants,  and  the  register  of  transfer  of  properties, 
which  he  maintained  in  return  for  the  annual  fee  or  perquisites 
received  from  the  villagers.  The  safeguards  not  infrequently  proved 
illusory,  for  there  was  nothing  to  prevent  the  mamlatdar  obtaining 
official  approval  of  his  returns  by  methods  of  his  own,  while  the 

1  Sen,  op.  cit.  pp.  532-4.  2  Idem,  pp.  252-8. 

8  Idem,  pp.  243-51. 

25-2 


388  MARATHA  ADMINISTRATION 

desmukKs  registers  were  irregularly  written  up  and  often  very 
incomplete.  The  second  check  upon  the  mamlatdar  was  provided  by 
a  staff  of  hereditary  darakhdars  or  office-holders,  who  were  appointed 
to  the  various  provinces  or  major  divisions  of  the  Maratha  dominions, 
were  directly  subordinate  to  the  Peshwa,  and  reported  direct  to  the 
government  in  Poona.  These  officials  were  eight  in  number,  viz. 
the  dewan  or  mamlatdar's  deputy,  mazumdar,  phadnavis,  daftardar, 
points,  potdar,  sabhasad,  and  chitnis;  and  they  were  expected  to  act 
as  a  check,  not  only  upon  one  another  but  also  on  the  mamlatdar,  who 
was  not  empowered  to  dismiss  any  one  of  them.  A  ninth  official  of 
this  class,  the  jamenis,  who  apparently  concerned  himself  with  the 
land  revenue  of  the  villages,  is  mentioned  in  the  reign  of  the  Peshwa 
Madhu  Rao  I.1 

With  the  object,  doubtless,  of  preventing  the  wholesale  malversa- 
tion of  public  money,  the  Maratha  Government  was  accustomed  to 
demand  from  the  mamlatdar  and  other  officials  the  payment  of  a 
heavy  sum  (rasad)  on  their  first  appointment  to  a  district,  and  careful 
estimates  of  probable  income  and  expenditure  were  drawn  up  for 
their  guidance  by  the  Hu&ir  Dqftar.  These  precautions  were  of  even 
less  value  than  those  mentioned  above.  The  mamlatdar  was  at  pains 
to  recover  his  advance  with  interest  and  frequently  made  considerable 
illicit  profits  by  concealment  of  receipts,  non-payment  of  pensions, 
and  the  preparation  of  false  bills  and  muster-rolls.  A  fruitful  source 
of  gain  was  the  sadar  warid  patti — an  extra  tax  intended  to  cover 
miscellaneous  district  expenditure  not  provided  for  by  the  govern- 
ment; and  one  of  the  chief  items  of  this  additional  expenditure  was 
the  darbar  kharch  or  fee  to  ministers  and  auditors,  which,  originally 
a  secret  bribe,  developed  eventually  into  a  recognised  scale  of  pay- 
ments, audited  like  other  items  of  account.  These  illicit  claims  showed 
a  constant  tendency  to  increase,  and  as  it  was  obviously  impolitic  to 
recover  more  than  a  certain  amount  from  the  peasantry,  who  pro- 
vided in  one  way  or  another  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  public 
revenues,  the  mamlatdar  did  not  scruple  to  pay  himself  and  his  superiors 
out  of  funds  that  should  have  been  credited  wholly  to  the  government. 2 
Under  the  rule  of  the  last  Peshwa,  Baji  Rao  II,  the  peasantry  were 
deprived  of  even  this  modified  protection  from  extortion  by  the 
system  of  farming  the  district  appointments,  which  had  been  in 
vogue  under  the  preceding  Muhammadan  governments  of  the 
Deccan. 

"The  office  of  mamlatdar",  according  to  Mountstuart  Elphinstone,  "was  put  up 
to  auction  among  the  Peshwa's  attendants,  who  wer£  encouraged  to  bid  high  and 
were  sometimes  disgraced,  if  they  showed  a  reluctance  to  enter  on  this  sort  of 
speculation." 

The  mamlatdar,  who  had  secured  a  district  at  these  auctions,  promptly 

1  Sen,  op.  cit.  pp.  258-63. 

*  Jdemt  pp.  263-5;  Forrest,  Official  Writings  of  Mountstuart  Elphinstone,  pp.  287-9. 


THE  K AM  AVISO  AR  389 

rented  it  at  a  profit  to  under-farmers,  who  repeated  the  process  until 
it  reached  the  village  officers.  Under  such  a  system  the  scale  on 
which  each  peasant  was  assessed  was  based  upon  his  ability  to  pay, 
not  upon  the  area  and  quality  of  the  land  which  he  occupied;  and 
as  the  demand  was  usually  immoderate  and  constant  resort  was  had 
to  fictitious  accounts,  the  villagers  were  steadily  exhausted  by  the 
shameless  exactions  of  the  official  hierarchy.1 

The  kamavisdar,  whose  official  emoluments  were  often  fixed  at 
4  per  cent,  of  the  revenues  of  the  district  in  his  charge  together  with 
certain  allowances,  e.g.  for  the  upkeep  of  a  palanquin,  was  provided, 
like  the  mamlatdar  >  with  a  staff  of  clerks  and  menials,  who  were 
generally  paid  ten  or  eleven  months'  salary  in  return  for  a  full  year's 
work.  The  reason  for  this  short  payment,  which  was  also  adopted  in 
the  military  department,  is  not  clear.  Possibly  it  amounted  to  a  tacit 
acknowledgment  that  an  aggregate  period  of  at  least  one  or  two 
months  in  every  twelve  would  be  spent  on  leave  or  otherwise  wasted, 
or  that  petty  illicit  perquisites,  which  it  would  be  fruitless  to  trace 
or  expose,  would  probably  total  to  the  amount  of  a  month's  salary. 
The  small  territorial  divisions,  known  as  mahal  or  tarf,  were  adminis- 
tered on  the  same  lines  as  the  mamlatdafs  and  kamavisdar* s  charges  by 
a  non-hereditary  official  styled  havaldar,  assisted  and  checked  by  a 
hereditary  mazumdar  (accountant)  and  phadnis  (auditor).  In  each 
mahal,  as  a  rule,  were  stationed  four  additional  officials  of  militia, 
viz.  the  hashamnavis,  who  maintained  a  muster-roll  of  the  villagers, 
their  arms,  and  their  pay;  the  hasham  phadnis  and  hasham  daftardar, 
who  kept  the  accounts  and  wrote  up  the  ledger  of  the  militia,  and 
the  hazirinavis,  who  maintained  a  muster-roll  of  those  actually  serving 
in  the  militia.2 

The  Maratha  judicial  system  has  been  described  as  very  imperfect, 
there  being  no  rules  of  procedure,  no  regular  administration  of 
justice,  and  no  codified  law.  In  both  civil  and  criminal  matters 
decisions  were  based  upon  custom  and  upon  rules  or  formulae 
embodied  in  ancient  Sanskrit  compilations,  like  those  of  Manu  and 
Yajnavalkya.  In  civil  cases  the  main  object  aimed  at  was  amicable 
settlement,  and  arbitration  was  therefore  the  first  step  in  the  disposal 
of  a  suit.  If  arbitration  failed,  the  case  was  transferred  for  decision 
to  a  panchayat,  appointed  by  the  patel  in  the  village  and  by  the  shete 
mahajan,  or  leading  merchant,  in  urban  areas.  An  appeal  lay  from  the 
decision  of  a  panchayat  to  the  mamlatdar,  who  usually  upheld  the 
verdict,  unless  the  parties  concerned  were  able  to  prove  that  the 
panchayat  was  prejudiced  or  corrupt.  In  serious  or  important  suits, 
however,  it  was  the  duty  of  the  mamlatdar  to  appoint  an  arbitrator  or 
a  panchayat)  the  members  of  which  were  chosen  by  him  with  the 
approval,  and  often  at  the  suggestion,  of  the  parties  to  the  suit.  In 


1  Forrest,  op.  cit.  pp.  294-6. 
*  Sen,  op.  (it.  p.  266. 


390  MARATHA  ADMINISTRATION 

such  cases  the  panchayafs  decision  was  subject  to  an  appeal  to  the 
Peshwa  or  his  legal  minister,  the  nyayadhish.  The  system  ofpanchqyats 
left  a  good  deal  to  be  desired  from  the  standpoint  of  modern  legal 
administration.  These  bodies  were  slow  in  action  and  uncertain  in 
their  decisions:  the  attendance  of  the  members  was  usually  irregular, 
depending  as  it  did  entirely  upon  the  individual's  sense  of  duty  or 
fear  of  public  opinion.  The  powers  of  the  panchayat  were  strictly 
limited;  it  was  exposed  to  constant  obstruction;  and  it  possessed  no 
authority  to  enforce  its  decisions,  which  were  left  to  the  mamlatdar 
to  carry  out  or  neglect,  as  he  pleased.  It  had  likewise  no  power  to 
compel  the  attendance  of  parties  and  their  witnesses,  and  depended 
upon  the  mamlatdar  or  other  local  official  to  supply  a  petty  officer  for 
this  purpose.  In  cases  where  the  members  of  a  panchayat  were  nomi- 
nated by  the  parties  to  a  suit,  they  functioned  rather  as  advocates 
than  as  judges;  and,  speaking  generally,  the  system  offered  consider- 
able scope  for  partiality  and  corruption,  which  became  very  marked 
under  the  rule  of  Baji  Rao  II.  Yet,  despite  its  primitive  character 
and  its  liability  to  be  improperly  influenced,  the  panchayat  was  a 
popular  institution,  and  the  absence  of  a  decision  by  a  panchayat  in 
any  suit  was  almost  always  regarded  as  complete  justification  for  a 
retrial  of  the  issues.  The  fact  must  be  admitted  that  among  themselves, 
within  the  confines  of  the  self-contained  ancestral  village,  the 
peasantry  did  obtain  a  fair  modicum  of  rude  justice  from  the  village- 
panchayat.  What  they  failed  to  obtain  either  from  the  panchayats  or 
from  the  government  was  any  measure  of  redress  against  the  merciless 
oppression  of  their  superiors.1 

In  criminal  cases  much  the  same  procedure  was  adopted,  though 
a  panchayat  was  less  frequently  appointed  than  in  civil  disputes.  The 
chief  authorities  were  the  patel  in  the  village,  the  mamlatdar  in  the 
district,  the  sarsubhedar  in  the  province,  and  the  Peshwa  and  his 
nyayadhish  at  headquarters;  and  they  administered  a  law  which  was 
merely  popular  custom  tempered  by  the  trying  officer's  own  ideas  of 
expediency.  Ancient  Hindu  law  in  its  criminal  application  had 
become  practically  obsolete  by  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  Mountstuart  Elphinstone's  opinion  that  "the  criminal  system  of 
the  Mahrattas  was  in  the  last  stage  of  disorder  and  corruption"  was 
fully  justified  by  the  state  of  the  criminal  law  and  procedure  imme- 
diately prior  to  the  downfall  of  the  last  Peshwa.  No  regular  form  of 
trial  of  accused  persons  was  prescribed;  flogging  was  frequently 
inflicted  with  the  object  of  extorting  confessions  of  guilt;  and  in  the 
case  of  crimes  against  the  state  torture  was  usually  employed.  The 
punishment  for  serious  offences  against  the  person  was  originally  fine, 
or  confiscation  of  property,  or  imprisonment,  the  fine  being  propor- 
tioned to  the  means  of  the  offender;2  but  after  1761  capital  putlish- 

1  fen,  op.  cit.  pp.  347-79. 

2  Idem,  pp.  381-3. 


JUDICIAL  SYSTEM  391 

ment  and  mutilation  were  inflicted  upon  persons  convicted  of  grievous 
hurt,  dacoity  and  theft,  as  well  as  upon  those  found  guilty  of  murder 
or  treason.1  The  usual  methods  of  execution  were  hanging,  decapi- 
tation, cutting  to  pieces  with  swords,  or  crushing  the  skull  with  a 
mallet,  exception  being  made  in  the  case  of  Brahmans,  who  were 
poisoned  or  starved  to  death. 2  Powers  of  life  and  death  were  originally 
vested  in  the  ruler  only,  and  in  the  principal  feudal  chiefs  within  the 
limits  of  their  respective  jagirs.  In  later  times,  however,  these  powers 
were  delegated  to  the  sarsubhedar  of  a  province;  while  throughout  the 
second  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  mamlatdar,  as  head  of  a 
district,  considered  himself  justified  in  hanging  a  Ramosi,  Bhil,  or 
Mang  robber,  without  reference  to  higher  authority.  The  punishment 
of  mutilation  consisted  usually  in  cutting  off  the  hands  or  feet  and 
in  the  case  of  female  offenders  in  depriving  them  of  their  nose,  ears 
or  breasts.  False  evidence  must  often  have  figured  in  criminal  en- 
quiries, as  it  still  does  to  some  extent;  and  the  false  witness  and  the 
fabricator  of  false  documents  were  practically  immune  from  prose- 
cution under  a  system  which  prescribed  no  penalty  for  either  perjury 
or  forgery.  The  only  notice  taken  of  a  case  of  deliberate  and  wholesale 
fabrication  of  false  evidence  consisted  of  a  mild  reproof  from  the 
nyayadhish. 

The  penalties  imposed  on  convicted  prisoners  were  aggravated  by 
the  knowledge  that  their  families  were  not  secure  from  oppression; 
for  it  was  a  common  practice  of  the  Maratha  Government  to  in- 
carcerate the  innocent  wives  and  children  of  convicts,  as  a  warning 
to  other  potential  malefactors.  The  prison  arrangements  were  primi- 
tive, the  only  jails  being  rooms  in  some  of  the  larger  hill-forts.  Here 
the  prisoners  languished  in  the  gravest  discomfort,  except  on  rare 
occasions  when  they  were  temporarily  released  to  enable  them  to 
perform  domestic  religious  ceremonies  such  as  the  sraddha?  It  is 
perhaps  needless  to  remark  that  a  prisoner  had  to  pay  heavily  for  such 
temporary  and  occasional  freedom,  as  well  as  for  other  minor 
concessions  to  his  comfort.  Provided  that  he  could  command 
sufficient  funds  to  satisfy  the  avarice  of  his  gaolers,  even  a  long-term 
convict  could  count  upon  a  fairly  speedy  release.  Even  in  the  days  of 
Sivaji  the  power  of  gold  to  unlock  the  gates  of  hill-forts  had  often 
proved  greater  than  that  of  the  sword,  spear  and  ambush. 

The  district  police  arrangements  under  the  Peshwas  were  practically 
identical  with  those  that  existed  in  the  seventeenth  centu  y,  and  were 
apparently  based  largely  on  the  doctrine  of  setting  a  thief  to  catch 
a  thief.  Each  village  maintained  its  own  watchmen,  who  belonged 
to  the  degraded  Mahar  or  Mang  tribes,  under  the  direct  control  of 
/,  and  remunerated  them  for  their  services  with  rent-free  lands 

1  Sen,  op.  cit.  pp.  393-6. 

*  Tone,  Institutions  of  the  Maratha  People,  pp.  15-16. 

8  Sen,  op.  cit.  pp.  417-24. 


392  MARATHA  ADMINISTRATION 

and  other  perquisites.  These  watchmen  were  assisted  in  the  detection 
of  crime  by  groups  or  gangs  of  hereditary  criminal  tribesmen,  like 
the  Ramosis  and  Bhils,  who  were  attached  to  each  village,  or  to  a 
group  of  villages,  and  resided  on  its  outskirts.  Each  group  was  under 
the  control  of  its  own  naiks  or  headmen,  who  were  answerable  to  the 
patel  for  any  theft  or  robbery  committed  in  the  village,  and  for  any 
disturbance  created  by  their  followers.1  The  antiquity  of  the  system 
is  indicated  by  the  fact  that  most  of  these  village  groups  of  Ramosis  or 
Bhils  received  certain  perquisites  of  long  standing  in  return  for  their 
services  to  the  village,  in  the  same  way  as  the  recognised  village  ser- 
vants, and  they  cherished  their  rights  as  ancillary  watchmen  and 
thief-catchers,  particularly  in  respect  of  some  of  the  hill-forts,  as 
jealously  as  any  village  officer  or  village  artisan. 

The  practical  working  of  the  system  was  as  follows.  Whenever  a 
crime  against  property  occurred  in  a  village,  the  Mahars  or  Ramosis, 
as  the  case  might  be,  were  bound  as  a  body  to  make  good  the  value 
of  the  stolen  property,  unless  they  succeeded  in  recovering  the  actual 
goods  or  in  tracing  the  offenders  to  another  village.  In  the  latter  case 
the  delinquent  village  was  forced  to  indemnify  the  owners  of  the 
property.  While  this  system  afforded  a  moderate  safeguard  to  each 
village  against  the  anti-social  propensities  of  its  own  particular  group 
of  criminal  tribesmen,  it  failed  to  prevent  crime  and  predatory 
incursions  by  the  Ramosis  of  other  areas  or  by  Bhils  from  the  forest- 
clad  hills  of  the  northern  Deccan.  It  offered,  moreover,  unlimited 
chances  of  subterfuge  and  blackmail  on  the  part  of  the  tribesmen 
concerned.  A  striking  example  of  the  shortcomings  of  the  system  is 
afforded  by  the  career  of  Umaji  Naik,  the  famous  Ramosi  outlaw, 
who  during  the  administration  of  Sir  John  Malcolm  (1827-30) 
perpetrated  a  long  series  of  crimes  against  person  and  property, 
while  he  was  actually  in  receipt  of  a  salary  from  the  Bombay  Govern- 
ment for  performing  police  duties  in  the  Sasvad  division  of  the  Poona 
collectorate.2  His  methods  proved  that  there  was  nothing  to  prevent 
the  village  police  and  the  Ramosis  combining  to  escape  responsibility 
by  falsely  saddling  crimes  upon  the  innocent.  These  watch  and  ward 
arrangements  were  also  of  no  avail  in  cases  where  the  petty  chiefs 
and  estate-holders  of  the  Deccan  plundered  the  villages  of  their  rivals. 
For  the  payment  of  fees  and  perquisites  to  the  Ramosis  or  Bhils, 
either  by  the  village  or  by  the  government,  was  essentially  a  form  of 
blackmail,  designed  to  secure  immunity,  partial  or  complete,  from 
the  depredations  of  a  body  of  professional  criminals  and  freebooters, 
and  it  naturally  could  not  influence  the  intentions  or  actions  of  the 
landed  gentry,  whenever  its  members  chose  to  indulge  in  marauding 
excursions  through  the  countryside.  Consequently,  whenever  serious 

1  Sen,  of.  tit.  pp.  425-7. 
pp.  f^.OSh>  An  ACC°mt  °f  *'  °rigin  and  Preseni  Comiitim  *  "*  ™<  If 


POLICE  393 

epidemics  of  dacoity  and  other  crime  occurred,  the  government 
authorities  usually  strengthened  the  village  police  with  detachments 
of  sihbandis,  or  irregular  infantry,  from  the  neighbouring  hill-forts. 
The  sihbandis  in  every  district  were  under  the  control  of  the  mamlatdar, 
and  were  maintained  on  the  proceeds  of  a  general  house  tax  imposed 
on  the  residents  of  the  disturbed  area.  Their  duty  was  to  support 
the  village  police  under  the  patel  and  to  oppose  violence  by  force  of 
arms,  but  did  not  extend  to  the  detection  of  crime.  They  were  also 
deputed  to  assist  the  village  police  in  maintaining  order  at  festivals, 
fairs  and  other  important  social  gatherings. 

Under  the  misguided  rule  of  Baji  Rao  II  the  district  police  system 
was  modified  by  the  appointment  of  additional  police  officials,  styled 
tapasnavis,  charged  with  the  discovery  and  seizure  of  offenders.1  These 
officials  were  independent  of  the  mamlatdar  and  other  district  authori- 
ties, and  their  area  of  jurisdiction  was  not  necessarily  conterminous 
with  that  of  the  revenue  and  police  officials.  As  a  class  they  were 
shamelessly  corrupt;  they  constantly  extorted  money  by  means  of 
false  accusations,  and  were  often  hand  in  glove  with  avowed  robbers 
and  outlaws.  In  the  latter  respect  they  were  little  less  culpable  than 
the  Maratha  jagirdars  and  zamindars,  who  frequently  offered  an 
asylum  and  protection  to  fugitive  criminals  wanted  for  serious  crimes 
in  other  districts. 

In  urban  centres  magisterial  and  police  powers  were  vested  in  a 
kotwal,  who  also  performed  municipal  duties.  He  regulated  prices, 
took  a  census  of  the  inhabitants,  investigated  and  decided  disputes 
relating  to  immovable  property,  supplied  labour  to  the  government, 
levied  fees  from  professional  gamblers,  and,  generally  speaking, 
performed  most  of  the  functions  ascribed  to  the  nagaraka  or  police 
superintendent  in  the  Arthasastra  of  Kautilya.2  The  best  urban  police 
force  at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  unquestionably  that 
of  the  capital,  Poona.  It  was  composed  of  foot-police,  mounted 
patrols,  and  Ramosis,  used  principally  as  spies  and  trackers,  and  was 
described  as  efficient.  Opportunities  for  nocturnal  delinquency  on 
the  part  of  the  inhabitants  were,  however,  greatly  lessened  by  a 
strict  curfew  order  which  obliged  everyone  to  remain  within  doors 
after  10  p.m.8 

The  Maratha  army,  composed  of  the  mercenary  forces  of  the  feudal 
chiefs  and  the  regiments  under  the  immediate  command  of  the  Peshwa, 
had  undergone  a  radical  change  since  Sivaji's  day.  Originally  re- 
cruited from  men  who,  though  not  invariably  Marathas  by  race, 
were  yet  united  by  a  common  bond  of  country  and  language,  the 
army  tended,  as  the  Maratha  power  spread  across  India,  to  assume 
a  professional  rather  than  a  national  character.  The  real  Marathas 

1  Forrest,  op.  cit.  pp.  305-6. 

8  Sen,  op.  cit.  pp.  427-31 ;  522-4. 

8  Idem,  pp.  431-2;  Tone,  Institutions  of  the  Maratha  People,  pp.  54-5. 


394  MARATHA  ADMINISTRATION 

were  gradually  relegated  almost  entirely  to  the  cavalry,  in  which  their 
horse-craft  and  knowledge  of  horse-breeding  proved  of  the  highest 
value;  the  infantry  was  mostly  drawn  from  Northern  India;  and  the 
artillery,  which  offered  little  attraction  to  the  Maratha  freebooter, 
was  manned  and  commanded  by  Portuguese  and  Indian  Christians. 
As  has  been  mentioned,  the  military  services  of  the  various  Maratha 
chiefs  and  landholders  were  secured  by  the  grant  ofsaranjams  (fiefs), 
care  being  taken  by  the  Peshwa  and  his  Brahman  secretariat  so  to 
group  the  holdings  of  rival  chiefs  in  the  same  area  that  the  former 
might  reap  full  advantage  from  their  inveterate  mutual  jealousies.1 
A  hegemony  founded  on  internal  strife  and  dissension  was  not  cal- 
culated to  give  stability  to  the  state;  and  ultimately  the  lack  of 
cohesion  induced  by  this  policy,  coupled  with  the  personal  unpopu- 
larity of  the  last  Peshwa,  contributed  largely  to  the  downfall  of  the 
Maratha  confederacy. 

The  Maratha  state  did  little  towards  the  economic  improvement  of 
the  country  and  the  intellectual  advancement  of  its  inhabitants. 
Being  essentially  a  predatory  power,  it  regarded  itself  as  always  in  a 
state  of  war,  and  a  large  proportion  of  its  revenue  was  supplied  by 
marauding  expeditions  into  the  territory  of  its  neighbours.  Unlike 
other  ancient  and  contemporary  Hindu  governments,  it  constructed 
no  great  works  of  public  utility,  and  its  interest  in  education  was 
confined  to  the  annual  grant  of  dakshina  to  deserving  pandits  and 
voids.2  In  the  days  of  Sivaji  and  his  successors  it  had  been  one  of  the 
duties  of  the  Pandit  Rao  to  enquire  into  the  merits  and  accomplish- 
ments of  applicants  for  this  form  of  state  aid  and  to  settle  in  each  case 
the  amount  and  character  of  the  award.  But  the  system  had  de- 
generated at  the  opening  of  the  nineteenth  century  into  a  form  of 
indiscriminate  largesse  to  Brahmans,  of  whom  some  at  least  were 
probably  unworthy  of  special  recognition.  Some  writers  on  Maratha 
affairs  have  sought  to  discover  the  germ  of  modern  postal  communi- 
cations in  the  system  of  intelligence  maintained  by  the  Maratha 
Government.  The  comparison  has  no  value,  in  view  of  the  fact 
that,  although  thtjasuds  (spies)  and  harkaras  (messengers)  did  carry 
messages  and  letters  with  astonishing  rapidity  throughout  India,  they 
were  primarily  employed  for  political  and  military  purposes,  and  not 
for  the  public  convenience.8  They  represented,  in  fact,  during  the 
eighteenth  century  the  official  system  of  intelligence,  which  was 
originally  described  in  the  Arthasastra  and  was  perfected  by  Chandra- 
gupta  Maurya  in  the  third  century  B.C. 

A  survey  of  Maratha  administration  must  necessarily  include  some 
account  of  the  principal  sources  of  the  state  revenues.  The  most 
important  items  were  the  chauth  (one-fourth)  and  sardesmukhi  (the 
tenth),  which  originally  were  payments  in  the  nature  of  blackmail 

1  Sen,  op.  cit.  pp.  439-69.  a  Idem,  pp.  470-2. 

8  Idem,  pp.  469-70. 


LAND  TENURES  395 

made  by  districts  under  the  government  of  other  powers  which 
desired  protection  from  plunder.  While  the  proceeds  of  both  levies 
were  reserved  for  the  state  treasury,  the  chauth  from  early  days  had 
been  sub-divided  into  the  following  shares: 

(a)  babti  or  25  per  cent.,  reserved  for  the  raja  or  ruler. 

(b)  mokasa  or  66  per  cent.,  granted  to  Maratha  sardars  and  chiefs 
for  the  maintenance  of  troops. 

(c)  sahotra  or  6  per  cent.,  granted  to  the  pant  sachiv. 

(d)  nadgaunda  or  3  per  cent.,  awarded  to  various  persons  at  the 
ruler's  pleasure. 

This  sub-division  of  chauth  continued  under  therjgime  of  the  Peshwas; 
and  when  the  territories,  which  paid  both  the  levies,  were  finally 
incorporated  in  the  Maratha  dominions,  the  remaining  three-fourths 
of  their  revenues,  after  deducting  the  chauth,  were  styled  jagir  and 
were  also  granted  in  varying  proportions  to  different  individuals.  As 
previously  stated,  this  system  was  characterised  by  a  multiplicity  of 
individual  claims  upon  the  revenues  of  a  single  tract  or  village,  and 
consequently  in  great  complication  of  the  accounts,  which  the  Brah- 
man secretariat  in  Poona  was  alone  in  a  position  to  comprehend 
-and  elucidate.  During  the  Pcshwa's  rule  a  somewhat  similar  sub- 
division was  made  of  the  sardesmukhi,  which  had  originally  been 
credited  wholly  to  the  raja,  in  accordance  with  Sivaji's  fictitious  claim 
to  be  the  hereditary  sardesmuhh  of  the  Deccan.1 

The  second  important  head  of  state  revenue  was  the  agricultural 
assessment  upon  village  lands,  which  were  generally  divided  between 
two  classes  of  holders,  the  mirasdar  and  the  upri.2  The  former,  who  is 
supposed  to  have  been  the  descendant  of  original  settlers  who  cleared 
the  forest  and  first  prepared  the  soil  for  agriculture,  possessed  per- 
manent proprietary  rights  and  could  not  be  ejected  from  his  holding 
so  long  as  his  rent  was  paid  to  the  government.  His  property  was 
hereditary  and  saleable;  and  even  if  he  was  dispossessed  for  failure 
to  pay  the  government  dues,  he  had  a  right  of  recovery  at  any  time 
during  the  next  thirty  or  forty  years,  on  his  liquidating  all  arrears. 
The  upri,  on  the  other  hand,  was  a  stranger  and  tenant-at-will,  who 
merely  rented  and  cultivated  his  fields  with  the  permission  and  under 
the  supervision  of  the  Peshwa's  district  officers.  He  did  not  enjoy 
the  same  advantages  and  fixity  of  tenure  as  the  mirasdar,  but  he  was 
not  liable,  like  the  latter,  to  sudden  and  arbitrary  impositions,  and 
he  bore  a  comparatively  moderate  proportion  of  the  miscellaneous 
village  expenses,  which  included  such  items  as  the  maintenance  of 
the  village  temple  and  the  repair  of  the  village  wall.  Theoretically 
the  assessment  on  the  village  lands  was  supposed  to  be  based  on  a 
careful  survey  of  the  cultivated  area,  the  lands  themselves  being 
divided  into  three  main  classes.  Allowance  was  also  supposed  to  be 

1  Sen,  p.  112. 
*  Idem,  pp.  237-9. 


396  MARATHA  ADMINISTRATION 

made  for  the  character  of  the  crop  and  the  facilities  existing  for 
irrigation,  and  special  rates  were  imposed  upon  coconut  and  other 
plantations  and  also  upon  waste  or  permanently  unproductive  lands. 
The  assessment  was  payable  either  in  cash  or  in  kind,  and  it  was  gener- 
ally recognised  that  remission  of  the  assessment  and  advances  of  money 
and  grain  (tagaf)  should  be  granted  to  the  peasantry  in  seasons  of 
drought  and  distress.  Theoretically,  indeed,  the  Maratha  land  revenue 
system  was  favourable  to  the  interests  of  the  cultivator,  and  under 
the  rule  of  a  Peshwa  like  Madhu  Rao  I  the  peasantry  were  probably 
contented  and  tolerably  well  off.  But  actually  the  patel  was  the  only 
person  who  could  champion  the  rights  of  the  villager  against  the  higher 
official  authorities,  and  as  the  latter  had  usually  to  satisfy  the  demands 
of  the  government  and  fill  their  own  pockets  at  one  and  the  same  time, 
the  cultivator  met  with  much  less  consideration  than  was  due  to  his 
position  in  the  economic  sphere.  Under  a  bad  ruler  like  Baji  Rao  II, 
whose  administration  was  stained  by  perfidy,  rapacity  and  cruelty, 
the  equitable  maxims  of  land  revenue  assessment  and  collection  were 
widely  neglected,  and  the  cultivator  was  reduced  in  many  cases  to 
practical  penury  by  the  merciless  exactions  of  the  Peshwa' s  officials. 
In  addition  to  the  regular  village  lands,  there  were  certain  lands 
which  were  regarded  as  the  private  property  of  the  Peshwa.  These 
fell  into  the  four-fold  category  of  pasture,  garden,  orchard,  pid  cul- 
tivated land,  and  were  usually  let  on  lease  to  upris  under  the  &z£hority 
of  the  mamlatdar  or  kamavisdar,  who  was  responsible  for  nxrovering 
the  rental  and  other  dues  from  the  tenant.1 

A  third  item  of  the  Maratha  revenues  consisted  of  miscellaneous 
taxes,  which  varied  in  different  districts.  They  included,  inter  alia> 
a  tax  of  one  year's  rent  in  ten  on  the  lands  held  by  the  desmukh  and 
despande,  a  tax  on  land  reserved  for  the  village  Mahars,  a  triennial 
cess  on  mirasdar  occupants,  a  tax  on  land  irrigated  from  wells,  a 
house  tax  recovered  from  everyone  except  Brahmans  and  village 
officers,  an  annual  fee  for  the  testing  of  weights  and  measures,  a  tax 
on  marriage  and  on  the  remarriage  of  widows,  taxes  on  sheep  and 
she-buffaloes,  a  pasturage  fee,  a  tax  on  melon  cultivation  in  river 
beds,  a  succession  duty,  and  a  town  duty,  including  a  fee  of  17  per 
cent,  on  the  sale  of  a  house.  There  were  several  other  taxes  and  cesses 
of  more  or  less  importance,  as  for  example  the  bat  chhapai  or  fee  for  the 
stamping  of  cloth  and  other  merchandise;  and  some  of  these  can  be 
traced  back  to  the  Mauryan  epoch  and  were  probably  levied  by 
Indian  rulers  at  an  even  earlier  date.  In  theory  such  taxes  were  to 
be  proportioned  in  their  incidence  to  the  resources  of  the  individual; 
but  on  the  not  infrequent  occasions  when  the  Maratha  Government 
'  was  pressed  for  money,  it  had  no  scruple  in  levying  on  all  landholders 
a  karjapatti  orjastipatti,  which  was  generally  equivalent  to  one  year's 
income  of  the  individual  tax-payer.2 

1  Sen,  op.  cit*  pp.  277-307.  2  Idem,  pp.  308-14. 


MISCELLANEOUS  REVENUES  397 

The  fourth  source  of  Maratha  revenue  was  customs  duties,  which 
fell  roughly  into  the  two  classes  of  mohatarfa  or  taxes  on  trades  and 
professions,  and  jakat  or  duties  on  purchase  and  sale,  octroi  and  ferry 
charges.1  The  mohatarfa,  for  example,  included  a  palanquin  tax  on 
the  Kolis,  a  shop  tax  on  goldsmiths,  blacksmiths,  shoemakers  and 
other  retail  dealers,  a  tax  on  oil  mills,  potter's  wheels  and  boats,  and 
a  professional  impost  of  three  rupees  a  year  on  the  Gondhalis  or  wor- 
shippers of  the  goddess  Bhavani.  The  jakat,  a  term  originally  borrowed 
from  the  Muhammadans,  was  collected  from  traders  of  all  castes  and 
sects,  and  was  farmed  out  to  contractors,  who  were  often  corrupt  and 
oppressive.  It  was  levied  separately  in  each  district,  and  was  divided 
into  thalbarit  or  tax  at  the  place  of  loading  the  merchandise,  thalmod 
or  tax  at  the  place  of  sale,  and  chhapa  or  stamping-duty.  In  some 
places  a  special  fee  on  cattle,  termed  shingshingoti,  was  also  imposed. 
Remissions  of  jakat  were  sometimes  granted,  particularly  to  cultivators 
who  had  suffered  from  scarcity  or  from  the  incursions  of  troops;  but, 
as  a  rule,  every  trader  had  to  submit  to  the  inconvenience  of  having 
his  goods  stopped  frequently  in  transit  for  the  payment  of  these  dues 
and  octroi.  Elphinstone  records  that  the  system  was  responsible  for 
the  appearance  of  a  class  of  hundikaris  or  middlemen,  who  in  return 
for  a  lump  payment  undertook  to  arrange  with  the  custom  farmers 
for  the  unimpeded  transit  of  a  merchant's  goods.  Brahmans  and 
government  officials  were  usually  granted  exemption  from  duty  on 
goods  imported  for  their  own  consumption,  just  as  they  were  exempted 
from  the  house  tax  and  certain  minor  cesses. 

A  small  revenue  was  derived  from  forests  by  the  sale  of  permits  to 
cut  timber  for  building  or  for  fuel,  by  the  sale  of  grass,  bamboos,  fuel 
and  wild  honey,  and  by  fees  for  pasturage  in  reserved  areas  (kurans).* 
Licences  for  private  mints  also  brought  some  profit  to  the  state  treasury. 
These  licences  were  issued  to  approved  goldsmiths  (sonars),  who  paid 
a  varying  royalty  and  undertook  to  maintain  a  standard  proportion 
of  alloy,  on  pain  of  fine  and  forfeiture  of  licence.  At  times  spurious 
and  faulty  coins  were  put  into  circulation,  as  for  example  in  the 
Dharwar  division  in  1760.  On  that  occasion  the  Maratha  Govern- 
ment closed  all  private  mints  in  that  area  and  established  in  their 
stead  a  central  mint,  which  charged  a  fee  of  seven  coins  in  every 
thousand.3 

The  administration  of  justice  produced  a  small  and  uncertain 
amount  of  revenue.  In  civil  disputes  relating  to  money  bonds,  the 
state  claimed  a  fee  of  25  per  cent,  of  the  amount  realised,  which  really 
amounted  to  a  bribe  to  secure  the  assistance  of  the  official  who  heard 
the  case.  The  general  inertia  of  the  government  effectually  prevented 
the  growth  of  revenue  from  legal  fees  and  obliged  suitors  to  depend  for 
satisfaction  of  their  claims  on  private  redress  in  the  form  of  takaza  or 

1  Sen,  op.  cil.  pp.  321-5.  2  Idem,  pp.  314-17. 

8  Idem,  pp.  3 1 7-2 1 . 


398  MARATHA  ADMINISTRATION 

dharna  (dunning),  or  on  patronage,  which  signified  the  enlistment  of 
the  aid  of  a  superior  neighbour  or  influential  friend.  In  suits  for 
partition  of  property  worth  more  than  300  rupees  in  value,  the  parties 
were  expected  to  pay  a  fee  at  the  rate  of  10  per  cent,  of  the  value  of 
the  property;  fees  were  also  charged  in  cases  concerned  with  main- 
tenance or  inheritance,  particularly  in  cases  in  which  an  applicant 
claimed  to  succeed  to  the  estate  of  a  childless  brother.1  It  is  not  clear 
what  proportion  of  the  fines  imposed  in  criminal  proceedings  was 
credited  to  the  state;  but  during  the  ministry  of  Nana  Phadnavis 
(1762-1800)  the  legal  revenues  included  a  considerable  sum  extorted 
from  persons  suspected  or  found  guilty  of  adultery. 

No  definite  estimate  of  the  total  revenue  of  the  Maratha  state  can 
be  given.  Lord  Valentia  (1802-6)  calculated  the  Peshwa's  revenue  at 
rather  more  than  7,000,000  rupees;  while  J.  Grant,  writing  in  1798, 
estimated  the  total  revenue  of  the  Maratha  empire  at  six  crorcs,  and 
the  revenue  of  the  Peshwa  alone  at  not  less  than  three  crores  of  rupees, 
including  chauth  from  the  Nizam,  Tipu  Sultan,  and  the  Rajput  chiefs 
of  Bundelkhand.2  The  revenue  of  a  state  which  subsists  largely  on 
marauding  excursions  and  blackmail,  as  the  Maratha  Government 
did  in  the  time  both  of  Sivaji  and  the  Peshwas,  must  necessarily 
fluctuate;  and  the  facts  outlined  in  the  preceding  pages  will  serve  to 
indicate  that,  though  the  general  principles  of  the  domestic  adminis- 
tration may  have  been  worthy  of  commendation,  the  practices  of  the 
Maratha  Government  and  its  officials  precluded  all  possibility  of  the 
steady  economic  and  educational  advance  of  the  country.  Tone 
records  that  the  Maratha  Government  invariably  anticipated  its 
land  revenues. 

These  mortgages  on  the  territorial  income  are  negotiated  by  wealthy  soucars 
(between  whom  and  the  Minister  there  always  exists  a  proper  understanding), 
and  frequently  at  a  discount  of  30  per  cent,  and  then  paid  in  the  most  depreciated 
specie. 

Owing  to  the  unsettled  state  of  the  country,  the  Maratha  Govern- 
ment preferred  to  raise  a  lump  sum  at  enormous  interest  on  the  security 
of  the  precarious  revenue  of  the  next  two  or  four  years,  and  made 
•  little  or  no  attempt  to  balance  its  revenue  and  current  expenditure. 
The  Maratha  army  was  organised  primarily  for  the  purpose  of 
plunder,  and  not  so  much  for  the  extension  of  territory  directly 
administered;  and  the  people  were  gradually  impoverished  by  the 
system  of  continuous  freebooting,  which  the  Marathas  regarded  as 
their  most  important  means  of  subsistence.  The  general  tone  of  the 
internal  administration  was  not  calculated  to  counteract  to  any 
appreciable  extent  the  feelings  of  instability  and  insecurity  engendered 
among  the  mass  of  the  people  by  the  predatory  activities  of  their 
rulers.  Indeed  the  constitution  of  the  Maratha  Government  and 
army  was  "more  calculated  to  destroy,  than  to  create  an  empire"; 

1  Sen,  op.  cit.  pp.  371-3.  *  Idem,  pp.  342-3. 


PREDATORY  POLICY  399 

and  the  spirit  which  directed  their  external  policy  and  their  internal 
administration  prevented  all  chance  of  permanent  improvement  of 
the  country  over  which  they  claimed  sovereign  rights.  There  can  be 
no  doubt  that  the  final  destruction  of  the  Maratha  political  power 
and  the  substitution  of  orderly  government  by  the  East  India  Com- 
pany were  necessary,  and  productive  of  incalculable  benefit  to 
India. 


CHAPTER   XXIV 

THE   CONQUEST  OF   CEYLON,    1795-1815 

JLHE  English  had  been  nearly  two  centuries  in  India  before  Ceylon 
attracted  their  attention.  They  were  too  much  occupied  with,  at 
first,  establishing  a  precarious  foothold,  and  then  extending  their 
conquests  on  the  continent,  to  trouble  much  about  a  small  island  so 
far  to  the  south.  There  had  indeed  been  a  curious  attempt  at  inter- 
course as  far  back  as  1664,  which  the  Dutch  historian,  Valentyn, 
records.  The  king  of  Kandi  at  that  period  had  a.  penchant  for  retaining 
in  captivity  any  Englishmen  he  could  capture — mostly  castaways 
from  merchant-ships  wrecked  on  the  coast,  and  an  effort  was  made 
to  negotiate  with  him  for  their  release,  but  it  was  abortive,  and  the 
curtain  fell  for  100  years.  But  towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  the  rivalry  with  the  Dutch  became  acute,  and  the  protection 
of  our  communications  with  our  Indian  possessions  was  a  question 
of  vital  importance.  Not  only  might  the  Dutch  prey  upon  our  com- 
merce from  their  harbours  in  Ceylon,  but  there  was  a  fear  lest  other 
nations,  tempted  by  the  tales  of  the  fabulous  wealth  that  poured  into 
Holland  from  the  Isle  of  Spices,  might  be  induced  to  forestall  us. 
Indeed  the  French,  our  dangerous  rivals  in  India,  had  shown  signs 
of  this  inclination  a  hundred  years  earlier,  and  had  sent  a  fleet  to 
attack  Trinkomali.  Though  it  was  repulsed,  a  small  embassy  under 
de  Laverolle  was  dispatched  to  Kandi  to  negotiate  with  the  raja.  But 
the  ambassador  was  badly  chosen:  his  unwise  and  intemperate 
behaviour  resulted  not  only  in  the  failure  of  the  mission  but  in  his 
own  imprisonment. 

The  first  serious  attempt  made  by  the  English  to  gain  a  footing  was 
in  1762,  when  Pybus  was  sent  to  Kandi  to  arrange  a  treaty  with  the 
raja,  Kirti  Sri.  He  has  left  an  account  of  his  mission — subsequently 
published  from  the  records  of  the  Madras  Government — which 
gives  a  curious,  if  somewhat  tedious,  sketch  of  the  state  of  affairs  at 
the  Kandian  court.  He  was  admitted  to  the  audience  hall  at 
midnight,  and  ordered  to  pull  his  shoes  off  and  hold  above  his  head 
the  silver  dish  containing  the  letter  for  the  raja.  Six  separate  curtains, 
white  and  red,  were  withdrawn,  and  the  king  was  then  discovered 
seated  on  his  throne,  which  was  a  large  chair,  handsomely  carved 
and  gilt,  which  may  now  be  seen  in  Windsor  Castle.  The  envoy  was 
forced  upon  his  knees  and  had  to  make  endless  prostrations  till  at 
last  his  painful  progress  ended  at  the  foot  of  the  throne,  where  he 
presented  his  credentials.  He  describes  the  elaborate  costume  of  the 
monarch,  and  the  decorations  of  the  hall,  and  adds : 


CAPTURE  OF  COLOMBO  401 

I  should  have  been  well  enough  pleased  with  the  appearance  it  made,  had  I 
been  in  a  more  agreeable  situation.  At  the  foot  of  the  throne  knelt  one  of  the 
King's  Prime  Ministers,  to  whom  he  communicated  what  he  had  to  say  to  me, 
who,  after  prostrating  himself  on  the  ground,  related  it  to  one  of  the  generals  who 
sat  by  me;  who,  after  having  prostrated  himself,  explained  it  to  a  Malabar  doctor, 
who  told  it  in  Malabar  to  my  dubash,  and  he  to  me.  And  this  ceremony  was 
repeated  on  asking  every  question.1 

Whether  or  not  this  somewhat  tortuous  method  of  communication 
led  to  misunderstandings,  the  Madras  Government  took  no  steps  to 
pursue  the  matter  further  then;  but  in  1782  war  was  declared  against 
the  Dutch,  an  English  fleet  under  Hughes  captured  Trinkomali,  and 
Hugh  Boyd  was  sent  to  Kandi  to  solicit  the  raja's  help  against  the 
Dutch.  The  failure  of  Pybus's  mission  had  left  a  bad  impression 
on  the  Kandian  court;  the  raja  curtly  refused  to  negotiate;  and 
Trinkomali  was  next  year  lost  to  the  French  and  finally  restored  to 
the  Dutch  when  peace  was  declared.  However  in  1 795  the  Dutch  were 
involved  in  the  European  upheaval,  and  had  also  got  into  trouble 
with  the  Kandian  court;  and  the  English  determined  to  strike. 
A  force  under  Colonel  James  Stuart  was  dispatched  to  Ceylon  by  the 
governor  of  Madras,  and  accomplished  its  object  with  an  unexpected 
rapidity.  The  Dutch  had  been  firmly  established  for  140  years  along 
the  sea  coast;  they  had  built  magnificent  forts — the  great  fortress  of 
Jaffna,  which  is  little  the  worse  for  wear  even  to-day,  was  perhaps  the 
finest  specimen — and  they  were  a  sturdy  and  tenacious  people.  But 
the  smaller  sea-ports  were  easily  occupied,  and  the  garrison  of  Colombo 
marched  out  without  a  blow.  The  English  historian  asserts  that  the 
enemy  was  in  a  state  of  utter  demoralisation.  When  the  English 
entered  the  gates  of  Colombo,  he  says, 

the  Dutch  were  found  by  us  in  a  state  of  the  most  infamous  disorder  and  drunken- 
ness, in  no  discipline,  no  obedience,  no  spirit.  The  soldiers  then  awoke  to  a  sense 
of  their  degradation,  but  it  was  too  late;  they  accused  Van  Angel  beck  of  betraying 
them,  vented  loud  reproaches  against  their  commanders,  and  recklessly  insulted 
the  British  as  they  filed  into  the  fortress,  even  spitting  on  them  as  they  passed.2 

On  the  other  hand  it  is  asserted  that  adequate  preparations  had  been 
made  for  the  defence,  but  that  the  surrender  was  due  to  the  treachery 
of  the  governor,  Van  Angelbeck.8  The  facts  were  as  follows.  Early 
in  1795  an  English  agent,  Hugh  Cleghorn,  induced  the  Comte  de 
Meuron,  colonel  propnStaire  of  the  Swiss  regiment  of  that  name,  to 
transfer  his  regiment,  then  forming  the  chief  part  of  the  Ceylon 
forces,  from  the  Dutch  to  the  English  service.  Cleghorn  and  de 
Meuron  arrived  in  India  in  the  following  September.  Much  seemed 
to  depend  upon  the  conduct  of  Van  Angelbeck.  He  was  believed 
to  be  an  Orangist,  but  several  of  his  council  were  strong  revolu- 
tionaries, and  it  was  feared  that  precipitate  action  might  lead  to 
the  governor's  arrest  or  murder.  It*was  decided  therefore  to  send 

1  Pybus,  Mission,  p.  79.  2  Percival,  p.  n8. 

8  Thombc,  Voyage  awe  Indes  Orientates. 

crav  26 


402  CONQUEST  OF  CEYLON,  1795-1815 

him  a  copy  of  the  capitulation  regarding  the  de  Meuron  regiment, 
with  a  demand  for  its  execution;  but  the  news  was  also  secretly 
communicated  to  the  commandant  of  the  regiment  at  Colombo. 
Van  Angelbeck,  who  clearly  did  not  intend  more  than  a  show  of 
resistance,  allowed  the  regiment  to  depart;  and,  when  Stuart 
appeared  before  Colombo,  surrendered  it  on  terms.  Indeed  the 
withdrawal  of  the  Swiss  troops  left  him  no  alternative,  whatever 
may  have  been  his  political  views.1  Accordingly  the  British  flag 
flew  over  Colombo  for  the  first  time  on  16  February,  1796,  and 
the  Dutch  rule  was  over.  Most  of  the  wealthy  folk  filtered  away  to 
Batavia  and  elsewhere,  but  many  of  the  officials  were  wisely  kept 
on  to  finish  up  the  judicial  and  other  matters  in  which  they  were 
engaged. 

It  is  open  to  argument  whether  the  Portuguese  or  the  Dutch  left 
the  stronger  mark  of  their  rule  upon  the  island.  The  Sinhalese 
language  was  strongly  affected  by  both.  Nearly  all  the  words  con- 
nected with  building  are  of  Portuguese  origin,  for  the  ancient  houses 
of  the  Sinhalese  were  rude  and  primitive  structures.  In  the  same  way, 
most  of  the  words  connected  with  the  household,  domestic  utensils, 
ihe  kitchen,  food,  etc.  come  from  the  Dutch — the  legacy  of  the 
huisvrouw.2  In  religious  influences  the  Portuguese  were  far  the  more 
powerful,  and  the  number  of  Portuguese  names  (bestowed  at  bap- 
tism) still  surviving  among  the  natives  is  most  remarkable.  The  Dutch 
Reformed  religion  never  got  beyond  the  walls  of  the  fortresses,  but 
they  taught  the  natives  many  lessons  in  town  planning,  sanitation, 
and  the  amenities  of  life. 

"Within  the  castle  [of  Colombo]  ",  says  a  Dutch  writer3  in  1 676, "  there  are  many 
pretty  walks  of  nut-trees  set  in  an  uniform  order:  the  streets  are  pleasant  walks 
themselves,  having  trees  on  both  sides  and  before  the  houses." 

But  it  was  by  their  magnificent  bequest  of  Roman-Dutch  law  that 
they  left  their  most  abiding  mark  on  the  island;  while  their  zeal  for 
trade  was  a  curious  counterpart  to  the  Portuguese  zeal  for  conversion. 
Nor  must  it  be  forgotten  that  the  "burgher"  (the  offspring  of  Dutch 
and  native  marriages)  is  probably  the  best  outcome  of  mixed  unions 
to  be  found  in  the  East,  and  the  colony  has  good  reason  to  be  grateful 
for  the  fine  work  they  have  accomplished  in  many  official  callings. 

The  transfer  of  power  was  effected  without  any  great  upheaval  and 
with  little  bloodshed,  and  at  first  it  seemed  likely  that  the  future 
course  of  events  would  be  peaceful  and  prosperous.  As  the  island  had 
been  taken  by  the  troops,  and  at  the  expense,  of  the  East  India  Com- 
pany, it  was  only  natural  that  it  should  claim  the  right  to  adminis- 
ter it;  aright  which  it  proceeded  to  assert,  in  spite  of  the  opposition 

1  The  Cleghorn  Papers,  pp.  14  sqq.,  202  sqq. 

2  Census  Report*  1911,  by  E.  B.  Denham. 

*  Christopher  Sweitzer's  Account  of  Ceylon. 


EARLY  MISTAKES  403 

of  Pitt  and  Melville,  who  wished  it  to  be  handed  over  to  the  crown.  The 
results  were  lamentable.  The  Company  selected  as  its  representative  a 
Madras  civilian  named  Andrews,  who  was  to  negotiate  a  treaty  with 
the  king  of  Kandi,  and,  with  plenary  powers,  to  superintend  the 
revenue  arrangements.  He  was  a  man  of  rash  and  drastic  measures, 
utterly  ignorant  of  the  people  he  was  sent  to  govern,  and  blind  to  the 
fact  that  a  newly,  and  barely,  conquered  country  requires  sympathy 
and  tactful  persuasion  rather  than  revolutionary  changes.  He  ruth- 
lessly swept  away  all  the  old  customs  and  service  tenures,  and  intro- 
duced, without  warning  or  preparation,  the  revenue  system  of  Madras, 
which  meant  not  only  taxes  and  duties  unheard  of  before,  but  the 
farming-out  of  those  imposts  to  aliens  from  the  coast  of  India, 
"enemies  to  the  religion  of  the  Sinhalese,  strangers  to  their  habits, 
and  animated  by  no  impulse  but  extortion"  (Governor  North).1  They 
were  under  inadequate  supervision,  and  it  did  not  take  many  months 
to  bring  about  the  inevitable  catastrophe.  A  fierce  rebellion  broke 
out;  the  forces  at  the  disposal  of  the  new  rulers  were  few;  the  rebels 
held  strong  positions  on  the  borderland  between  the  low  country  and 
the  hills;  and  it  was  only  after  fierce  fighting  and  considerable  loss 
of  life  that  any  headway  was  made  against  them. 

This  state  of  affairs  was  intolerable.  Andrews  was  at  once  with- 
drawn; his  outrageous  crew  of  tax-collectors  was  sent  back  to  the 
coast,  and  Pitt  got  his  way  earlier  than  he  expected.  The  island  was 
made  a  crown  colony,  and  the  first  governor  sent  out  to  administer 
it  was  Frederick  North,2  who  landed  in  October,  1798.  He  was  at 
first  placed  under  the  orders  of  the  governor-general  of  India;  but 
after  the  Treaty  of  Amiens  four  years  later,  this  arrangement  was 
ended.  He  kept  up  a  considerable  correspondence  with  Lord 
Mornington  (afterwards  the  Marquess  Wellesley),  preserved  in  the 
Wellesley  MSS,  and  his  letters  throw  a  revealing  light  upon  the 
questionable  policy  he  adopted.  He  set  to  work  at  once  to  abolish 
the  hateful  taxes  of  his  predecessor,  eject  the  remaining  Madras 
civilians,  and  change  the  fiscal  policy  of  the  government  by  reverting 
for  the  time  to  the  system  which  the  Dutch  had  worked  upon;  for, 
in  spite  of  its  obvious  defects,  it  was  at  least  familiar  to  the  people. 
Unfortunately  his  attention  was  diverted  from  these  peaceful  efforts 
towards  reform  by  a  series  of  events  at  the  capital  of  the  island, 
Kandi;  and  his  method  of  dealing  with  this  crisis  has  undoubtedly 
left  a  stain  upon  his  character.  At  the  same  time  it  may  be  urged 
that  a  man  must  to  a  certain  extent  be  judged  by  the  standard  of  his 
age;  and  it  was  not  an  age  of  extreme  official  probity  or  humanity. 
In  1787  we  find  Governor  Phillip,  before  starting  for  New  South 

1  Letter  from  Hon.  F.  North,  Wellesley  MSS. 

*  Afterwards  fifth  Earl  of  Guildford.  He  was  remarkable  for  his  love  of  Greece  and  the 
Greek  language.  He  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  the  foundation  of  the  Ionian  University 
at  Corfu,  of  which  he  was  the  first  Chancellor. 

26-2 


404  CONQUEST  OF  CEYLON,  1795-1815 

Wales,  deliberately  suggesting  in  an  official  memorandum  that,  for 
certain  crimes, 

I  would  wish  to  confine  the  criminal  till  an  opportunity  offered  of  delivering  him 
as  a  prisoner  to  the  natives  of  New  Zealand,  and  let  them  eat  him.1 

It  was  not  a  nice  age,  from  the  modern  point  of  view;  but  whether 
such  instances  as  thes^e  can  excuse  North  for  the  breach  of  faith  he 
was  guilty  of,  must  be  left  to  the  judgment  of  the  reader. 

The  king  of  Kandi  died,  or  was  deposed,  in  the  same  year  as 
governor  North  landed,  and  the  prime  minister  nominated  a  nephew 
of  the  queen's,  Vikrama  Raja  Sinha,  to  succeed  him.  This  was  quite 
in  accordance  with  Kandian  custom,  and  the  English  Government 
accepted  the  arrangement,  and  prepared  an  embassy  to  the  new  king. 
The  prime  minister's  name  was  Pilame  Talawe,  and  he  was  to  bulk 
very  large  in  the  history  of  Ceylon  for  the  next  few  luckless  years.  He 
was  a  traitor  of  a  not  unfamiliar  oriental  type,  and  had  no  sooner  put 
his  nominee  on  the  throne  than  he  began  to  conspire  against  him  with 
a  view  to  his  own  advancement  to  the  kingly  dignity.  He  sought  a 
secret  interview  with  North  and  explained  his  plans,  his  excuse  for 
his  treachery  being  that  the  reigning  family  was  of  alien  (i.e.  South 
Indian)  origin,  and  that  it  was  advisable  to  replace  it  by  a  family  of 
native  extraction.  Unfortunately  North  listened  to  the  tempter;  he 
was  anxious  to  get  hold  of  Kandi,  and  thought  he  saw  his  chance. 
After  much  tortuous  negotiation  it  was  finally  agreed  that  the  prime 
minister  should  persuade  the  king  to  allow  an  ambassador  to  enter 
Kandi  with  an  armed  escort,  which  was  to  be  far  larger  than  was 
reported  to  the  king;  and  North  hoped  that  this  "ambassador"  (to 
wit,  his  principal  general)  would  be  able  to  secure  and  hold  Kandi 
for  the  English,  depose  the  unoffending  monarch,  and  put  Pilame 
Talawe  in  his  place  as  titular  monarch. 

The  plot  fell  through;  for  though  the  raja  at  first  fell  into  the  trap 
and  sanctioned  the  entry,  the  size  of  the  escort  leaked  out,  the  other 
nobles  got  alarmed,  the  king  was  persuaded  to  cancel  his  pefmission, 
and  the  troops  were  mostly  stopped  at  the  boundary  or  led  astray. 
The  general  did  indeed  arrive  at  Kandi,  but  with  only  a  handful  of 
men,  and  there  was  nothing  for  him  to  do  but  to  return  discomfited. 

But  this  rebuff  by  no  means  diverted  the  prime  minister  (or  adigar, 
as  his  reaFtitle  was)  from  his  intentions.  After  various  fruitless  en- 
deavours, he  at  last,  in  1802,  managed  to  effect  a  breach  between 
the  Kandians  and  the  English  by  causing  a  rich  caravan,  belonging 
to  English  subjects,  to  be  robbed  by  Kandian  officials.  This  was 
enough  for  North,  who  sent  a  large  force  under  General  Macdowall 
to  seize  Kandi — an  easy  victory,  as  the  inhabitants  .and  the  king 
precipitately  fled.  A  puppet  king,  Mutuswamy,  with  sqme  claims 
to  royal  blood,  was  placed  on  the  throne;  but  it  was  agreed  with 

1  Historical  Records  of  New  South.  Wales,  vol.  i,  pt  n,  p.  53. 


MASSACRE  OF  1803  405 

Pilam^  Talaw^  that  this  puppet  should  be  at  once  deported  and  that 
he,  the  traitor,  should  reign  in  his  stead.  The  English  were  sufficiently 
deluded  to  believe  in  the  good  faith  of  such  a  turncoat,  and  retired 
in  triumph  to  the  coast,  leaving  a  very  small  garrison  (only  300 
English  and  some  native  levies)  behind.  They  had  their  due  reward. 
The  adigar  saw  his  chance,  and  was  as  ready  to  betray  his  allies  the 
English  as  his  master  the  monarch.  He  calculated  that  by  destroying 
the  tiny  garrison  and  seizing  the  two  kings,  he  could  attain  the  summit 
of  his  desires  without  further  tedious  negotiations;  and  proceeded  to 
carry  out  the  former  part  of  the  programme.  He  surrounded  Kandi 
with  sufficient  troops  to  make  resistance  hopeless;  he  attacked  and 
killed  many  of  the  garrison,  already  decimated  by  disease,  and  called 
on  the  remnant  to  surrender.  Their  commander,  Major  Davie,  was 
apparently  not  of  the  "bull-dog  breed".  He  accepted  the  traitor's 
word  that  their  lives  should  be  spared,  laid  down  his  arms,  and 
marched  out  of  the  town  on  his  way  to  Trinkomali  with  his  sickly 
following  and  the  puppet  king,  Mutuswamy.  But  the  adigar  knew 
well  that  they  could  not  cross  the  large  river  near  Kandi,  as  it  was 
swollen  by  floods.  A  party  of  headmen  came  up  while  they  were 
waiting  desperately  by  the  bank,  and  explained  that  unless  Mutu- 
swamy was  given  up,  they  would  never  be  allowed  to  cross.  Davie 
was  base  enough  to  entreat  the  prince  to  agree,  as  the  envoys  had 
promised  that  his  life  should  be  spared.  The  prince  knew  his  country- 
men and  the  adigar  too  well.  "My  god",  he  exclaimed,  "is  it  possible 
that  the  triumphant  arms  of  England  can  be  so  humbled  as  to  fear 
the  menaces  of  such  cowards  as  the  Kandians?" 

Nevertheless,  he  was  unconditionally  surrendered ;  he  stood  a  mock 
trial  with  heroic  restraint,  answering  only,  "I  am  at  the  king's  mercy"; 
and  within  five  minutes  he  met  his  death  from  the  krises  of  the  Malay 
guard.  His  relatives  and  followers  were  stabbed  or  impaled,  and  his 
servants  were  deprived  of  their  noses  and  ears. 

But  this  base  act  failed  to  save  the  English  remnant.  They  were 
seized  by  the  king's  troops,  Major  Davie  was  taken  back  to  Kandi, 
and  the  other  officers  and  men  were  led  two  by  two  into  a  hollow 
out  of  sight  of  their  comrades,  felled  by  blows  inflicted  by  the 
Caffres,  and  dispatched  by  the  knives  of  the  Kandians.1  One  man 
alone  escaped  from  the  carnage.  He  was  found  to  be  alive,  and  was 
twice  hung  by  the  Kandians,  but  each  time  the  rope  broke.  He 
survived  this  trying  ordeal,  and  struggled  in  the  darkness  to  a  hut, 
where  a  kindly  villager  fed  him  and  tended  his  wounds,  and  eventually 
took  him  before  the  king,  who  spared  his  life,  more  probably  from 
superstition  than  humanity.2 

The  scene  of  the  massacre  is  still  pointed  out.    "Davie's  Tree" 

1  Emerson  Tennent,  Ceylon,  n,  83. 

8  See  An  Account  of  the  Interior  of  Ceylon,  by  Dr  Davy,  a  brother  of  the  celebrated  Sir 
Humphry  Davy. 


406  CONQUEST  OF  CEYLON,  1795-1815 

is  about  three  miles  from  Kandi,  near  the  fatal  river.  The  ill-starred 
Major  Davie  met  with  a  lingering  doom.  His  life  was  spared,  says 
Mrs  Heber  in  her  journal,  from  a  kind  of  superstitious  feeling,  as 
being  the  individual  with  whom  the  treaty  was  made.  He  was 
removed  to  Dumbara,  but,  owing  to  a  plot  by  some  Malays  to  carry 
him  off  and  get  a  reward  from  the  English  Government,  he  was  brought 
back  to  Kandi,  suffering  from  ill-health,  and  died  there  in  1810. 
Several  attempts  were  made  by  government  to  obtain  his  release,  but 
the  king  demanded  a  sea-port  on  the  coast  as  the  ransom  for  his 
prisoner,  and  the  negotiations  broke  down.  He  assumed  the  dress 
and  habits  of  the  natives,  from  whom  he  is  said  latterly  to  have  been 
scarcely  distinguishable,  and  if  he  had  a  defence  for  his  conduct,  he 
was  never  able  to  make  it  known.  His  apparent  cowardice  was  In 
marked  contrast  to  the  heroism  of  two  subordinate  officers,  whose 
names  should  be  remembered.  Captain  Madge  was  in  command  of 
a  small  fort  named  Fort  Macdowall,  with  a  tiny  force  at  his  disposal. 
It  was  assaulted  by  swarms  of  Kandians  simultaneously  with  the 
attack  on  the  capital,  and  safe  conduct  was  offered  in  return  for 
capitulation.  Captain  Madge  sternly  refused,  stood  a  blockade  of 
three  days,  and  then  cut  his  way  out  and  began  a  masterly  retreat 
to  Trinkomali,  which  he  reached  in  safety,  though  his  march  lay 
through  an  almost  unbroken  ambuscade.  Ensign  Grant  was  in  charge 
of  a  small  redoubt  called  Dambudenia,  slightly  constructed  of 
fascines  and  earth,  and  garrisoned  by  fourteen  convalescent  Europeans 
and  twenty-two  invalid  Malays.  He  equally  scorned  the  threats  and 
promises  of  the  enemy,  strengthened  his  flimsy  fortifications  with  bags 
of  rice  and  provision  stores,  and  sustained  an  almost  incessant  fire 
from  several  thousand  Kandians  for  ten  days.  His  force  was  then 
relieved  from  Colombo,  and  the  place  dismantled. 

Such  was  the  result  of  North's  disastrous  policy;  yet  he  seems  to 
have  been  fortunate  enough  to  escape  all  official  censure.  Certainly 
his  letters  to  Lord  Mornington  do  not  show  much  remorse  for  his 
crooked  dealings;  doubtless  he  had  strong  influence  at  home;  and 
the  date  alone  may  explain  his  escape,  for  in  1803  England  was  far 
too  deeply  involved  in  her  struggles  with  Napoleon  to  have  much 
time  to  spare  for  the  petty  squabbles  of  a  distant  and  hardly-known 
island. 

The  effects  of  the  disastrous  surrender  at  Kandi  were  immediate 
and  widespread.  The  whole  island  hovered  on  the  verge  of  revolt,  or 
broke  out  into  open  hostilities;  and  the  available  British  troops, 
thinned  by  death  and  sickness,  could  do  no  more  than  repel  the  attacks 
of  the  invaders;  while  the  war  between  England  and  France  made  it 
impossible  to  send  reinforcements  from  home.  The  king  of  Kandi, 
inflamed  by  hatred  of  the  English,  defied  the  wiles  of  Pilame  Talawe, 
and  was  backed  by  his  whole  people  in  his  efforts  to  eject  them  from 
Ceylon.  He  sent  emissaries  throughout  the  low  country,  inciting  the 


KANDIAN  WAR  407 

population  to  revolt,  and  led  a  large  army  to  lay  siege  to  Colombo, 
But  the  garrison  was  strong  enough  to  repel  him  when  he  was  eighteen 
miles  from  his  objective,  and  he  retired  to  his  hill-fastnesses,  where  he 
felt  himself  secure.  For  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  country  was 
then  without  roads  of  any  kind;  dense  forests  and  steep  hills  and 
ravines  guarded  the  approach  to  the  capital;  the  damp  enervating 
heat  of  the  low  country  and  the  foot-hills,  and  the  plague  of  leeches 
and  mosquitoes,  constituted  an  additional  defence  against  English 
soldiers,  whose  dress  and  equipment  at  that  period  were  not  exactly 
of  the  kind  best  suited  to  warfare  in  near  proximity  to  the  equator. 

An  abortive  attempt  to  attack  Kandi  from  six  different  points  in 
1804  kd  to  a  verY  gallant  action.  The  necessary  orders  had  been 
issued  to  the  six  different  commanders,  but  it  was  eventually  decided 
that  the  difficulties  were  too  great,  and  fresh  orders  were  sent  can- 
celling the  whole  scheme.  But  the  countermand  failed  to  reach 
Captain  Johnston,  whose  original  orders  were  to  march!  from 
Batticaloa,  join  a  detachment  from  Uva,  and  attack  Kandi  from  the 
east.  He  set  out  accordingly,  with  a  force  of  82  Europeans  and  220 
native  troops,  failed  to  find  any  detachment  from  Uva,  fought  his 
way  to  Kandi  through  the  thick,  unhealthy  jungle  and  unknown 
country,  and  took  and  occupied  the  capital  for  three  days.  As  there 
was  no  sign  of  any  of  the  supporting  contingents,  he  evacuated  the 
town  and  marched  back  to  Trinkomali,  with  only  sixteen  British 
soldiers  killed  and  wounded.  His  march  was  through  a  continuous 
ambuscade;  and,  besides  his  human  foes,  he  had  to  contend  with 
malaria,  heavy  rains,  bad  equipment,  the  plague  of  insects  and  the 
want  of  provisions.  He  has  the  credit  of  having  performed  the 
pluckiest  military  feat  in  the  annals  of  Ceylon. 

A  long  period  of  sullen  inaction  followed,  during  which  the 
Kandian  king  gave  way  to  all  the  worst  excesses  of  an  oriental  tyrant. 
The  traitor  adigar  was  detected  in  an  attempt  to  assassinate  the  king 
and  met  with  a  traitor's  doom  in  1812,  and  was  succeeded  by  his 
nephew,  Eheylapola.  This  minister,  heedless  of  the  warning  of  his 
uncle's  fate,  secretly  solicited  the  help  of  the  English  to  organise  a 
general  revolt  against  the  despot  of  the  hills.  But  his  treason  was 
discovered,  and  he  fled  for  protection  to  Colombo,  leaving  behind 
him  his  wife  and  family.  The  tragedy  which  followed  is  thus  described 
by  Dr  Davy:1 

Hurried  alonjj  by  the  flood  of  his  revenge,  the  tyrant  resolved  to  punish  Eheyla- 
pola through  his  family,  who  still  remained  in  his  power:  he  sentenced  his  wife 
and  children,  and  his  brother  and  wife,  to  death — the  brother  and  children  to  be 
beheaded,  and  the  females  to  be  drowned.  In  front  of  the  Queen's  Palace  the  wife 
and  children  were  brought  from  prison  and  delivered  over  to  their  executioners. 
The  lady,  with  great  resolution,  maintained  her  own  and  her  children's  innocence, 
and  then  desired  her  eldest  child  to  submit  to  his  fate.  The  poor  boy,  who  was  eleven 
years  old,  clung  to  his  mother  terrified  and  crying;  her  second  son,  of  nine  years, 

*  l  An  Account  of  the  Interior  of  Ceylon. 


4o8  CONQUEST  OF  CEYLON,  1795-1815 

stepped  forward  and  bade  his  brother  not  to  be  afraid;  he  would  show  him  the  way 
to  die.  By  the  blow  of  a  sword  the  head  of  the  child  was  severed  from  the  body, 
and  thrown  into  a  rice  mortar:  the  pestle  was  put  into  the  mother's  hands,  and  she 
was  ordered  to  pound  it,  or  be  disgracefully  tortured.  To  avoid  the  infamy,  the 
wretched  woman  did  lift  up  the  pestle  and  let  it  fall.  One  by  one  the  heads  of  the 
children  were  cut  off,  and  one  by  one  the  poor  mother — but  the  circumstance  is 
too  dreadful  to  be  dwelt  on.  One  of  the  children  was  an  infant;  it  was  plucked  from 
its  mother's  breast  to  be  beheaded.  After  the  execution  the  sufferings  of  the  mother 
were  speedily  relieved.  She  and  her  sister-in-law  were  taken  to  the  little  tank  at 
Bogambara  and  drowned. 

This  extract  has  been  given  in  full  because  the  memory  of  the 
horror  is  still  very  vivid  among  the  Sinhalese;  and  "The  Tragedy  of 
Eheylapola's  wife"  is  told  and  retold  by  many  a  professional  story- 
teller. 

But  the  tyrant's  punishment  was  fortunately  near  at  hand,  and  the 
year  1815  equally  witnessed  the  defeat  of  Napoleon  and  the  extinction 
of  the  Kandian  dynasty.  He  ventured  to  seize  and  disgracefully 
mutilate  a  party  of  merchants,  British  subjects,  who  had  gone  up  to 
Kandi  to  trade,  and  sent  them  back  to  Colombo  with  their  severed 
members  tied  round  their  necks. x  This  was  the  last  straw :  an  avenging 
army  was  instantly  on  the  march,  led  by  Governor  Sir  R.  Brownrigg 
in  person,  and  within  two  weeks  was  well  within  reach  of  the  capital. 
The  king  meanwhile  remained  in  a  state  of  almost  passive  inertness, 
rejecting  all  belief  in  our  serious  intentions  to  attack  him.  A  mes- 
senger brought  him  news  of  our  troops  having  crossed  the  frontiers : 
he  directed  his  head  to  be  struck  off.  Another  informed  him  of  the 
defeat  of  his  troops  in  the  Seven  Korles :  he  ordered  him  to  be  impaled 
alive.  At  length  he  precipitately  quitted  Kandi,  and  (14  February) 
the  English  marched  in  and  took  possession.  An  armed  party  sent 
out  by  Eheylapola  discovered  the  house  to  which  the  king  had  fled, 
pulled  down  the  wall  of  the  room  where  he  was  hiding,  and  suddenly 
exposed  the  crouching  tyrant  to  the  glare  of  the  torches  of  the  by- 
standers. He  was  bound  with  ropes,  subjected  to  every  obloquy  and 
insult,  and  handed  over  to  the  English  authorities,  who  eventually 
transported  him  to  Vellore  in  India,  where  he  died  in  January,  i832.2 

Kandian  independence  was  over;  the  whole  island  was  in  the  hands 
of  the  English,  and  the  new  regime  began. 

1  Emerson  Tennent,  Ceylon,  n,  89. 

2  A  narrative  of  events  which  have  recently  occurred  in  Ceylon,  by  a  Gentleman  on  the  Spot, 
London,  1815. 


CHAPTER   XXV 

THE    REVENUE    ADMINISTRATION   OF  BENGAL, 

1765-86 

1 N  May,  1 765,  Clive  returned  to  India,  and  his  forceful  personality 
was  soon  at  work.  On  16  August,  1765,  the  emperor  Shah  'Alam, 
from  motives  very  foreign  to  those  of  Aibar,  divested  the  nawab  of 
his  powers  as  diwan,  and  conferred  that  office  on  the  British  East  India 
Company  to  hold  as  a  free  gift  and  royal  grant  in  perpetuity  (altamgha) . 
The  Company  in  turn  appointed  as  its  deputy  or  naib  diwan  the 
same  officer  who  had  been  selected  to  act  as  naib  nazim,  viz. 
Muhammad  Reza  Khan,  who  now  united  in  his  person  the  full 
.  powers  of  the  nizamat  and  diwanni  which  had  been  separated  by 
Akbar  and  reunited  by  Murshid  Kuli  Khan.  But  the  arrangement 
spelt  failure  from  the  beginning.  The  emperor  was  a  ruler  in  name 
only:  his  diwan  in  Bengal  was  a  mysterious  being  locally  known  as 
the  Kampani  Sahib  Bahadur,  represented  by  a  victorious  and  masterful 
foreign  soldier,  assisted  by  men  who  were  avowedly  traders,  whose 
interests  were  principally  engaged  in  maintaining  the  Company's 
dividends,  and  who  lacked  completely  the  professional  training 
essential  to  efficient  administration.  Confusion  reigned  both  in  the 
provinces  of  justice  and  revenue. 

The  revenue  of  Bengal  as  assessed  in  the  reign  of  Akbar1  varied 
little  either  in  the  amount  or  the  mode  of  levying  it  until  the  eighteenth 
century,  when  increasing  anarchy  introduced  fresh  assessments  and 
further  exactions  under  the  name  ofabwabs  or  cesses.  The  three  main 
sources  of  revenue  at  the  time  when  the  Company  assumed  the 
diwanni  were  (a)  mal>  i.e.  the  land  revenue,  including  royalties  on 
salt;  (b)  sair,  i.e.  the  revenue  received  from  the  customs,  tolls,  ferries, 
etc.;  (c)  bazijama,  i.e.  miscellaneous  headings,  such  as  receipts  from 
fines,  properties,  excise,  etc.  The  land  revenue  was  collected  by 
hereditary  agents  who  held  land  in  the  various  districts,  paid  the 
revenue,  and  stood  between  the  government  and  the  actual  cultivators 
of  the  soil;  these  agents  were  in  general  known  as  zamindars,  and  the 
cultivators  of  the  soil  as  ryots. 

The  position  of  the  zamindar  gave  considerable  difficulty  to  the 
Company's  senior  officers.  At  first  he  was  looked  upon  merely  as  a 
revenue  agent,  with  an  hereditary  interest  and  privileges  in  certain 
districts;  but  later  he  was  considered  as  owning  land  in  fee  simple. 
The  controversy  is  too  lengthy  to  be  followed  in  this  chapter;  but  it 
may  be  asserted  that  the  zamindar,  though  not  the  owner  of  the  land 

1  Report  of  Anderson,  Groftes  and  Bogle,  dated  28  March,  1778. 


410    REVENUE  ADMINISTRATION  OF  BENGAL,  1765-86 

in  fee  simple,  was  by  no  means  a  mere  revenue  agent ;  it  was  practically 
impossible  by  constitutional  methods  to  break  his  hereditary  con- 
nection with  the  land  of  which  he  was  the  zamindar;  and  as  long  as 
he  performed  his  duties  he  was  far  more  impregnable  in  his  position 
than  the  average  English  official.  On  the  other  hand,  the  position 
of  the  ryots  was  less  enviable  than  that  of  an  English  cultivator  of  the 
soil  at  the  same  period.  In  each  village  there  was  a  mandal>  or  chief 
ryot,  who  acted  as  their  agent  in  dealing  with  the  various  petty 
officers  employed  by  the  zamindar  in  the  collection  of  the  land 
revenue.  The  result  of  the  investigation  ordered  in  1776  was  to  give 
a  sad  picture  of  the  lot  of  the  ryot  and  of  the  zamindar's  indifference 
to  his  welfare,  especially  during  the  chaotic  fifty  years  that  followed 
on  the  death  of  Murshid  Kuli  Khan,  during  which  the  zamindar's 
receipts,  owing  to  anarchy  and  consequent  lack  of  cultivation, 
diminished. 

"Although",  in  the  words  of  the  1776  report,  "the  increase  of  the  assessment  t 
[in  1 772]  may  have  been  the  principal,  or  at  least  the  original,  cause  of  the  various 
additional  taxes  imposed  on  the  ryots  it  did  not  follow  that  a  reduction  in  the  assess- 
ment would  produce  a  diminution  in  the  rents.  The  prospect  of  contingent  and 
future  benefits  from  the  cultivation  and  improvement  01  his  country  is  hardly 
sometimes  sufficiently  powerful  to  induce  a  zamindar  to  forego  the  immediate 
advantage  which  he  enjoys  by  rack-renting  his  zamindari  and  exacting  the  greatest 
possible  revenue  from  the  tenants  and  vassals.  Were  it  necessary  to  support  the 
truth  of  this  position  we  could  produce  many  proofs  from  the  accounts  which  we 
have  collected.  The  instances,  especially  in  large  zamindaris,  are  not  infrequent 
where  a  reduction  in  the  demands  of  Government  have  been  immediately  followed 
by  new  taxes  and  new  impositions." 

The  proceedings  contain  frequent  references  from  the  districts  in 
Bengal  complaining  of  the  exactions  and  harshness  of  the  zamindars. 

After  so  many  years  ought  not  Government  [i.e.  the  nawab's  government]  to 
have  obtained  the  most  perfect  and  intimate  nature  of  the  value  of  the  rents  and 
will  it  be  believed  at  this  day,  it  is  still  in  the  dark? 

So  wrote  Edward  Baber,  Resident  at  Midnapur,  in  a  letter  dated 
13  December,  1772,  to  the  Committee  of  Revenue  in  Calcutta.1  We 
must  now  consider  the  efforts  by  the  leading  executive  officers  of  the 
Company  to  pierce  this  fog  of  ignorance. 

It  has  been  alleged2  that  having  accepted  the  diwanni  the  English 
deliberately  adopted  a  policy  offestina  lente  chiefly  because  they  wished 
to  avoid  the  expense  and  unpopularity  of  a  general  survey  of  the 
lands;  but  such  a  survey,  unless  conducted  entirely  under  expert 
European  supervision,  was  worthless,  and  such  supervision  was  un- 
procurable. Moreover  the  existing  revenue  nomenclature  had  then 
been  in  use  for  nearly  two  centuries,  the  population  was  almost 
entirely  illiterate,  and  the  bulk  of  such  revenue  records  as  existed 
were  in  the  hands  of  native  registrars;  these  factors,  combined  with 

1  Revenue  Board  Proceedings,  15  December,  1772,  pp.  417-26. 
8  Firminger,  Fifth  Report,  etc.  i,  167. 


THE  SUPERVISORS  411 

their  own  curtailed  powers  and  the  caprices  of  the  directors,  might 
well  induce  the  Company's  local  authorities  to  move  slowly.  The 
directors  commenced  by  attaching  an  enormous  salary,1  nine  lakhs 
of  rupees  per  annum,  to  the  office  of  the  naib  diwan,  hoping  thereby 
to  obtain  uncorrupt  and  efficient  service. 

Meanwhile,  under  the  governorship  of  Verelst,  the  president  and 
Select  Committee  made  as  full  an  enquiry  as  they  could,  arriving  at 
the  well-known  conclusions  contained  in  their  Proceedings2  for 
1 6  August,  1769,  in  which  "certain  grand  original  sources"  of  the 
unsatisfactory  state  of  the  revenue  collection  in  Bengal  were  enu- 
merated. At  home,  the  court  of  directors  in  June,  1 769,  had  sent 
orders  to  Bengal,  appointing  a  committee  "for  the  management  of 
the  diwanni  revenue";  and  three  "supervisors"  with  plenary  powers 
sailed  from  England  in  September,  1 769,  but  after  leaving  the  Cape 
of  Good  Hope  were  never  heard  of  again. 

Verelst  and  his  committee  made  a  correct  diagnosis  of  the  trouble. 
They  realised  that  the  Company's  European  servants  were  kept  in 
complete  ignorance  "of  the  real  produce  and  capacity  of  the  country 
by  a  set  of  men  who  first  deceive  us  from  interest  and  afterwards 
continue  the  deception  from  a  necessary  regard  to  their  own  safety". 
The  chaos  and  misrule  caused  by  the  venal  officials  and  adventurers 
who  had  frequented  Bengal  since  the  death  of  Aurangzib,  combined 
with  the  secretive  methods  which  a  continuous  oppression  of  the  ryot 
by  the  zamindar  had  produced,  formed  an  impenetrable  labyrinth 
of  which  the  key  was  sought  in  vain. 

Verelst's  committee  established  supervisors  of  the  collections;  these 
supervisors  received  instructions  to  make  a  full  and  complete  enquiry 
into  the  method  of  collecting  the  revenue  in  their  respective  districts 
and,  in  fact,  into  any  customs,  knowledge  of  which  might  assist  to 
improve  the  condition  of  the  people;  the  instructions  breathe  a  warm 
and  humane  spirit  and  a  real  desire,  not  merely  to  collect  revenue, 
but  to  assist  the  oppressed  cultivator  of  the  soil.  The  supervisors  failed, 
as  indeed  they  were  bound  to  do.  Their  instructions  ordered  them  to 
prepare  a  rent  roll,  and,  by  enquiry,  to  ascertain  the  facts  from  which 
a  just  and  profitable  assessment  of  the  revenue  could  be  made.  Such 
instructions  were  impossible  to  carry  out.  The  supervisors  soon  found 
themselves  confronted  by  a  most  formidable  passive  opposition  from 
the  zamindars  and  kanungos  which  prevented  any  real  knowledge 
whatever  of  the  amount  of  revenue  actually  paid  by  the  ryot  to  the 
zamindar  from  coming  to  the  knowledge  of  the  Company.  By  this 
conspiracy  of  two  corrupt  and  hereditary  revenue  agencies  all  avenues 
of  information  were  closed.  Between  them,  the  zamindars  and  the 
kanungos  held  all  the  essential  information,  but  the  kanungo  was 
the  dominant  figure. 

1  Cf.  letter  from  Hastings  to  the  Secret  Committee,  i  September,  1772. 
8  Cf.  Verelst,  A  View,  etc.  pp.  224-39. 


412    REVENUE  ADMINISTRATION  OF  BENGAL,  1765-86 

A  full  account  of  this  officer  and  his  duty  was  submitted  in  May, 
1787,  to  the  Board  of  Revenue  by  J.  Patterson,1  register,  Kanungo's 
Office. 

The  kanungo  comes  into  prominence  in  the  reign  of  Akbar,  who 
employed  him,  as  the  name  implies,  to  keep  the  records  of  the  pargana, 
a  revenue  sub-division.  He  was  in  fact  a  registrar  of  a  district  ap- 
pointed to  see  that  the  crown  received  its  dues  and  that  the  ryot  was 
not  oppressed;  his  duties  were  responsible  and  onerous;  he  had  to 

register  the  usages  of  a  district,  the  rates  and  mode  of  its  assessment,  and  all 
regulations  relating  thereto.  To  note  and  record  the  progress  of  cultivation,  the 
produce  of  the  land  and  the  price  current  thereof,  and  to  be  at  all  times  able  to 
furnish  Government  with  materials  to  regulate  the  assessment  by  just  and  equitable 
proportions. 

The  kanungos'  duties  also  included 

the  keeping  of  a  record  of  all  events,  such  as  the  appointments,  deaths  or  removals 
of  zammdars,  to  preserve  the  records  of  the  Tumar  and  Taksim  Jama,  and  the 
record  of  the  boundaries  and  limits  of  zamindaris,  talukdaris,  parganas,  villages, 
etc. 

They  also  preserved  in  their  registers  the  genealogies  of  zamindars, 
records  of  all  grants  of  land,  copies  of  the  contracts  of  the  zamindars 
and  tax-farmers  with  the  government,  and,  in  short,  acted  as  general 
custodians  for  every  description  of  record  in  the  district.  There  were 
two  main,  or  sadary  kanungos  for  Bengal,  but  in  each  pargana  the?e 
was  a  deputy  or  naib  kanungo;  the  office  became  hereditary  at  an 
early  date.  Murshid  Kuli  Khan  is  stated  to  have  replaced  the 
kanungos  of  his  day  by  an  entirely  new  set,  but  the  evil  was  not 
checked,  because  the  new  kanungos  passed  on  their  office  and  their 
knowledge  to  their  descendants  in  the  same  way  as  the  evicted  ones 
had  done. 

Thus  the  whole  of  the  land  registration,  arid  the  entire  knowledge 
of  the  actual  receipts  of  the  land  revenue,  were  in  the  hands  of  a 
hereditary  close  corporation,  who  were  the  only  authorities  on  the 
real  state  of  the  revenue;  their  power  was  enormous;  and  only  com- 
plete ignorance  can  explain  Verelst  and  his  committee's  imagining 
that  such  knowledge  would  be  surrendered  to  the  Company  on 
demand.  Edward  Baber,  in  his  letter  of  13  December,  1772,  called 
the  attention  of  the  Board  of  Revenue  to  these  facts,  and  to  the  great 
power  which  the  kanungos  had  over  the  zamindars, 

because  it  was  in  the  power  of  the  Kanungos  to  expose  the  value  of  their  parganas. 
. . .  This  power  the  Kanungos  availed  themselves  of,  and  it  was  the  rod  which  they 
held  over  them  so  that  the  apprehension  of  an  increase  of  his  rents  kept  the  zamindar 
in  very  effectual  awe  of  the  Kanungo. .  ..In  a  word  the  Kanungos  have  an  abso- 
lute influence  over  the  Zamindars  which  they  exercise  in  every  measure  that  can 

promote  their  own  interests It  now  happens  that  the  Kanungos  manage,  not 

only  the  zamindars,  but  the  business  of  the  province.  There  is  not  a  record  but 

1  Original  consultations,  no.  63,  Revenue  Dept.  18  May,  1 787.  Printed  «/>.  Ramsbotham, 
Land  Revenue  History  of  Bengal,  pp.  163-97. 


THE  KANUNGOS  413 

what  is  in  their  possession  and  so  much  of  the  executive  part  have  they  at  last 
obtained  that  they  are  now  virtually  the  Collector,  while  he  is  a  mere  passive 
representative  of  Government.  They  are  the  channel  through  which  all  his  orders 

are  conveyed Instead  of  being  the  agents  of  Government  they  are  become  the 

associates  of  the  zamindars  and  conspire  with  them  to  conceal  what  it  is  their  chief 
duty  to  divulge. 

Baber  drives  home  the  argument  by  challenging  the  board  to  state 
how  the  last  settlement  (he  is  referring  to  the  settlement  made  by  the 
Committee  of  Circuit  in  1772)  was  made;  taking  the  example  of 
Midnapur,  his  own  district,  he  asks  "on  what  information,  on  what 
materials  was  it  made?  was  there  a  single  instrument  produced  to 
guide  the  judgment  of  the  board?"1  It  will  be  obvious  that  the 
supervisors  appointed  in  1769  were  bound  to  fail.  They  were  com- 
pletely and  wilfully  kept  in  the  dark  by  officials  who  had  everything 
to  lose  and  nothing  to  gain  by  giving  the  required  information.  The 
kanungos  were  only  prepared  to  serve  the  state  on  their  own  terms; 
and  those  terms  included  a  retention  of  the  very  information  which 
their  office  was  created  to  obtain  for  the  state.  Their  action  was 
utterly  unconstitutional  and  involved  the  admission  that  a  few  families 
should  hereditarily  possess  information  which  is  the  sole  prerogative 
of  the  state,  and  that  they  should  use  that  information  for  their 
personal  and  pecuniary  profit. 

The  Company's  government  in  India  created  in  1770  two  Boards 
of  Revenue,  one  in  Murshidabad  and  one  in  Patna,  to  control 
respectively  the  Bengal  and  Bihar  collections;  but  dissensions  taking 
place  in  the  council,  John  Carrier  was  ordered  to  hand  over  his  office 
to  Warren  Hastings  and  several  other  alterations  were  made.  Hastings 
assumed  office  as  governor  and  president  of  Fort  William  on  13  April, 
1772. 

The  outstanding  result  of  the  first  seven  years  of  the  Company's 
administration  of  the  diwanni  is  that  the  Company's  officers  in  Bengal 
realised  that  they  were  face  to  face  with  the  great  problem  of  ascer- 
taining the  difference  between  the  sum  received  as  land  revenue  by 
government,  and  the  sum  actually  paid  by  the  ryot  to  the  zamindar. 
This  was  the  secret  of  the  zamindar  and  kanungo  which  the  Company 
never  fathomed;  it  forms  the  burden  of  the  collectors'  reports  to  the 
Board  of  Revenue  from  1772  onwards;  and  it  is  the  basis  of  the  great 
Shore-Grant  controversy.  When  the  revenue  settlement  was  made 
permanent  in  1793  this  information  was  still  wanting,  and  not  a 
single  revenue  officer  of  the  Company  in  1793  could  state  with 
accuracy  the  entire  actual  amount  which  the  zamindars  in  his  district 
received  from  the  ryots,  or  the  proportion  which  it  bore  to  that  which 
the  zamindar  paid  to  the  government;  yet  these  were  the  conditions 
in  which  the  revenue  settlement  was  declared  permanent. 

Hastings  brought  to  his  work  a  sound  experience  of  Bengal,  a  fluent 

1  Revenue  Board  Proceedings,  15  December,  1772,  pp.  417-26. 


414    REVENUE  ADMINISTRATION  OF  BENGAL,  1765-86 

and  accurate  knowledge  both  of  Persian  and  of  Bengali:  moreover, 
he  had  the  reputation  of  being  a  loyal  and  most  efficient  servant  of 
the  Company.  It  is  still  difficult  to  give  an  impartial  verdict  on  his 
official  career.  In  revenue  work  his  ability  was  not  remarkable,  and 
on  his  own  admission1  he  had  no  practical  working  knowledge  of  it; 
in  fact,  his  influence  on  the  actual  conditions  of  the  revenue  was 
unfortunate,  especially  when  contrasted  with  his  administration  and 
reorganisation  of  the  judicature  in  the  districts,  which  was  a  vigorous 
beneficial  achievement.  His  masterful  temperament  often  prevented 
him  from  using  the  advice  of  subordinates  better  qualified  than  himself 
to  speak  authoritatively  on  details  of  revenue  administration.  This 
inflexibility  must  share  responsibility  with  the  jealousy  of  Francis  and 
the  ill-temper  of  Clavering  for  the  deadlock  which  occurred  in  the 
administration  of  Bengal  between  1774  and  1776. 

The  directors'  orders  which  confronted  the  new  governor  were  of 
a  disturbing  nature.  On  14  April,  1772,  these  dispatches  containing 
the  well-known  proclamation  arrived  in  Calcutta.  On  1 1  May  the 
information  was  made  public : 

Notice  is  hereby  given  that  the  Hon'ble  the  Court  of  Directors  have  been  pleased 
to  divest  the  Nawab  Muhammad  Reza  Khan  of  his  station  of  Naib  Diwan  and  have 
determined  to  stand  forth  publicly  themselves  in  the  character  of  Diwan. 

This  announcement  radically  altered  the  existing  system  of  the 
collections. 

The  new  governor  and  his  council,  as  a  prelude  to  carrying  out  their 
orders,  appointed  a  committee  to  tour  through  various  districts  of 
Bengal  and  to  submit  a  report  on  their  observations.  Thus  was  formed 
the  Committee  of  Circuit,  consisting  of  the  Company's  most  senior 
officers,  including  the  governor  himself,  S.  Middleton,  P.  M.  Dacres, 
J.  Lawrell,  and  J.  Graham.  Their  terms  of  reference  were  based  on 
the  resolutions  taken  by  the  council  on  14  May,  1772,  viz. 

(a)  to  farm  the  lands  for  a  period  of  five  years; 

(b)  to  establish  a  Committee  of  Circuit  to  form  the  settlement; 

(c)  to  re-introduce  the  supervisors  under  the  name  of  collectors, 
assisted  by  an  Indian  diwan  in  each  district; 

(d)  to  restrict  the  officials  of  the  Company  from  any  private  em- 
ployment. 

The  Committee  of  Circuit  realised  the  difficulty  of  their  work. 

The  Hon'ble  Court  of  Directors . . .  declare  their  determination  to  stand  forth 
as  Diwan,  and,  by  the  agency  of  the  Company's  servants,  to  take  upon  themselves 
the  entire  care  and  management  of  the  Revenue.  By  what  means  this  agency  is 
to  be  exercised  we  are  not  instructed . . .  .They  have  been  pleased  to  direct  a  total 
change  of  system,  and  have  left  the  plan  of  execution  of  it  to  the  direction  of  the 
Board  without  any  formal  repeal  of  the  regulations  they  had  before  framed  and 

1  Cf.  the  evidence  given  by  Hastings  for  the  plaintiff  in  the  case  brought  by  Kamal- 
ud-din  Khan  against  the  Calcutta  Committee  of  Revenue,  Governor-General's  Proceedings, 
2  September,  1776,  pp.  3367-89. 


COMMITTEE  OF  CIRCUIT  415 

adopted  to  another  system,  the  abolition  of  which  must  necessarily  include  that  of 
its  subsidiary  institutions  unless  they  shall  be  found  to  coincide  with  the  new.  The 
Revenue  is  beyond  all  question  the  first  object  of  Government.1 


The  Committee  of  Circuit  decided  to  place  the  revenue  adminis- 
tration entirely  under  the  direct  control  of  the  president  and  council, 
who  were  to  form  a  committee  of  revenue;  they  also  recommended 
that  the  Khalsa,  or  treasury  office,  should  be  removed  from  Murshi- 
dabad  to  Calcutta,  making  the  latter  town  the  financial  capital  of 
the  province. 

As  the  duties  of  the  diwanni  comprised  the  administration  of  civil 
justice,  and  as  the  business  of  the  Committee  of  Circuit  was  to 
consolidate  the  Company's  control  over  the  diwanni,  the  important 
question  of  restoring  the  administration  of  justice  in  the  districts  came 
before  them.  The  close  connection  between  the  land  revenue  and 
civil  justice  necessitates  a  brief  mention  of  the  committee's  proposals 
recorded  in  their  Proceedings.2  They  recommended  in  each  district 
under  a  collector  the  formation  of  two  courts,  the  diwanni  adalat  and 
the  faujdari  adalat,  the  former  with  civil,  the  latter  with  criminal 
jurisdiction;  the  matters  cognisable  by  each  court  were  strictly 
defined,  and  the  diwanni  adalat  was  under  the  direct  charge  of  the 
collector.  In  addition  to  these  mufassil  or  district  courts,  two  similar 
sadar,  or  headquarters5  courts,  were  to  be  established  in  Calcutta,  the 
sadar  diwanni  adalat  being  presided  over  by  the  governor  or  a 
member  of  council.  These  courts  were  designed  to  remove  the  abuses 
in  the  administration  of  justice  referred  to  by  Verelst  in  his  Instructions 
to  the  Supervisors.  "Every  decision",  he  writes  of  these  native  courts, 

"is  a  corrupt  bargain  with  the  highest  bidder Trifling  offenders 

are  frequently  loaded  with  heavy  demands  and  capital  offences  are 
as  often  absolved  by  the  venal  judge."3 

The  most  objectionable  feature  of  the  proposed  regulations,  as  is 
pointed  out  by  Harington,4  was  that  they  vested  in  one  person  the 
powers  of  a  tax-collector  and  of  a  magistrate.  Hastings6  himself  made 
this  complaint  against  Verelst's  plan  introducing  the  supervisors ;  but 
he  was  apparently  forced  to  embody  the  same  defect  in  his  own 
regulation.  Perhaps  the  best  and  most  straightforward  defence  of  this 
admitted  defect  was  that  made  by  Shore.6 

...  It  is  impossible  to  draw  a  line  between  the  Revenue  and  Judicial  Departments 
in  such  a  manner  as  to  prevent  their  clashing :  in  this  case  either  the  Revenue  must 
suffer  or  the  administration  of  Justice  be  suspended. .  ..It  may  be  possible  in 
course  of  time  to  induce  the  natives  to  pay  their  rents  with  regularity  and  without 
compulsion,  but  this  is  not  the  case  at  present. 

1  Committee  of  Circuit's  Proceedings,  28  July,  1772,  pp.  162-8. 

"  Idem,  15  August,  1772,  pp.  234-48.  Cf.  also  Colebrooke,  Supplement,  etc.  pp.  1-8. 

Verelst,  op.  at.  pp.  229-30. 

Harington,  Analysis,  i,  34. 

In  a  minute  printed  in  India  papers,  vol.  vi,  quoted  by  Harington,  Analysis,  11,  41-3. 

Letter  to  Sir  G.  Colebrooke,  26  March,  1772. 


416    REVENUE  ADMINISTRATION  OF  BENGAL,  1765-86 

The  Committee  of  Circuit's  recommendations1  were  sent  with  a 
covering  letter  to  the  council  at  Fort  William  on  15  August,  1772, 
and  received  the  council's  approval  on  21  August.  They  proposed 
that  a  large  proportion  of  that  land,  known  as  ku&ir  zilla  land, 
because  it  paid  its  revenue  direct  to  the  Khalsa,  should  be  converted 
into  separate  districts  each  under  a  collector.  The  whole  council  was  to 
act  as  a  committee  of  revenue,  and  to  audit  the  accounts  of  the 
diwanni  assisted  by  an  Indian  officer  styled  the  rai  raian.  The  latter 
was  a  most  important  person ;  his  duties  included  the  supervision  of 
all  the  provincial  diwans  attached  to  the  various  collector-ships, 

to  receive  from  them  the  accounts  in  the  Bengali  language  and  to  issue  to  them  a 
counterpart  of  the  orders  which  the  Board  of  Revenue  shall  from  time  to  time 
expedite  to  the  Collectors. 

The  salary  attached  to  this  important  post  was  5000  rupees  a  month. 
The  first  holder  was  Raja  Rajballabh,  a  son  of  Raja  Rai  Durlabh, 
the  old  colleague  of  Muhammad  Reza  Khan.  The  business  of  the 
Khalsa  was  precisely  defined;  the  post  of  accountant-general  was 
created,  the  first  holder  being  Charles  Croftes;  and  the  various 
departments  of  that  office,  and  of  the  treasury  in  general,  defined 
and  organised.  This  completed  the  main  work  of  the  Committee  of 
Circuit,  and  unquestionably  the  most  successful  portion  was  that 
which  dealt  with  the  administration  of  justice.  They  inherited  from 
the  Moghul  government  every  evil  that  could  afflict  a  judicial  system: 
a  disorganised  and  corrupt  judicature  and  incompetent  „  agents. 
Dacoity  was  rampant,  and  there  was  no  ordinary  security  in  the  land. 
The  new  courts,  although  by  no  means  perfect,  brought  great  relief 
to  the  ryots  and  talukdars,  and  within  a  short  time  began  to  foster 
confidence  in  the  Company's  administration. 

On  13  October,  1772,  the  new  Committee  of  Revenue  commenced 
its  work  by  settling  the  revenue  to  be  collected  from  Hugli,  Midnapur, 
Birbhum,  Jessore  and  the  Calcutta  zamindary  lands.  The  settlement 
was  for  five  years,  and  the  lands  were  farmed  out  by  public  auction, 
in  order  better  to  discover  the  real  value  of  the  lands.  This,  in  itself, 
is  a  comment  on  the  board's  revenue  policy,  for  they  must  have  known 
that  to  farm  the  land  revenue  by  public  auction  would  induce  many 
people  to  bid  from  motives  other  than  mere  desire  for  profit;  the 
gambling  instinct,  the  desire  for  power,  the  opportunity  of  inflicting 
injury  on  an  enemy  or  of  humiliating  a  local  zamindar,  all  powerfully 
contributed  to  raise  the  bidding  beyond  the  value  of  the  revenue. 
The  board  certainly  expressed  an  opinion2  that,  ceteris  paribus,  it  was 
preferable  to  accept  the  bids  of  established  zamindars,  but  they  had 
definitely  placed  both  the  zamindar  and  the  ryot  at  the  mercy  of 

1  Committee  of  Circuit's  Proceedings,  pp.  248-58.  Cf.  Colebrooke,  Subblment 
pp.  8-14  and  194-200;  also  Harington,  Analysis,  n,  25-33. 

8  Letter  of  the  President  to  the  Court  of  Directors,  3  November,  1772.  Cf.  Harimrton 
op.  cit.  n,  16-18.  ' 


THE  COLLECTORS  417 

speculating  and  unprincipled  adventurers  who,  in  many  cases,  ousted 
the  old  zamindars  and  thus  severed  an  old-established  link  between 
government  and  the  cultivator  of  the  soil,  for  the  zamindar,  in  spite 
of  his  shortcomings,  had  (in  the  words  of  Hastings  himself)  "riveted 
an  authority  in  the  district,  acquired  an  ascendancy  over  the  minds 
of  the  ryots  and  ingratiated  their  affections".  Between  1772  and  1781 
the  connection  between  the  zamindars  and  their  tenants  was  seriously 
impaired  by  this  unfortunate  method.1 

In  justice  to  Hastings  and  his  colleagues  it  must  be  remembered 
that  they  were  suddenly  called  upon  to  administer  the  revenues  of 
a  country  which  for  half  a  century  had  been  in  a  state  of  increasing 
disorder,  and  to  create  an  administrative  service  from  young  men 
who  had  come  to  the  country  at  an  immature  age  for  a  purely  com- 
mercial career.  Among  their  critics  is  Hastings  himself,  whose  letters2 
in  the  early  days  of  his  governorship  contain  disparaging  references 
to  the  collectors;  yet  many  of  those  so  criticised  were  almost  imme- 
diately employed  by  him  and  rose  to  positions  of  comparative 
eminence;  the  majority  came  from  good  British  homes.  The  record 
of  their  work,  contained  in  the  forgotten  and  unpublished  minutes  of 
perished  boards,  shows  them  to  have  been  humane,  if  untrained,  men 
genuinely  anxious  to  relieve  the  distress  in  their  districts. 

A  careful  perusal  of  the  proceedings  of  the  Board  of  Revenue  for 
the  years  1772  and  1773  reveals  that  the  most  valuable  suggestions 
for  alleviating  distress  among  the  cultivators  are  to  be  found  in  letters 
from  the  district  officers  rather  than  in  the  resolutions  of  the  board : 
in  spite  of  the  most  determined  passive  resistance  which  zamindars, 
kanungos,  and  farmers  of  the  revenue  made  to  their  enquiries,  it  was 
the  collectors  who  enabled  the  voice  of  the  oppressed  ryot  to  reach 
the  headquarters  of  government. 

The  collectors  soon  realised  that  the  settlement  had  been  seriously 
over-estimated,  but  the  board  refused  to  believe  their  district  officers 
and  added  to  the  trouble  by  peremptory  orders  for  the  collection  of 
deficits.  This  was  done  with  undoubted  harshness,  for  the  collectors 
had  no  option3  but  to  carry  out  their  orders.  Confinement  of  zamin- 
dars and  farmers  was  freely  used,  but  without  any  result  except  that 
of  adding  to  the  confusion;  and  the  words  with  which  Hastings,  in 
his  letter  to  the  directors,  dated  3  November,  1772,  described  the 
conditions  of  the  revenue  collections  in  Bengal  on  his  assumption  of 
the  governorship,  might  be  used  with  truth  to  describe  the  conditions 
in  collecting  the  same  revenue  in  1773. 

The  entire  system  of  revenue  registration  was  still  in  the  hands  of 
an  hereditary  corporation  and  was  still  unknown  to  government,  which 

1  In  the  matter  of  the  public  auction  of  the  farms  consult  also  the  letter  dated  17  May, 
1766,  para.  17  from  the  Court  of  Directors  (Long,  Selections ,  no.  893). 

1  E.g.  to  L.  Sulivan,  10  March,  1774. 

*  Letter  from  the  Council  of  Revenue  at  Patna,  dated  17  October,  1774.  Revenue 
Board  Proceedings,  i  November,  1774,  pp.  6395-8. 

era  v  27 


4i  8    REVENUE  ADMINISTRATION  OF  BENGAL,  1765-86 

had  no  accurate  working  knowledge  on  which  to  base  a  general 
settlement,  and  which  was,  as  several  district  officers  testified,  com- 
pletely ignorant  of  the  actual  amount  paid  by  the  cultivator  com- 
pared with  that  received  by  itself.1  Over-assessment  and  wholesale 
farming  had  aggravated  the  mischief.  Though  government  had 
established  a  business-like  system  for  keeping  the  accounts  of  such 
revenue  as  was  actually  received,  this  was  but  a  trifle  compared  with 
the  weighty  problem  that  was  still  unsolved. 

The  diwanni  adalats  relieve  the  sombre  colours  of  the  picture,  and 
in  them  the  cultivator  found  a  real  protection  and  assistance  at  the 
hands  of  those  collectors  whose  work  received  such  scanty  acknow- 
ledgment :  but  the  day  of  the  collectors  was  to  be  short.  In  April,  1 773, 
the  court  of  directors  sent  orders  to  the  governor  and  council  to  recall 
the  collectors  from  their  districts  and  to  adopt  other  measures  for 
collecting  the  revenues.  These  orders  were  similar  to  those  issued  in 
1769  abolishing  the  supervisors;  the  directors  apparently  distrusted 
their  junior  officers,  and  were  nervous  lest  private  trade  should  engross 
their  time.  These  orders  were  considered  by  the  president  and  council 
on  23  November,  I773.2 

The  board  drew  up  a  detailed  temporary  plan  in  order  to  give 
effect  to  these  instructions,  to  be  "adopted  and  completed  by  such 
means  as  experience  shall  furnish  and  the  final  orders  of  the  Hon'ble 
Company  allow",  (i)  A  committee  of  revenue  at  the  presidency  was 
formed  consisting  of  two  members  of  the  board  and  three  senior 
servants  below  council  who  were  to  meet  daily  and  transact  the 
necessary  business  assisted  by  the  rai  raian;  (2)  the  three  provinces 
were  divided  into  six  divisions,  each  under  a  provincial  council 
consisting  of  a  chief,  assisted  by  four  senior  servants  of  the  Company: 
in  Calcutta  the  committee  of  revenue  above  mentioned  was  to 
carry  out  the  dudes  of  such  a  council;  (3)  each  district,  originally  a 
collectorship,  was  placed  under  the  control  of  an  Indian  revenue 
officer  (diwan),  except  in  districts  entirely  let  to  a  zamindar  or  farmer, 
who  was  then  empowered  to  act  as  diwan;  (4)  occasional  inspections 
were  to  be  made  by  commissioners  specially  selected  by  the  board 
for  their  knowledge  of  Persian  and  " moderation  of  temper".  The 
selection  of  these  commissioners  was  to  be  unanimous ; 

an  objection  made  by  a  single  member  of  the  Board  to  any  proposed  as  wanting 
these  requisites  shall  be  a  sufficient  bar  to  his  rejection  without  any  proof  being 
required  to  support  it; 

(5)  the  various  collectors  were  to  make  up  their  accounts  and  hand 
over  charge  to  Indian  deputies  who  were  empowered  to  hold  the 
courts  of  diwanni  adalat,  but  appeals  in  all  cases  were  allowed  to  the 
provincial  sadar  adalat  now  constituted  to  form  a  link  between  the 

1  Letter  from  C.  Bentley,  collector  of  Chittagong,  dated  10  July,  1773.  Revenue  Board 
Proceedings,  17  August,  1773,  pp.  2620-39. 
8  Idem,  23  November,  1773,  pp.  3453-77. 


PROVINCIAL  COUNCILS  419 

mufassal  and  headquarters  diwanni  courts;  (6)  with  a  view  to  checking 
private  trade  the  chiefs  of  the  provincial  councils  were  given  a  salary 
of  3000  sicca  rupees  per  mensem,  and  had  to  take  an  oath1  not  to 
engage  in  private  trade. 

The  changes,  necessitated  by  the  directors'  orders,  were  for  the 
worse.  The  collectorship  as  a  district  unit  of  the  revenue  adminis- 
tration was  retained,  but  the  employment  of  Indian  diwans  instead 
of  European  collectors  deprived  the  Company  of  an  increasing 
knowledge  among  its  European  servants  of  the  country,  the  state  of 
the  revenue,  and  the  methods  of  collection ;  it  checked  the  growth  of 
a  spirit  of  responsibility  and  of  public  service  among  the  junior 
officers;  and  it  diluted  the  European  element  in  the  district  collections 
to  such  an  extent  as  to  render  it  negligible.  The  whole  scheme,  for 
which  the  directors  must  bear  the  responsibility,  is  tainted  with  the 
inference  that,  provided  the  stipulated  revenue  was  received,  the 
method  of  collecting  it  did  not  much  matter. 

The  proceedings  of  the  Board  of  Revenue  from  1773  to  1776  record 
a  monotonous  list  of  large  deficits,  defaulting  zamindars,  absconding 
farmers,  and  deserting  ryots.  The  provincial  councils,  like  the 
collectors  before  them,  protested  that  the  country  was  over-assessed ; 
the  diwans  proved  incapable  and  unbusinesslike,  and  were  the  subject 
of  a  circular  letter2  of  complaint  issued  by  the  board  to  the  provincial 
councils. 

The  new  system  was  only  in  force  for  six  months  before  the  Regu- 
lating Act  made  further  changes,  but  its  proceedings  display  all  the 
signs  of  impending  collapse.  The  council  of  Patna  sent  in  a  moving 
description3  of  the  distress  in  their  province.  Anticipating  Philip 
Francis,  they  definitely  recommended  a  settlement  in  perpetuity, 
because  no  satisfactory  collections  could  be  made  except  on  that  basis 
of  stability  which  only  a  lengthy  tenure  furnishes. 

"It  remains",  they  write,  "that  we  should  submit  to  you  our  sentiments  on 
the  measures  calculated  to  produce  a  remedy.  It  has  been  successfully  practised 
by  the  Hindostan  Princes  that  where  a  particular  district  has  gone  to  ruin  to  give 
it  to  a  Zamindar  or  any  other  man  of  known  good  conduct  for  a  long  lease  of  years 
or  in  perpetuity  at  a  fixed  rent  not  to  be  increased  should  ever  the  industry  of  the 
renter  raise  an  unexpected  average  to  himself. ..." 

The  board  in  their  reply  considered  the  suggestion  to  be  too  hazardous 
for  experiment, 

Other  events  were  now  impending.  On  19  October,  1774,  Clavering, 
Monson,  and  Francis  arrived  in  Calcutta.  Of  the  three  new  members 
of  council  the  ablest  was  Francis,  whose  malicious  and  petulant 
character  needs  no  description  here,  but  whose  ability  and  grasp  of 
the  intricate  revenue  problem  in  Bengal,  although  not  free  from  error, 

1  Revenue  Board  Proceedings,  16  March,  1774. 

*  Idem,  5  July*  *774>  PP-  5425~6. 

*  Idem,  29  January,  1773,  pp.  627-33. 

27-8 


420    REVENUE  ADMINISTRATION  OF  BENGAL,  1765-86 

was  remarkable,  even  if  due  allowance  is  made  for  his  alleged  in- 
debtedness to  the  "coaching"  of  John  Shore. 

The  Supreme  Council  soon  offered  a  most  unfortunate  example  of 
disunion  to  all  the  subordinate  officers  of  the  Company,  and  the  same 
spirit  appeared  in  the  provincial  councils;  thus  was  created  a  spirit 
of  partisanship  throughout  the  entire  service,  which  encouraged  in 
farmers,  zamindars,  and  tenants  the  hope  that  profit  might  be 
obtained  by  supporting  one  side  or  the  other;  but  in  spite  of  these 
evils,  the  new  council  brought  into  the  administration  of  the  revenue 
a  vigorous  and,  on  the  whole,  healthy  spirit  of  enquiry.  Abuses  were 
brought  to  light  which  under  a  more  easy-going  regime  would  have 
remained  dormant.  The  most  noticeable  result  of  the  new  change  was 
the  position  of  the  governor-general.  Hitherto  Hastings  had  exerted 
an  overwhelming,  almost  dictatorial,  control  over  his  council,  whose 
proceedings  for  the  years  1772-4  show  a  general  compliance  with 
the  governor's  desires,  and  the  greatest  reluctance  to  oppose  him. 
This  authority  was  now  openly  disregarded.  The  new  members  of 
the  council  came  out  prejudiced,  if  not  against  individual  servants  of 
the  Company,  against  the  personnel  and  the  Company's  service  in 
general;  but  allowing  for  their  wholesale  suspicion,  it  must  be  con- 
ceded that  the  time  was  ripe  for  a  complete  investigation  into  the 
methods  of  collecting  the  revenue,  and  for  some  radical  changes  in 
that  administration. 

On  21  October,  1774,  the  new  Board  of  Revenue  met  for  the  first 
time  and  the  governor-general  explained  in  detail  the  mode  of 
collecting  the  land  revenue,  and  the  lately  introduced  system  of  the 
provincial  councils,  and  he  recommended  a  continuation  of  the 
system,  at  any  rate  for  the  present,  as  the  season  of  year  was  soon 
approaching  in  which  the  heaviest  instalments  of  the  revenue  were 
due  for  payment.  The  board  agreed  to  the  suggestion,  partly  because 
they  wanted  to  see  the  existing  system  at  work,  and  partly  because 
they  realised  the  force  of  the  argument  for  a  temporary  continuation 
of  the  existing  system,  but  "they  do  not  mean  to  preclude  themselves 
from  such  future  alterations  as ...  some  mature  deliberation  may 
suggest  to  them  " .  In  revenue  matters,  as  in  others,  the  new  councillors 
soon  displayed  their  intolerance,  and  the  first  difference  was  between 
the  governor-general  and  Clavering  over  a  complaint  made  to  the 
former  by  the  rai  raian  against  Joseph  Fowke.  It  is  impossible  to 
relate  here  in  detail  the  many  cases  of  friction  and  open  quarrelling 
which  occurred  during  the  new  administration;  this  was  not  always 
produced  by  the  quarrelsome  attitude  of  the  new  arrivals.  Hastings 
and  Barwell  were  also  intolerant.  The  rejection  of  certain  officers 
proposed  by  the  governor-general  for  promotion  drew  a  protest  from 
Barwell  who  alleged  that  "good  and  zealous  servants  had  been 
deprived  of  normal  promotion";  a  policy,  he  contended,  that  would 
create  faction  throughout  the  service  and  "involve  the  policy  and 


SUPREME  COURT  421 

connection  of  the  state  with  the  different  powers  of  Hindostan".  But 
Glavering  was  able  to  quote  figures  to  prove  that  in  the  matter  of 
revenue  appointments  the  governor-general's  choice  had  almost 
always  been  accepted  by  the  council.  In  a  letter  to  the  court  of 
directors  dated  i  September,  1777,  and  embodied  in  proceedings  for 
i  October,  1777,  Glavering  states  without  contradiction  that  out 
of  thirty-four  officers  recommended  by  the  governor-general  for 
appointment  to  seats  on  the  provincial  councils,  only  six  were  set 
aside  by  the  vote  of  the  majority;  moreover,  in  1777  there  were  on 
the  provincial  councils  only  three  men  who  had  not  been  recommended 
by  Hastings  himself:  these  three  were  John  Shore,  Boughton  Rous, 
and  Goring.  This  effective  reply  remained  unanswered,  and  disposes 
very  decisively  of  Barwell's  insinuations. 

In  addition  to  the  weekly  reports  from  the  districts  of  defaulting 
farmers  and  oppressed  ryots,  a  new  and  serious  problem  was  created 
by  the  interference  of  the  Supreme  Court  in  the  revenue  adminis- 
tration. This  threatened  to  bring  the  collections  to  a  standstill, 
because  the  Supreme  Court,  by  issuing  writs  of  habeas  corpus  in  favour 
of  persons  confined  by  the  orders  of  the  provincial  diwanni  adalat 
courts  for  non-payment  of  revenue,  paralysed  the  effective  control 
exercised  by  these  courts.  Complaints  and  requests  for  instructions 
poured  in  from  all  the  divisions :  the  Supreme  Council  became  very 
restive  but  was  induced  to  concur  for  the  time  being  in  the  governor- 
general's  advice  "not  to  controvert  the  authority  which  the  Supreme 
Court  may  think  fit  to  exercise".1  The  judges  of  the  Supreme  Court 
acknowledged  the  caution  displayed  by  the  board  in  a  letter2  which 
conveyed  their  opinion  on  certain  questions  propounded  by  the  board 
regarding  the  appellate  jurisdiction  of  the  sadar  diwanni  adalat  and 
the  Supreme  Court.  The  matter  rested  there  for  a  while. 

The  dissensions  in  the  council  encouraged  unscrupulous  people, 
hostile  to  Hastings,  to  bring  accusations  of  corruption  against  the 
governor-general  to  which  the  majority  in  the  council  lent  a  greedy 
ear. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  the  governor-general  had  shown  much 
laxity  in  permitting  his  banyan  Krishna  Kantu  Nandi  (the  well- 
known  "Cantoo  Baboo")  to  hold  lucrative  farms.  The  Committee  of 
Circuit  had  laid  down3  that  no  banyan  of  the  collector,  nor  any  of 
his  relations,  should  under  any  circumstances  hold  a  farm  or  be 
connected  with  a  farmer.  Gleig's4  shuffling  defence  that  this  order 
applied  to  collectors  only  is  unworthy  of  serious  consideration,  for 
the  chances  of  corrupt  profit  that  might  accrue  to  the  banyan  of  a 
collector  were  insignificant  compared  to  those  which  an  unscrupulous 

1  Governor-General's  Proceedings,  January,  1775. 

*  Idem,  25  July,  1775.  Gf.  also  Hastings's  letter  to  Lord  North,  dated  10  January,  1776. 

1  Committee  of  Circuit's  Proceedings,  pp.  56-9. 

"  Gleig,  op.  cit.  i,  529,  530  (ed.  1841). 


422    REVENUE  ADMINISTRATION  OF  BENGAL,  1765-86 

banyan  of  the  governor-general  might  receive.  Kantu  Babu  held 
farms  in  his  own  name  whose  annual  rental  exceeded  thirteen  lakhs 
of  rupees,1  and,  in  addition,  he  held  farms  in  the  name  of  his  son, 
Loknath  Nandi,  a  child  of  twelve  or  thirteen  years.  The  acquiescence 
of  Hastings  in  this  matter  was  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  the  regulations 
drawn  up  by  the  Committee  of  Circuit  of  which  he  himself  had  been 
the  most  prominent  member.  His  statement  that  he  had  no  personal 
interest  in  the  affairs  of  his  banyan  does  not  alter  the  situation.  In  this 
case,  and  in  his  defence2  of  Bhawani  Charan  Mitra,  diwan  of  Burdwan, 
whose  sons  and  servants  had  been  discovered  in  the  possession  of 
farms,  no  excuse  can  be  offered  for  Hastings's  inertness;  but  the 
majority  of  the  council  allowed  their  venom  to  poison  their  judgment 
in  declaring  that  "there  was  no  species  of  peculation  from  which  the 
governor-general  had  thought  fit  to  abstain".  Certain  transactions 
of  Barwell,  when  chief  of  the  Dacca  provincial  council,  were  also 
declared  by  the  majority  to  be  corrupt,  but  the  real  target  was  the 
governor-general  who  protested  with  unavailing  logic  that  his  would- 
be  judges  were  also  his  accusers.  Hastings,  to  preserve  the  dignity 
of  his  office,  was  forced  on  several  occasions  to  break  up  the  council. 
Such  were  the  conditions  in  which  the  new  government  proceeded 
to  administer  the  revenues  of  Bengal ;  conditions  which  lasted  till 
Monson's  death  on  25  September,  1776.  During  this  period  some 
very  valuable  information  was  obtained  from  the  senior  servants  of 
the  Company  in  response  to  a  circular  issued  on  23  October,  1774, 
to  the  chiefs  of  the  provincial  councils  asking  their  views  on  the  causes 
of  the  diminution  of  the  land  revenue  and  of  the  frequent  deficits. 

Middleton,3  writing  of  the  Murshidabad  division  which  included 
Rajshahi,  named  the  famine  of  1770  as  the  first  cause;  he  also  con- 
sidered that  "the  unavoidably  arbitrary  settlement  made  by  the 
Committee  of  Circuit"  and  the  public  auction  of  farms  contributed 
heavily  to  the  distress,  especially  the  last  cause : 

the  zamindar  being  tenacious  of  her  hereditary  possessions,  and  dreading  the  disgrace 
and  reproach  which  herself  and  her  family  of  long  standing  as  zamindars  must  have 
suffered  by  its  falling  into  other  hands. 

He  suggested  that  "a  universal  remission  of  a  considerable  amount 
of  the  revenue  due"  be  granted,  and  the  settlement  in  future  be  made 
with  the  zamindars :  if  farmers  must  be  employed,  they  should  be  very 
carefully  selected. 

P.  M.  Dacres,4  late  chief  of  the  Calcutta  committee,  also  considered 
the  public  auction  of  farms  to  be  largely  responsible  for  much  distress, 
instancing  the  bidding  in  the  Nadia  district;  other  causes  were  the 
great  famine  and  the  excessive  assessment  of  1772.  He  advocated  a 
general  remission  of  deficits  and  urged  a  permanent  settlement  with 

1  Governor-General's  Proceedings,  17  March,  1775,  25  April,  1777,  and  29  April, 

1777- 
8  Idem,  23  January,  1776.  *  Idem,  7  April,  1775.  *  Idem. 


REFORMS  PROPOSED  423 

the  zamindars  which  "would  fix  the  rents  in  perpetuity  and  trust  to 
a  sale  of  their  property  as  a  security  for  their  payments" :  advice  that 
was  not  lost  on  Francis. 

G.  Hurst,1  from  the  council  of  Patna,  shared  Middleton's  views  and 
also  referred  to  the  wars  that  had  ravaged  Bihar  from  the  days  of 
'Ali  Wardi  Khan  until  the  assumption  of  the  diwanni  by  the  Company. 
Of  these  interesting  comments,  that  of  P.  M.  Dacres,  advocating  a 
permanent  settlement  of  the  land  revenue,  commands  the  most 
attention.  This  advice  did  not  reach  the  board  for  the  first  time. 
Two  years  previously2  the  council  of  Patna  had  suggested  it,  and  in 
January,  I775,3  G.  Vansittart,  late  chief  of  the  Burdwan  Council, 
had  urged  the  board  to  adopt  a  lengthy  settlement,  for  life  at  least. 
In  July,  1775,  G.  G.  Ducarel,  lately  in  charge  of  the  Purnia  district, 
in  his  evidence  given  before  the  board4,  expressed  the  view  that  "a 
person  of  experience  with  discretionary  power  might  render  great 
service  to  the  Company  by  effecting  a  permanent  settlement  in  the 
most  eligible  mode".  He  even  argued  that  it  was  desirable  to  effect 
a  permanent  settlement  "with  inferior  talukdars  or  with  the  ryots 
themselves  if  possible",  advice  which  implies  that  the  speaker  did 
not  regard  either  the  state  or  the  zamindars  as  owners  of  the  soil. 
At  home  the  same  idea  was  also  finding  expression.  In  1772  Colonel 
Dow5  had  strongly  advocated  a  settlement  in  perpetuity  with  the 
zamindars,  and  in  the  same  year  a  pamphlet  urging  a  similar  course 
was  published  by  H.  Patullo.6 

Meanwhile  the  results  of  the  quinquennial  settlement  were  proving 
more  deplorable  each  year,  and  some  fresh  method  was  imperatively 
necessary.  Accordingly,  on  21  March,  1775,  the  governor-general 
invited  the  individual  opinions  of  members  of  the  council  on  the 
subject  of  settling  and  collecting  the  land  revenue.  On  22  April  he 
and  Barwell  submitted  a  joint  plan  consisting  of  seventeen  proposals 
in  which  they  practically  adopted  the  principle  of  a  permanent 
settlement  by  recommending  leases  for  life  or  for  two  joint  lives. 
Beveridge7  has  shown  that  the  concluding  remarks  of  this  scheme 
bear  strong  if  unintentional  testimony  to  the  hardships  inflicted  on 
the  ryots  by  the  nawab's  and,  latterly,  the  Company's  mismanage- 
ment of  the  collections.  This  plan  was  opposed  by  one  propounded 
by  Francis  on  22  January,  1776,  in  which  he  definitely  recommended 
a  settlement  in  perpetuity  with  the  zamindars,  and  he  emphasised 
this  opinion  at  meetings  of  the  board  in  May,  1 776®,  when  a  letter  was 

Governor-General's  Proceedings,  7  April,  1775. 

Revenue  Board  Proceedings,  29  January,  1773. 

Governor-General's  Proceedings,  27  January,  1775. 

Idem,  1 5  July,  1775. 

Enquiry  into  the  state  of  Bengal,  affixed  to  vol.  n,  History  of  Hindustan,  cd.  1772. 

Firminger,  Fifth  Report,  etc.  i,  309,  note. 

Op.  cit.  n,  410-17. 

Governor-General's  Proceedings,  17  May  and  31  May,  1776. 


424    REVENUE  ADMINISTRATION  OF  BENGAL,  1765-86 

considered  from  the  provincial  council  of  revenue  at  Patna  describing 
the  over-assessment  and  consequent  poverty  of  the  people.  Francis 
published  in  1 782  his  proposals,  together  with  the  plan  of  Hastings  and 
Barwell  and  various  extracts  from  the  minutes  of  the  board's  pro- 
ceedings1, but  he  did  not  acknowledge  the  debt  that  he  obviously 
owed  to  Dacres  and  other  servants  of  the  Company.  The  following 
comments  from  two  distinguished  writers  are  sufficient  to  reveal  the 
defects  of  the  scheme  of  Francis,  who  recognised  only  the  zamindar 
and  ignored  the  ryot.  "We  are  left  to  infer",  says  Beveridge,2  "that, 
after  all,  the  best  security  for  the  ryot  would  be  to  throw  himself  on 
the  zamindar' s  mercy."  Mill3  is  even  more  trenchant. 

Without  much  concern  about  the  production  of  proof  he  [Mr  Francis]  assumed 
as  a  basis  two  things:  first,  that  the  opinion  was  erroneous  which  ascribed  to  the 
sovereign  the  property  of  the  land;  and  secondly,  that  the  property  in  question 
belonged  to  the  zamindars.  Upon  the  zamindars  as  proprietors  he  accordingly 
proposed  a  certain  tax  should  be  levied;  that  it  should  be  fixed  once  and  for  all; 
and  held  to  be  perpetual  and  invariable. 

The  effect  of  Francis's  pertinacity  was  to  bring  into  prominence  the 
question  of  the  ownership  of  the  land.  It  is  sufficient  to  point  out 
that  while  Hastings  and  Barwell  assumed  that  the  sovereign  possessed 
the  land,  and  Francis  and  his  school  were  equally  convinced  that  the 
zamindar  was  the  real  owner,  no  one  thought,  with  the  possible 
exception  of  Ducarel,  of  what  might  be  the  claim  of  the  ryots  to  the 
possession  of  the  land,  and  of  the  khudkasht  ryot4  in  particular. 

The  settlement  problem,  though  of  the  first  importance,  was  not 
peremptory;  the  quinquennial  settlement  had  still  some  time  to  run. 
At  this  juncture,  Monson  died,  and  the  governor-general  recovered 
his  lost  authority  in  the  council.  Almost  the  first  use  that  Hastings 
made  of  his  restored  authority  was  to  take  up  the  business  of  the 
coming  settlement,  a  duty  which  he  had  felt  to  be  paramount,  and 
which  he  could  now  approach  with  effect.5  In  August,  1776,°  he 
had  laid  before  the  board  certain  proposals  connected  with  the 
necessity  of  preparing  for  the  approaching  settlement,  suggesting  that 
all  provincial  councils  and  collectors  should  submit  an  estimate  of 
the  land  revenue  that  might  justly  be  expected  from  their  districts. 
This  idea  was  eventually  agreed  to  and  a  circular  letter  to  that  effect 
issued. 

On  i  November7  the  governor-general  suggested  that  an  "office" 
or,  in  modern  parlance,  a  commission  should  be  formed  whose  duty 

1  The  Original  Minutes  of  the  Governor-General  and  Council  of  Fort  William,  etc.,  published 
in  London,  1782. 
8  Op.  cit.  ii,  417. 

3  Mill,  History  of  British  India,  5th  ed.  iv,  24. 

4  The  Zemindary  Settlement  of  Bengal,  vol.  i,  para.  2,  and  appendix  viii,  vol.  I,  pp.  198-9. 
(Calcutta,  1879.) 

5  Letter  to  L.  Sulivan,  21  March,  1776,  also  to  John  Graham,  26  September,  1776. 
e  Governor-General's  Proceedings,  30  August,  1776. 

T  Idem,  i  November,  1776. 


THE  AMINI  COMMISSION  425 

should  be  to  tour  throughout  Bengal  "to  procure  material  for  the 
settlement  of  the  different  districts".  The  reports  from  the  various 
district  officers  had  revealed  the  disastrous  effect  of  an  assessment 
based  on  faulty  information,  and  Hastings  was  determined  to  avoid 
that  evil,  if  possible,  in  making  the  approaching  settlement.  His 
proposals  were  strenuously,  even  violently,  opposed  by  Clavering  and 
Francis,  who  feared  that  the  powers  given  to  the  amins,  or  Indian 
officers,  of  the  commission  to  enable  them  to  obtain  the  requisite 
information  would  be  used  in  a  method  prejudicial  to  the  good  name 
of  the  Company.  This  fear,  which  was  not  without  basis,  was  expressed 
in  their  usual  intemperate  fashion,  and  was  made  to  serve  as  an  attack 
on  the  governor-general's  character;  for  he  was  accused  of  diverting 
the  constitutional  powers  of  the  Supreme  Council  for  his  own 
gratification  by  means  of  the  casting  vote. 

Hastings  met  these  unfounded  allegations  with  more  than  his 
wonted  courtesy  and  self-control,  entering  into  detailed  explanations 
of  the  information  required,  and  the  necessity  for  it,  but  his  deter- 
mination was  as  inflexible  as  ever:  on  29  November  D.  Anderson  and 
C.  Bogle,  two  of  the  most  promising  of  the  younger  officers  of  the 
Company,  were  selected1  as  members  of  the  commission:  the 
accountant-general,  C.  Croftes,  was  shortly  afterwards  added,  and 
the  cost  of  the  commission  was  estimated  at  something  less  than 
4500  rupees  per  mensem.  Thus  was  established  that  commission  whose 
report,  presented  in  March,  1778,  is  perhaps  the  most  valuable 
contemporary  document  in  the  early  revenue  history  of  Bengal  under 
the  Company's  administration.2  The  information  collected  and  its 
style  of  presentment  reflect  the  greatest  credit  both  on  the  professional 
capacities  of  its  authors,  and  on  the  choice  and  acumen  of  the  governor- 
general.  The  report  lost  no  force  from  the  dispassionate  and  un- 
assuming tone  in  which  it  recounted  with  studied  moderation  the 
wholesale  alienation  of  lands  and  deliberate  oppression  of  the  ryots 
by  the  zamindars,  who  not  infrequently  continued  to  collect  taxes 
which  the  indulgence  of  government  had  abolished.  The  report 
therefore  exposed  the  inaccuracy  of  much  that  Francis  had  asserted : 
it  also  included  a  large  collection  of 

the  original  accounts  in  the  Bengal,  Persian,  and  Orissa  languages. . .  .If  preserved 
as  records  they  will  be  highly  serviceable  as  references  in  settling  disputes . . .  and 
may  lay  the  foundation  of  regular  and  permanent  registers. 

Meanwhile  the  court  of  directors  wrote  to  express  their  displeasure 
with  the  governor-general,  and  their  support  of  the  minority;  they 
censured  the  use  which  Hastings  had  made  of  the  casting  vote,  and 
expressed  surprise  that  "after  more  than  seven  years'  investigation'* 
further  information  about  the  collections  was  still  required. 

1  Governor-General's  Proceedings,  6  December  and  27  December,  1776. 
8  Printed  ap.  Ramsbotham,  op.  cit.  pp.  99-131. 


426    REVENUE  ADMINISTRATION  OF  BENGAL,  1765-86 

No  definite  decision  was  taken  in  the  matter  of  the  new  settlement. 
In  the  face  of  much  conflicting  evidence  the  directors  decided  to 
mark  time;  accordingly,  on  23  December,  1778,  they  sent  orders  for 
the  land  revenue  to  be  settled  annually;  it  is  not  easy  to  say  what  else 
they  could  have  done.  In  1779  the  trouble1  between  the  Supreme 
Court  and  the  Company's  diwanni  adalats,  which  had  been  simmering 
since  1774,  boiled  over.  The  Kasijora  case,  with  its  disgraceful 
incidents,  compelled  the  immediate  interference  of  the  council.  The 
Supreme  Court  refused  to  yield,  and  the  quarrel  threatened  to  split 
the  entire  administration.  A  solution  was  found  by  the  chief  justice 
in  consultation  with  the  governor-general.  Sir  Elijah  Impey  was 
offered  and  accepted  the  chief  judgeship  of  the  sadar  diwanni  adalat 
with  an  additional  salary  of  about  £6500 :  he  thus  united  in  his  own 
person  the  authority  of  both  jurisdictions.  His  action  was  severely 
criticised  by  Francis  and  Wheler  at  the  time,  and  by  later  critics. 
But  the  law  officers  of  the  crown  in  England  found  nothing  incorrect 
in  Impey's  action  which  "put  an  end  to  an  intolerable  situation. . . 
and  anticipated  by  many  years  the  policy  which  extended  the 
appellate  jurisdiction  of  the  Supreme  Court  over  the  provincial 
courts".2 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  plan  drawn  up  by  the  Board  of 
Revenue  in  1773,  placing  the  collections  under  six  provincial  councils 
of  revenue,  was  expressly  declared  by  the  governor  and  council  to 
be  temporary.  No  opportunity  occurred  for  introducing  a  permanent 
scheme  until  Hastings  had  regained  his  control  of  the  council,  when 
a  commission  of  enquiry  was  appointed  to  prepare  the  way  for  a  per- 
manent measure.  In  July,  1777,  the  governor-general  and  council 
promulgated  to  all  the  provincial  councils  except  Patna  a  modified 
scheme  for  the  settlement  of  the  revenue  for  the  current  year.  The 
scheme  contained  ten  paragraphs  and  bore  strong  impress  of  the 
board's  debates  during  the  previous  three  years,  in  that  it  gave  the 
zamindar  a  position  of  increased  importance  at  the  cost  of  the  ryot. 
The  councils  were  empowered  to  use  their  own  discretion  in  making 
fresh  settlements  with  those  zamindars  who  refused  to  agree  to  a 
renewal  of  the  existing  terms,  and  where  possible  the  zamindar  was 
to  be  invited  to  co-operate  in  making  the  settlement.  In  April,  1 778, 
a  circular  letter  was  sent  to  all  provincial  councils  requiring  a  list  of 
all  defaulting  zamindars  to  be  posted  at  every  district  headquarters, 
while  defaulters  were  warned  that  failure  to  meet  obligations  might 
result  in  the  sale  of  the  zamindari,  or  its  transference  to  others  who 
were  willing  to  take  over  the  existing  arrangement  and  to  pay  the 
arrears.  These  instructions  were  repeated  each  May  in  1778,  1779 
and  1780. 

In  December,  1 780,  Francis  sailed  for  Europe.  The  field  was  now 

1  Mill,  op.  cit.  iv,  218-54;  Beveridge,  op.  cit.  pp.  436-40. 
1  Roberts,  History  of  British  India,  p.  213. 


CENTRALISATION  OF  1781  427 

clear;  Hastings  had  an  undisputed  authority;  his  adversaries  "had 
sickened,  died  and  fled".1  Tenax  propositi,  if  ever  man  was,  Hastings 
continued  his  endeavours  to  reorganise  the  collections,  and  shortly 
there  was  issued 

a  permanent  plan  for  the  administration  of  the  revenue  of  Bengal  and  Bihar, 
formed  the  soth  February,  1 781 ,  by  the  Hon'ble  the  Governor-General  and  Council 
in  their  Revenue  Department,2 

The  main  alteration  involved  cannot  be  described  better  than  in 
the  words  of  the  introductory  minute.  After  recalling  the  temporary 
nature  of  the  provincial  councils,  the  easy  prelude  of  another  per- 
manent mode,  and  referring  to  the  Revenue  Board's  proceedings  of 
23  November,  1773,  where  the  board's  intention  is  "  methodically 
and  completely  delineated",  the  alteration  is  stated  to  consist  sub- 
stantially in  this :  that 

all  the  collections  of  the  provinces  should  be  brought  down  to  the  Presidency  and 
be  there  administered  by  a  Committee  of  the  most  able  and  experienced  of  the 
covenanted  servants  of  the  Company  under  the  immediate  inspection  of,  and 
with  the  opportunity  of  constant  reference  for  instruction  to,  the  Governor- 
General  and  Council. 

"By  this  plan",  wrote  Hastings,  "we  hope  to  bring  the  whole  administration 
of  the  revenues  to  Calcutta,  without  any  intermediate  charge  or  agency,  and  to 
effect  a  saving  of  lacs  to  the  Company  and  to  the  Zamindars  and  ryots."  He  added 
complacently:  "Read  the  plan  and  the  minute  introducing  it;  it  will  not  discredit 
me,  but  the  plan  will  put  to  shame  those  who  discredit  it'*. 

Shore,  after  a  year's  experience  of  the  plan  in  working,  did  not 
hesitate  emphatically  to  condemn  it. 

The  new  scheme3  consisted  of  fourteen  paragraphs.  Its  object  was 
to  reduce  the  expense  of  the  collections  and  to  restore  the  revenue  of 
the  provinces  as  far  as  possible  "  to  its  former  standard  " ;  an  indefinite 
reference.  To  this  end  a  new  committee  of  the  revenue  was  created 
consisting  of  four  members  assisted  by  a  diwan;  the  first  members  of 
this  committee  were  David  Anderson,  John  Shore,  Samuel  Charters, 
and  Charles  Croftes;  Ganga  Govind  Singh  was  appointed  diwan.  The 
members  of  this  committee  took  oath  to  receive  uno  lucrative  ad- 
vantage" from  their  office,  except  of  course,  from  their  salary  which 
was  made  up  of  2  per  cent,  on  the  monthly  net  receipts4  and  divided 
proportionally  among  them.  The  provincial  councils  and  appeal 
courts  were  abolished,  and  collectors  replaced  in  all  the  districts.  The 
superintendentship  of  the  Khalsa  was  abolished  and  its  functions 
transferred  to  the  Committee  of  Revenue;  the  office  of  the  rai  raian 
was  placed  under  the  Supreme  Council  and  its  holder  was  specifically 
forbidden  to  "interfere  in  the  business  transacted  by  the  diwan  of 

*  Gleig,  op.  tit.  n,  329,  330. 

8  Governor-General  s  Proceedings,  20  January,  1781. 

8  Colcbrooke,  op.  cit.  pp.  213-16.  4  Idem,  pp.  215,  216. 


428    REVENUE  ADMINISTRATION  OF  BENGAL,  1765-86 

the  Committee".  Finally,  the  kanungos  were  reinstated  "in  the 
complete  charge  and  possession  of  all  the  functions  and  powers  which 
constitutionally  appertain  to  their  office". 

The  scheme  bears  all  the  signs  of  being  prepared  in  a  secretariat. 
On  paper  it  possibly  appeared  extremely  reasonable  and  efficient;  in 
practice  it  broke  down  at  every  point.  The  information,  valuable  as 
it  was,  collected  by  the  commission  of  1776,  could  not,  and,  by  its 
authors,  was  not  intended  to  take  the  place  of  that  information  which 
only  trained  district  officers  could  furnish,  but  Hastings  was  bent  on 
concentration.  In  1773,  the  result  of  his  grouping  the  various  districts 
into  six  divisions  under  provincial  councils  resulted  in  a  loss  to  the 
Company's  government  of  much  valuable  local  knowledge  and 
experience.  His  plan  of  1781  carried  concentration  still  further. 

The  re-appointment  of  Collectors  appears  to  suggest  an  idea  of  decentralisation. 
This  however  was  not  the  case.  The  collector  was  denied  any  interference  with 
the  new  settlement  of  the  revenue. . . .  The  new  collectors  were  merely  figureheads, 
and  the  distrust  which  the  council  showed  in  their  appointment  could  lead  to 
nothing  but  discouragement.1 

The  truth  of  this  comment  is  exemplified  by  two  quotations 
selected  at  random  from  the  Committee  of  Revenue's  proceedings 
for  April,  1783.  John  David  Patterson,  collector  of  Rangpur,  wrote 
on  3  April,  1 783,  to  ask  for  instructions  as  to  what  action  he  might 
take  in  his  district. 

There  is  nothing  but  confusion ;  there  is  no  Kanungo  to  be  found,  he  is  fled  the 
country ;  the  ryots  wanting  to  withhold  their  payments ;  the  Farmer  seizing  every- 
thing he  can  lay  his  hands  upon  and  swelling  up  his  demands  by  every  artifice 

No  pains  shall  be  spared  on  my  part  to  get  at  the  truth  altho*  it  is  wading  through 
a  sea  of  chicanery  on  both  sides .... 

On  13  March  William  Rooke,  collector  of  Purnia,  wrote  with  even 
greater  detail  to  the  same  effect;  he  reported  that  the  farmer 

has  repeatedly  flogged  those  who  preferred  any  complaint  to  me ....  In  the 
course  of  the  last  ten  days  a  numerous  body  of  ryots  from  all  quarters  have  beset 
me  on  every  side,  uncommonly  clamorous  for  justice.  Their  complaints  exhibit 
an  almost  universal  disregard  and  setting  aside  of  their  pottahs,  an  enormous 
increase  exacted  from  them,  etc. : 

and  the  letter  concludes  with  a  request  to  be  informed  of  "the  degree 
of  interference  which  is  expected  of  me  by  you".  The  Committee  of 
Revenue  was  accustomed  to  such  letters.  Within  one  month  of  the 
establishment  of  the  new  scheme  it  had  pointed  out  that  much  of 
the  work  of  the  settlement  should  be  left  in  detail  to  the  collector. 
Shore  had  ruthlessly  exposed,  in  his  minute  of  I78s2,  the  inefficiency 
of  the  whole  scheme.  Space  unfortunately  permits  only  of  a  small 
quotation  from  this  illuminating  criticism,  in  which  he  showed  that 
there  could  be  no  check  on  oppression  or  extortion,  that  the  real  state 


1  Ascoli,  op.  cit.  pp.  35,  36. 

2  Harington,  op.  cit.  n,  41-3. 


SHORE'S  CRITICISM  429 

of  any  district  could  not  be  discovered,  and  that  it  was  impossible 
to  discriminate  truth  from  falsehood. 

I  venture  to  pronounce  that  the  real  state  of  the  districts  is  now  less  known  and 
the  revenues  less  understood  than  in  1774. .  ..It  is  the  business  of  all,  from  the 

ryot  to  the  diwan,  to  conceal  and  deceive With  respect  to  the  Committee  of 

Revenue,  it  is  morally  impossible  for  them  to  execute  the  business  they  are  entrusted 
with. 

Shore  concluded  that  the  committee  "with  the  best  intentions  and 
the  best  ability  and  the  steadiest  application,  must  after  all  be  a  tool 
in  the  hands  of  their  Diwan"  and  that  the  system  was  fundamentally 
wrong.  Shore's  opinion  was  afterwards  endorsed  in  1786  when  the 
Governor-General  in  Council,  in  instructing  the  Committee  of 
Revenue  to  appoint  collectors  for  certain  districts,  observed 

from  experience  we  think  it  past  doubt  that  situated  as  you  are  at  the  Presidency, 
you  cannot  without  a  local  agency  secure  the  regular  realisation  of  the  revenues, 
still  less  preserve  the  ryots  and  other  inferior  tenants  from  oppressions.1 

The  scheme  of  1781  further  restored  to  their  old  position  and 
perquisites  the  sadar  kanungos,  whose  claim  to  appoint  their  own 
deputies  had  been  correctly  contested  by  the  collector  of  Midnapur,2 
who  pointed  out  that  the  Committee  of  Circuit  had  ordered  the 
registration  of  all  deputy  kanungos  as  servants  of  the  Company.  The 
collector  of  Rangpur  in  1 784  was  similarly  restrained  from  exercising 
any  control  over  the  deputy  kanungos  without  the  express  orders  of 
government.  The  claim  of  the  kanungos  to  their  arrears  of  fees  was 
sanctioned  to  the  extent  of  over  i,  10,000  rupees,  and  they  regained 
the  full  control  of  their  deputies  in  the  districts ;  their  triumph  was 
complete,  and  the  evil  situation  exposed  by  Baber  and  others  in  1772 
was  restored. 

The  picture,  however,  is  not  entirely  black.  In  1782  an  office, 
known  as  the  zamindari  dqftar3,  was  established  for  the  management  of 
the  estates  of  minor  and  female  zamindars;  it  also  afforded  pro- 
tection to  zamindars  of  known  incapacity.  This  was  a  wise  and 
beneficent  step  which  anticipated  the  work  of  the  present  court  of 
wards.  The  growing  influence  of  officers  with  district  experience  can 
be  seen  in  the  orders  issued  by  the  Committee  of  Revenue  to  all 
collectors  in  November,  1783,  directing  them  to  proceed  on  tour 
throughout  their  districts  in  order  to  form  by  personal  observation 
an  estimate  of  the  state  of  the  crops  and  their  probable  produce  for 
the  current  year.  In  the  past,  district-officers  had  in  vain  sought 
permission  to  tour  through  their  districts,  but  this  had  always  been 
peremptorily  refused  by  the  board.  The  wholesome  influence  now 
exerted  on  the  board  by  practical  men  who  had  served  in  districts 

1  Colebrpokc,  op.  cit,  pp.  243-4. 

1  Committee  of  Revenue's  Proceedings,  1 2  September,  1 7  September,  8  November, 
1781. 
1  Idem,  May  and  September,  1782. 


430    REVENUE  ADMINISTRATION  OF  BENGAL,  1765-86 

was  to  grow  stronger.  Anderson,  Shore  and  Charters  were  men  who 
had  had  a  real  mufassal  training,  and  Croftes  had  been  a  member  of  the 
1776  commission.  They  knew  that  "in  every  pargana  throughout 
Bengal  there  are  some  district  usages  which  cannot  clearly  be  known 
at  a  distance",  yet  which  must  be  known  if  the  administration  is  to 
be  just  and  efficient.  In  1 786  a  great  and  beneficial  change  comes 
over  the  revenue  administration  of  Bengal;  it  is  not  too  much  to 
attribute  this  to  the  district  experience  of  the  members  of  the  com- 
mittee appointed  in  1781.  For  five  years  they  laboured  under  the 
evils  and  difficulties  of  attempting  to  administer  a  system  which  was 
over-centralised,  and  which  placed  secretariat  theories  before  district 
experience.  In  1786  the  district  officer  comes  to  his  own.  Before 
discussing  these  changes  in  detail  some  important  facts  must  be  briefly 
noticed.  In  1784  Pitt's  India  Act  was  passed.  Section  39  of  this  act 
directs  that  the  conditions  governing  the  collection  of  land  revenue 
shall  be  "forthwith  enquired  into  and  fully  investigated"  and  that 
"permanent  rules"  for  the  future  regulation  of  the  payments  and 
services  due  "from  the  rajas,  zemindars  and  other  native  land-holders " 
will  be  established.  Thus  the  opinion  of  which  Francis  was  the  leading 
advocate,  that  the  zamindar  was  a  landowner,  was  adopted  by  the 
act  and  the  permanent  rules,  which  Lord  Cornwallis  was  sent  out 
to  put  into  effect,  were,  to  the  great  misfortune  of  the  Bengal  culti- 
vators, founded  on  that  assumption.  Before  the  details  of  the  act 
could  reach  India  Hastings  had  resigned  his  charge;  on  8  February, 
1785,  he  delivered  over  charge  to  Macpherson  and  in  the  same  month 
sailed  for  England.  His  influence  on  the  collection  of  the  land 
revenue  in  Bengal  was  unhappy.  In  1 772  he  was  mainly  responsible 
for  the  defects  which  marked  the  quinquennial  settlement;  in  1781, 
his  further  attempt  at  centralisation  reduced  the  collections  to  chaos. 
He  possessed,  as  has  been  shown,  very  little  first-hand  knowledge  of 
district  revenue  work.  It  has  been  claimed  for  him  that 

he  adopted  the  principle  of  making  a  detailed  assessment  based  on  a  careful 
enquiry  in  each  district  and ...  he  conferred  on  the  raiyats  who  were  the  actual 
cultivators,  the  protection  of  formal  contracts. 

Neither  of  these  encomiums  can  be  substantiated.  The  assessment  of 
1772  was  summary  and  admitted  by  its  authors  to  have  been  too  high. 
The  system  of  putting  up  the  farms  to  open  auction  resulted  in  utterly 
fictitious  values  that  were  never  realised  and  was  soon  afterwards 
forbidden  by  the  Company.  The  system  ofpattahs,  or  leases,  completely 
broke  down,  and  failed,  then  as  later,  to  protect  the  ryot.1  Further- 
more, the  reinstatement  of  the  kanungos,  the  abolition  of  collectors, 
the  establishment  of  the  provincial  diwans,  and  lastly  the  excessive 
power  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  diwan  of  the  Committee  of  Revenue, 
all  testify  to  the  incapacity  of  Hastings  in  his  administration  of  the 

1  Letter  from  the  Burdwan  Council,  Governor-General's  Proceedings,  18  April,  1777. 


MACPHERSON'S  REFORMS  431 

Bengal  land  revenue;  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  in  this  respect  his 
achievements  compare  unfavourably  with  those  of  Muhammad  Reza 
Khan.  But  Hastings  was  not  a  civil  servant  of  the  crown.  To  judge 
him,  therefore,  by  the  crown  standard  of  a  later  date  is  unjust  and 
unhistorical.  The  Company's  servants  were  imbued  with  one  idea: 
they  came  to  serve  the  Company  first  and  last;  their  intensity  of 
purpose  made  the  East  India  Company  master  of  India;  and  this 
purpose  was  not  the  less  strong  because  it  did  not  profess  to  be  governed 
by  the  restrictions  which  are  attached  to  an  administrative  service  of 
the  crown.  Hastings  gave  his  employers  a  service  and  devotion  that 
was  unflinching  in  its  loyalty,  that  feared  no  difficulty,  that  shrank 
from  no  adversary;  although  he  may  have  failed  in  his  personal 
handling  of  the  land  revenue,  he  is  entitled  to  the  credit  of  having 
selected  some  most  able  officers  to  deal  with  this  branch  of  the  ad- 
ministration. Conspicuous  among  these  were  Shore,  David  Anderson, 
Samuel  Charters,  Charles  Croftcs  and  James  Grant.  In  the  same 
week  as  Hastings  handed  over  charge  of  the  government,  a  letter1 
from  the  court  of  directors  was  received  calling  for  an  accurate  account 
of  the  administration  at  the  precise  period  at  which  Hastings  resigned 
his  office;  a  foretaste,  had  he  but  known,  of  the  anxious  days 
ahead. 

On  25  April,  1786,  the  new  scheme  was  published:  it  spelt  de- 
centralisation. "The  division  of  the  province  into  districts  is  the 
backbone  of  the  whole  system  of  the  reforms."2  The  collector  becomes 
a  responsible  officer,  making  the  settlement  and  collecting  the 
revenue;  the  provincial  diwans  were  abolished;  and  the  districts  were 
reorganised  into  thirty-five  more  or  less  fiscal  units,  instead  of  the 
previous  "series  of  fiscal  divisions  over  which  the  earlier  collectors 
had  exercised  their  doubtful  authority";3  these  thirty-five  districts 
were  reduced  in  1787  to  twenty-three.  These  measures  of  the  local 
government  were  reinforced  by  orders  from  the  court  of  directors 
dated  21  September,  1 785,  which  were  published  in  Calcutta  on  1 2  June, 
1786;  under  them  the  Committee  of  Revenue  was  reconstituted  and 
officially  declared  to  be  the  Board  of  Revenue.  The  president  of  the 
board  was  to  be  a  member  of  the  governor-general's  council.  The 
special  regulations  drawn  up  for  the  guidance  of  the  board  may  be 
read  in  the  pages  of  Harington  and  Colebrooke.  Its  duties  were  those 
of  controlling  and  advising  the  collectors  and  sanctioning  their  settle- 
ment. On  19  July  the  office  of  Chief  Saristadar  was  instituted  to  bring 
the  revenue  records,  hitherto  the  property  of  the  kanungos,  under  the 
control  of  government.  This  measure  was  long  overdue,  and  had  been 
urged  by  the  abler  district  officers  since  1772,  as  being  "no  less 
calculated  to  protect  the  great  body  of  the  people  from  oppression 

1  Committee  of  Revenue's  Proceedings,  14  February,  1785. 

2  Ascoli,  op.  cit.  pp.  38-40. 
8  Idem. 


432    REVENUE  ADMINISTRATION  OF  BENGAL,  1765-86 

than  to  secure  the  full  and  legal  right  of  the  Sovereign".  James  Grant 
was  selected  to  be  the  first  Chief  Saristadar,  being  specially  chosen  for 
his  interest  in  and  research  among  the  revenue  records.  For  the  first 
time  since  the  assumption  of  the  diwanni,  government  had  made 
a  resolute  effort  to  reduce  the  kanungos  to  their  constitutional  position 
in  the  state. 

The  reforms  of  1 786  were,  therefore,  the  work  of  men  who  desired  to 
gain  the  confidence  of  and  to  co-operate  with  the  local  district  officer. 
The  authors  of  the  reforms  were  convinced  from  their  own  district 
experience  that  the  real  work  of  the  revenue  must  be  carried  out  by 
trusted  officers  on  the  spot;  they  set  themselves  to  create  the  conditions 
and  atmosphere  in  which  those  officers  could  best  work. 

The  period  1765-86  in  the  administration  of  the  land  revenue  in 
Bengal  by  the  Company's  servants  is  a  record  of  progress  from  the 
employment  of  untested  theories  to  the  establishment  of  an  adminis- 
tration based  on  much  solid  knowledge.  A  careful  perusal  of  the 
voluminous  manuscript  proceedings  of  the  Committees  of  Revenue 
during  those  years  reveals  a  fact  too  little  known,  namely,  that  this 
progress  was  largely  the  result  of  unrecognised  work  by  the  district 
officers  of  the  Company  in  their  own  districts  where,  generally 
speaking,  they  laboured  to  establish  a  just  and  humane  collection  of 
the  land  revenue.  Their  advice,  based  on  sound  local  knowledge,  was 
too  often  rejected  by  their  official  superiors  in  Calcutta,  by  whom, 
as  well  as  by  the  Court  of  Directors,  they  were  regarded  with  suspicion 
and  even  hostility.  Their  persistence  had  its  reward;  twenty  years 
after  the  assumption  of  the  diwanni  the  first  sound  and  just  adminis- 
tration of  the  land  revenue  was  established. 

NOTE.  The  reader  has  doubtless  found  the  various  references  to  boards  and 
committees  of  revenue  confusing. 

In  1769  the  Council  had  delegated  its  authority  in  revenue  matters  to  a 
"select  committee"  drawn  from  its  own  members.  This  select  committee  in 
1772  appointed  the  Committee  of  Circuit  to  examine  the  conditions  with  a  view 
to  making  a  new  settlement.  The  Committee  of  Circuit  in  August,  1772,  proposed 
that  the  whole  Council  should  compose  a  Board  of  Revenue — this  was  established 
in  October,  1772,  as  the  Committee  of  Revenue,  and  remained  in  existence  till 
1781 ,  when  it  was  reorganised  and  composed  of  members  junior  to  and  subordinate 
to  the  Supreme  Council,  but  still  retained  its  name  "Committee  of  Revenue". 
The  term  "board"  is  used  indifferently  by  contemporary  writers  up  to  1781; 
after  1781  it  indicates  the  Supreme  Council  when  sitting  to  hear  revenue  appeal 
cases  from  the  Committee  of  Revenue.  The  modern  Board  of  Revenue  dates 
from  1 786,  when  it  replaced  the  second  Committee  of  Revenue. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE  BENGAL  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM, 

1786—1818 

JLrlE  Select  Committee  of  1781  had  been  directed  to  find  means 
for  gaining  not  only  "security  and  advantage"  for  Britain  but  "the 
happiness  of  the  native  inhabitants,"  and  from  the  discussions  of  the 
years  1 781-4  certain  maxims  of  local  government  had  clearly  emerged. 
There  must  be  a  reform  of  abuses  among  the  Company's  servants; 
the  methods  by  which  they  grew  rich  must  be  watched;  they  must 
no  longer  take  presents.  Their  trading  activities  must  no  longer 
operate  to  destroy  the  trade  of  native  merchants  and  bankers.  The 
system  of  monopolies  must  be  restricted.  The  rights  of  zamindars  and 
land-holders  must  not  be  superseded  in  order  to  increase  the  revenues. 
There  must  be  even-handed  justice  for  Europeans  and  Indians  alike. 

The  instructions  to  Cornwallis  embodied  the  principles  thus  de- 
scribed. In  relation  to  local  government  three  main  subjects  were 
discussed.  First,  there  was  the  land  revenue.  It  was  to  be  handled 
leniently:  "a  moderate  jama,  regularly  and  punctually  collected" 
was  to  be  preferred  to  grandiose  but  unrealised  schemes.  It  was  to 
be  settled  "in  every  practicable  instance"  with  the  zamindars.  Ulti- 
mately the  settlement  was  to  be  permanent,  but  at  present  it  was  to 
be  made  for  ten  years.  Secondly,  there  was  the  question  of  adminis- 
tration. This  was  to  be  organised  upon  a  simple  and  uniform  basis. 
The  frequent  changes  of  recent  years  had  *  produced  injury  and 
extravagance,  and  made  "steady  adherence  to  almost  any  one 
system"  a  preferable  policy.  The  higher  officers  should  be  Europeans; 
and  the  subordinates  Indians,  as  being  more  suited  to  the  detailed 
work  of  the  province.  These  higher  officers  were  to  be  chosen  carefully 
from  the  principal  servants  of  the  Company;  men  "distinguished  for 
good  conduct  and  abilities,  and  conversant  with  the  country  lan- 
guages". They  should  be  adequately  paid,  partly  by  salary,  partly 
by  commission.  Their  districts  were  to  be  large;  there  should  not  be 
more  than  twenty,  or  at  most  twenty-five,  in  the  whole  province.  In 
the  settlement  of  the  revenue,  and  in  the  administration  of  justice, 
they  were  to  have  wide  authority. 

Thirdly,  there  was  the  judicial  system.  The  instructions  contem- 
plated the  continuance  of  the  existing  system  of  civil  justice,  under  • 
European  judges.  In  the  districts  the  collectors  of  revenue  were  to 
be,  also,  judges  of  the  civil  courts;  for  this  would  "tend  more  to 
simplicity,  energy,  justice  and  economy".  In  criminal  jurisdiction, 
too,  the  existing  system  was  to  be  maintained.  Indian  control  was  to 

GHIV  88 


434    BENGAL  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM,  1786-1818 

continue.  Although  the  collector  was  to  enjoy  magisterial  powers  of 
arrest,  "the  power  of  trial  and  punishment  must  on  no  account  be 
exercised  by  any  other  than  the  established  officers  of  Mahomedan 
judicature".  The  judicial  system  indeed  was  to  be  informed  with 
European  ideas  of  justice,  but  to  be  governed  by  Indian  usages.1  One 
point  recurred  frequently  throughout  the  instructions.  There  was  to 
be  a  general  movement  for  purification  and  economy.  Abuses  of  all 
kinds  were  to  be  swept  away;  peculation  was  to  cease;  useless  offices 
were  to  be  reduced,  and  the  interests  of  economy  and  simplicity  were 
to  regulate  the  various  branches  of  the  administrative  system.  Such 
was  the  task  of  Cornwallis, 

i 

•*.. _The  proposal  to  make  Cornwallis  the  first  instrument  of  the  new 
policV iWas  first  m<>oted  in  1782  during  the  administration  of  Shel- 
bume-^nd  his  appointment  had  been  one  feature  of  the  scheme  for 
Indian  refof m  proposed  by  Dundas  in  the  report  of  the  Secret  Com- 
mittee of  1 78*  •  The  Fox-North  coalition  rejected  the  idea,  but  Pitt 
revived  it  on<^eir  defeat.  The  negotiations  began  in  April,  I784;3 
at  the  end  o^  t'ie  Year  ^Y  seemed  to  have  failed  completely;  a 
renewal  in  Fekruary>  II^  was  aga*n  a  failure;  and  it  was  not  until 
February,  1786,  that  Cornwallis  accepted.  Then  the  union  of  the 
military  comjmand  with  the  governor-generalship,  and  the  promise 
that  the  go\ernor~Seneral  should  be  independent  of  his  council, 
induced  Cor^w^8  to  accept.4  He  finally  landed  at  Calcutta  in 
September,  'I786- 

Cornwall18  was  a  man  °f  m*ddle  age  with  extensive  military 
experience-  He  had  taken  part  in  the  campaigns  of  the  Seven  Years' 
War,  ?»nd  had  gained  sufficient  reputation  to  secure  his  appointment 
in  *7?6  to  command  in  America.  There,  his  ultimate  failure,  after 
some  brilliant  preliminary  successes,  did  not  suffice  to  ruin  his 
career.  Even  his  opponent,  Fox,  paid  homage  to  his  abilities  in 
1783,  and  his  employment  under  Pitt  on  the  mission  of  1785  to 
Prussia  was  sufficient  evidence  of  the  trust  in  which  he  held  him.  Of 
the  affairs  of  India,  he  had  little  knowledge  and  no  experience.  He 
is  distinguished  as  the  first  governor-general  who  did  not  climb  to 
power  from  the  ranks  of  the  Company's  service.  Appointed  by  the 
Company,  he  owed  his  nomination  to  the  ministry.  His  selection  was 
one  more  evidence  of  the  new  spirit  in  Indian  affairs.  It  brought  India 
a  stage  nearer  to  incorporation  in  the  overseas  empire  of  Britain. 

Inexperience  made  Cornwallis  largely  dependent  on  advisers  both 
in  framing  his  policy,  and,  still  more,  in  working  it  out.  The  broad 

1  The  instructions  are  in  a  series  of  dispatches  dated  1 2  April,  1 786.  They  are  to  be  found 
in  I.O.  Records,  Despatches  to  Bengal,  vol.  xv.   One  of  the  most  important  of  these  is 
printed  as  Appendix  12  to  the  Second  Report  from  the  Select  Committee  of  the  House  of 
Commons  on  the  Affairs  of  the  East  India  Company.  Parliamentary  Papers,  1810,  v,  13. 

2  Cornwallis  to  Pitt,  8  November,  1784.  Ross,  Correspondence,  i,  179. 
8  Ross,  op.  cit.  i,-  167.  *  Idem,  p.  208. 


CORNWALLIS'S  ADVISERS  435 

lines  of  his  action  were  laid  down  by  the  administration;  the  instruc- 
tions of  the  court  of  directors  gave  more  detailed  guidance.  But 
much  was  left  necessarily  to  the  men  on  the  spot,  and  hence  the 
servants  of  the  Company  by  their  practical  knowledge  had  great 
influence  on  the  result.  Cornwallis  acknowledged  plainly  his  debt 
to  them.  Perhaps  the  chief  of  them  was  John  Shore,  chosen  especially 
by  the  directors  to  supply  the  local  knowledge  which  Cornwallis 
lacked.  "The  abilities  of  Mr  Shore",  Cornwallis  wrote  a  month  after 
his  arrival,  "and  his  knowledge  in  every  branch  of  the  business  of 
this  country,  and  the  very  high  character  which  he  holds  in  the  settle- 
ment, render  his  assistance  to  me  invaluable."1  And  again  in  1789 
in  connection  with  the  revenue  settlement,  he  said,  "I  consider  it  as 
singularly  fortunate  that  the  public  could  profit  from  his  great  ex- 
perience and  uncommon  abilities".2  In  revenue  matters  Cornwallis 
trusted  mainly  to  Shore.  He  was  by  far  the  most  experienced  of  the 
Company's  servants  in  this  branch,  for  he  had  been  in  its  service 
since  1769,  and  had  held  important  revenue  offices  since  1774. 
Francis  had  brought  him  to  the  front,  but  Hastings  also  had 
recognised  his  merit. 

James  Grant  is  indeed  as  famous  as  Shore  in  connection  with  the 
revenue  settlement.  But  Grant  had  but  little  practical  experience. 
His  reputation  has  come  from  his  wide  study  of  the  revenue  system, 
and  the  series  of  published  works  in  which  he  stated  the  results  of  his 
learning.  He  was  an  expert  rather  than  a  man  of  affairs.  As  saristadar 
he  had  unrivalled  opportunity  for  studying  revenue  records,  and 
Cornwallis  retained  the  office  of  saristadar  till  Grant  went  home  in 
1789.  But  in  making  important  decisions  he  preferred  men  of 
experience  to  men  of  learning.  After  Shore,  Cornwallis  therefore  put 
Jonathan  Duncan,  another  experienced  collector,  and  later  governor 
of  Bombay?  He  was  little  known  in  England  when  Cornwallis  arrived, 
but  "he  is  held  in  the  highest  estimation  by  every  man,  both  European 
and  native,  in  Bengal",  wrote  Cornwallis  in  1787,  "and,  next  to 
Mr  Shore,  was  more  capable  of  assisting  me,  particularly  in  revenue 
matters,  than  any  man  in  this  country".3  He  had,  said  Cornwallis  in 
1789,  "besides  good  health. .  .knowledge,  application,  integrity,  and 
temper",  the  last  "not  the  least  useful".4  Although  a  junior,  he 
was  recommended  by  Cornwallis  for  a  seat  on  the  council  as  early 
as  I788.5  And  in  the  last  stages  of  the  revenue  settlement  Cornwallis 
found  consolation  in  the  approval  of  Duncan  for  his  differences  with 
Shore  over  the  question  of  permanence. 

The  final  decision  in  that  matter  was  due,  however,  largely  to 
Charles  Grant.  When  Dundas  decided  to  support  Cornwallis  against 

1  Cornwallis  to  Dundas,  15  November,  1786.  Ross,  op.  cit.  i,  1227. 

2  Cornwallis  to  Court  of  Directors,  2  August,  1789.  Ross,  op.  cit.  i,  545. 
8  Cornwallis  to  Dundas,  14  August,  1787.  Ross,  op.  cit.  i,  271. 

*  Cornwallis  to  N.  Smith,  9  November,  1 789.  Ross,  op.  cit.  i,  449. 

*  Dundas  to  Cornwallis,  20  February,  1789.  Ross,  op.  cit.  i,  410-11. 

38-9 


436    BENGAL  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM,  1786-1818 

the  advice  of  Shore,  it  was  partly  at  least  owing  to  the  representations 
of  Charles  Grant.  He  had  no  personal  knowledge  of  revenue  matters, 
but  he  received  the  greatest  share  in  the  confidence  of  Cornwallis, 
and  had  given  him  invaluable  help  during  the  years  1786-90.  When 
Grant  sailed  for  home  in  1790  Cornwallis  recommended  Dundas  "to 
converse  with  him  frequently  upon  every  part  of  the  business  of  this 
Country",1  and  his  zeal  for  the  governor-general's  interests  gave  him 
considerable  influence  over  Dundas  during  the  years  1790-3.  James 
Grant  (a  cousin  of  Charles),2  like  Shore  and  Duncan,  specialised  on 
the  revenue  side.  But  Charles  Grant  was  the  chief  adviser  in  matters 
of  trade.  His  loss  "in  the  commercial  line",  wrote  Cornwallis  when 
he  left  India,  "is  irreparable".  He  had  been  secretary  to  the  Board 
of  Trade  in  the  time  of  Hastings  and  had  been  appointed  by  the 
board  in  1781  commercial  resident  at  Malda.  He  was  outstanding 
both  in  experience  and  integrity.  At  first,  at  least,  Cornwallis  thought 
him  the  only  honest  man  on  the  commercial  side8,  and  trusted  very 
largely  to  him  in  his  attempt  to  reform  that  branch  of  the  adminis- 
tration. In  this  work  Cornwallis  had  also  the  help  of  Charles  Stuart, 
member  of  council  and  president  of  the  Board  of  Trade  (1786-9). 
Stuart,  however,  never  gained  in  the  same  degree  the  confidence  of 
Cornwallis,  and  he  lacked  the  wide  commercial  experience  of  Charles 
Grant. 

In  his  judicial  work  Cornwallis  had  also  an  invaluable  adviser. 
Here  the  Company's  servants  could  be  of  but  limited  use.  Cornwallis 
took  full  advantage  of  their  experience  in  judicial  business,  but  their 
experience  was  relatively  small  and  they  lacked  expert  knowledge. 
Some  of  them — Charles  Grant  among  them — were  of  great  value  in 
carrying  out  reforms :  but  only  the  judges  could  help  in  devising  them. 
Cornwallis  was,  therefore,  fortunate  in  the  aid  of  Sir  Williajp  Jones,  an 
oriental  scholar  of  reputation  unrivalled  in  his  own  time,  and  a  man 
of  great  practical  ability,  who  had  devoted  many  years  to  the  study 
and  practice  of  the  law.  In  1783  he  had  come  to  India  as  judge  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  Judicature  at  Calcutta,  and  he  brought  to  his  task 
the  zeal  of  an  enthusiast,  and  the  knowledge  of  an  expert.  "A  good 
system  of  laws"  seemed  to  him  the  first  necessity  of  India;  and, 
following  the  lead  of  Hastings,  he  set  himself  to  this  end  to  codify  the 
existing  Hindu  and  Muhammadan  laws.  But  he  realised  also  the  need 
for  "due  administration"  and  a  "well-established  peace".  He  gave, 
therefore,  full  aid  to  Cornwallis  in  his  reform  of  the  judicial  adminis- 
tration and  in  the  regulation  of  the  police. 

Although  the  policy  that  Cornwallis  came  to  enforce  in  1786  was 
new,  it  was  not  wholly  new.  In  every  direction  Cornwallis  built 

1  Cornwallis  to  Dundas,  12  February,  1790.  Ross,  op.  cit.  i,  480. 

*  Firminger  (ed.),  Fifth  Report. .  .on  the  Affairs  of  the  East  India  Company..  .1812,  n, 
p.  xiv. 

*  Ross,  op.  cit.  I,  306. 


CORNWALLIS'S  CHARACTER  437 

on  foundations  already  laid  or  begun  to  be  laid  by  his  predecessors, 
and  especially  by  Hastings.  It  was  the  emphasis  rather  than  the 
principle  that  was  new;  but  the  principles  were  now  clearly  stated, 
and  the  strength  of  the  home  government  was  used  to  enforce  them. 
Every  aspect  of  reform  was  foreshadowed  in  the  work  or  in  the 
projects  of  Hastings,  and  hence  the  solidity  of  the  work  of  Cornwallis. 

Yet  even  when  all  allowance  has  been  made,  much  credit  must  be 
given  to  Cornwallis  himself.  Certainly  no  man  of  genius,  he  con- 
tributed no  new  ideas  to  the  work  he  undertook.  He  was  not  an 
expert  like  Jones  or  Grant,  nor  a  man  of  wide  experience  like  Shore. 
He  was  not  a  doctrinaire  like  Francis,  nor  an  inventive  genius  like 
Hastings.  He  was  content,  as  Hastings  had  never  been,  to  plead  a 
command  from  home  as  a  final  cause  for  decision,  and  this  respect 
for  authority  was  his  outstanding  characteristic.  But  in  spite  of  this 
he  possessed  great  qualities  and  stood  for  important  principles. 
Above  all,  he  was,  beyond  reproach,  upright  and  honest.  He  had 
not  to  fear  a  sudden  decline  in  favour;  he  had  no  pettiness  of  ambition; 
he  was  not  a  time-server;  and  he  left  behind  him  a  tradition  of  service 
which  was  of  lasting  value  in  Indian  administration.  Loyalty  and 
integrity  there  had  been  before,  but  it  was  a  loyalty  to  the  Company 
and  an  integrity  in  the  Company's  affairs.  Cornwallis  was  a  public 
servant  who  upheld  national  and  not  private  traditions.  His  service 
was  to  the  Crown  and  to  the  people  over  whom  he  ruled,  and  he  thus 
embodied  fitly  the  new  spirit  of  Indian  rule. 

To  this  invincible  honesty  and  desire  for  the  public  good,  he  added 
a  soldier's  sense  of  duty  to  his  superiors.  The  command  of  Dundas 
or  Pitt,  or  even  of  the  court  of  directors,  was  decisive  to  him.  He  had 
a  belief  in  the  possibilities  of  justice,  a  faith  in  the  standards  by  which 
conduct  would  be  judged  at  home.  He  was  determined  that  these 
standards 'should  not  be  lowered  in  India,  nor  overlaid  by  native 
practices.  To  secure  this  he  gave  the  higher  administrative  posts  to 
Englishmen,  and  he  was  always  loth  to  leave  real  responsibility  in  native 
hands.  Yet  he  was  wise  enough  to  see  that  this  was  not  enough: 
these  Englishmen  must  maintain  the  English  standards.  They  must 
be  appointed  and  promoted  for  merit,  not  by  patronage.  In  the 
interests  of  this  maxim  he  was  prepared  to  resist  the  recommendations 
of  all,  even  of  the  Prince  Regent  or  of  the  directors.  Lastly,  every 
deviation  from  honesty  must  be  rigorously  punished. 

This  is  the  system  Cornwallis  set  out  to  establish,  and  no  doubt 
because  it  was  practical  rather  than  ideal,  he  came  much  nearer  than 
most  Reformers  to  a  realisation  of  his  aims. 

When  Cornwallis  landed  in  Bengal  in  September,  1786,  important 
changes  in  administration  had  just  taken  place.  More  than  twenty 
years  of  experiment  had  gone  to  make  them,  and  the  recent  innovations 
were  rather  a  further  stage  in  experiment  than  a  final  reorganisation. 


438    BENGAL  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM,  1786-1818 

Much  of  the  work  of  Gornwallis  also  was  experimental  in  character, 
but  his  greatest  claim  to  importance  is  that  he  permanently  estab- 
lished some  features  of  administration. 

It  is  necessary  to  go  back  more  than  twenty  years  to  explain  the 
character  of  the  system  with  which  Cornwallis  dealt.  The  main  work 
of  the  Company  in  India  had  at  one  time  consisted,  like  that  of  any 
other  company  for  overseas  trade,  in  import  from  England  and 
export  home.  The  import  had  from  early  times  consisted  mainly  of 
specie,  so  that  the  most  burdensome  duty  of  the  Company's  servants 
was  the  provision  of  the  cargoes  for  England,  cargoes  for  the  most 
part  of  raw  silk,  wool,  cotton,  or  indigo;  in  other  words  the  "invest- 
ment". In  the  mid-eighteenth  century  the  import  of  specie  ceased: 
the  import  of  English  goods,  never  large,  was  still  comparatively 
small,  and  the  main  source  from  which  the  investment  was  provided 
— and  the  local  expenses  paid — was  the  territorial  revenue  of  Bengal. 

The  result  was  a  dual  system  of  administration.  The  management 
of  this  revenue  and  the  exercise  of  responsibilities  arising  from  it,  was 
one  branch  of  the  Company's  work;  the  provision  of  the  investment 
the  other.  Hastings  in  1785  had  written  of  the  division  between  "the 
general  and  commercial  departments".  The  Company's  servants  in 
all  parts  of  Bengal  wrote  to  Cornwallis  on  his  arrival  describing  their 
years  of  experience  in  the  "revenue"  or  the  "commercial  line".  The 
commercial  was  the  senior  branch,  but  the  revenue  line  was  already 
becoming  the  more  important. 

Since  1774  the  investment  had  been  under  the  supervision  of  the 
Board  of  Trade.  Originally  a  body  of  eleven  members,  very  im- 
perfectly controlled  by  the  Supreme  Council,  the  Board  of  Trade 
had  been  reorganised  in  May,  1786.  It  was  now  definitely  sub- 
ordinated to  the  Supreme  Council,  and  reduced  to  five  members. 
One  of  them,  the  president,  was  Charles  Stuart,  a  member  of  council. 
Under  the  board,  the  investment  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Company's 
servants  stationed  at  scattered  centres  in  Bengal.  The  chief "  residents  " 
at  the  various  stations  were  responsible  to  the  board  for  such  share  of 
the  investment  as  had  been  assigned  to  them.  In  dealing  with  it  they 
had  great  opportunities  for  good  or  evil  in  coming  into  contact  with 
the  people,  and  especially  they  had  valuable  and  recognised  facilities 
for  private  trade. 

From  the  time  of  the  board's  first  appointment  in  1774  it  had  been 
increasingly  the  practice  to  obtain  the  investment  by  a  series  of 
contracts.  At  first  these  contracts  were  generally  direct  with  Indian 
manufacturers  or  agents,  the  residents  merely  exercising  supei^ision 
over  them.  Since  1778,  however,  the  contracts  had  been  made  more 
frequently  with  the  Company's  servants  themselves.  So  a  resident 
at  one  of  the  Company's  stations  contracted  with  the  Board  of  Trade, 
and  then  obtained  the  goods  from  the  Indian  manufacturers  at  as  great 
profit  as  he  could  get.  This  system,  though  a  direct  breach  of  their 


THE  EXISTING  SYSTEM  439 

covenants  and  of  an  order  of  the  Company  of  1759,  was  none  the  less 
the  general  rule.  The  directors  were  so  complaisant  of  the  breach  that 
even  in  their  reform  proposals  of  1 786  they  did  not  think  that  it  was 
"necessary  to  exclude  our  servants  from  entering  into  contracts". 
Their  criticism  was  not  one  of  principle,  but  of  practice.  The  prices 
paid  were  high,  the  quality  of  the  goods  was  poor,  and  there  was  a 
general  feeling  that  corruption  and  oppression  were  frequent.  The 
reform  of  the  Board  of  Trade  and  the  commercial  establishment 
generally  was  one  of  the  first  tasks  of  Gornwallis. 

The  "general  department"  was  more  complicated  if  less  corrupt 
in  its  management  of  local  administration.  It  had  come  into  existence 
slowly  during  the  eighteenth  century,  and  bore  still  a  few  marks  of  its 
piecemeal  origin,  though  broadly  speaking  in  1786  there  was  one 
system  for  the  whole  province.  It  is  in  this  sphere  that  those  frequent 
changes  had  taken  place  which  the  directors  deprecated.  The  changes 
were  really  a  series  of  attempts,  on  the  "rule  of  false"  extolled  by 
Hastings,  to  reach  some  satisfactory  system  for  a  most  complicated  and 
varied  work. 

In  the  "general  department",  it  may  be  said  without  question, 
the  chief  concern  was  the  revenue,  and  the  second  the  administration 
of  civil  justice.  As  diwan  the  Company  was  responsible  for  both  these 
branches  of  administration.  Criminal  justice  was  outside  the  scope 
of  the  diwan,  although  the  Company  here  also  had  obtained  a  large 
measure  of  control.  One  of  the  results  of  the  work  of  Cornwallis  was 
that  before  he  left,  in  1793,  this  side  of  the  administrative  system  had 
definitely  bifurcated.  There  was  the  management  of  revenue  on  the 
one  side:  the  administration  of  civil  and  criminal  justice  on  the  other. 
But  this  involved  a  breach  with  historical  origins,  and  it  was  not 
achieved  until  1793. 

In  1786  the  chief  machinery  in  the  sphere  of  revenue  was  the  Board 
of  Revenue.  This  body  was  stationed  at  Calcutta,  and  before  Corn- 
wallis landed,  had  just  undergone  change,  like  the  Board  of  Trade. 
In  July,  1786,  at  the  instance  of  the  court  of  directors  it  had  received 
an  addition  to  its  existing  membership.  There  were  to  be,  as  pre- 
viously, four  members;  but  a  president  was  added,  who  must  be  a 
member  of  the  Supreme  Council.  The  president  appointed  in  1786 
was  John  Shore. 

The  work  of  the  revenue  administration  concerned  certain  main 
sources  of  revenue.  By  far  the  most  important  was  the  revenue  from 
land,  and  the  machinery  for  revenue  administration  had  grown  up 
mainly  in  connection  with  this.  There  was  also,  however,  the  sair 
revenue — from  customs  and  excise — and  the  revenues  from  the  opium 
contract  and  the  monopoly  of  salt.  In  1786  the  sair  revenue  was 
managed  by  the  same  agencies  as  the  revenue  from  land.  The  opium 
revenue  had  been  managed  ever  since  1 773  by  a  contract  with  certain 
Indians,  who  paid  a  royalty  to  the  Company.  In  1 785  the  contract 


440    BENGAL  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM,  1786-1818 

had  been  disposed  of  to  the  highest  bidder  on  a  four-years'  agreement. 
This  system  was,  therefore,  in  force  when  Cornwallis  arrived.  In 
connection  with  the  opium,  the  duties  of  the  Company's  servants, 
when  once  the  contract  had  been  let,  were  limited  to  a  general  right 
of  enquiry  to  prevent  the  oppression  of  the  cultivators.  The  monopoly 
of  salt  was  another  source  of  revenue.  Here  again  the  system  in  force 
was  at  one  time  one  of  contract.  But  in  1 780  Hastings  had  substituted 
a  system  of  European  agency.  A  number  of  the  Company's  servants 
were  employed  to  superintend  the  manufacture  and  sale  of  salt,  the 
price  being  fixed  annually  by  the  Supreme  Council.  Whereas,  there- 
fore, work  in  connection  with  the  sair  revenue  and  the  opium  contract 
was  undertaken  by  the  same  officers  as  those  of  the  land  revenue,  a 
small  separate  establishment,  responsible  directly  to  the  Supreme 
Council,  dealt  with  the  monopoly  of  salt. 

The  land  revenue  organisation  consisted,  under  the  Board  of 
Revenue,  of  a  number  of  the  Company's  servants,  known  already  as 
collectors.  Here  also  reorganisation  had  taken  place.1 

In  addition  to  the  collection  of  revenue,  and  of  the  information 
upon  which  the  assessment  was  made,  the  collectors,  like  the  zamin- 
dars,  had  originally  judicial  functions.  The  judicial  system,  however, 
like  the  revenue  administration,  had  been  the  subject  of  repeated 
experiments,  and  as  a  result,  when  Cornwallis  arrived,  the  work  of 
collecting  the  revenue  was  almost  wholly  divorced  from  that  of 
administering  justice.  Civil  justice  was  administered  in  local  civil 
courts  (diwanni  adalat)  presided  over  by  Company's  servants;  from 
them  appeal  lay  to  the  governor-general  in  council  in  the  capacity 
of  judges  of  the  sadr  diwanni  adalat.  For  criminal  cases  there  was 
again  a  separate  organisation.  Magisterial  powers  were  indeed  vested 
in  the  judges  of  the  civil  courts;  but  the  power  of  trial  and  punishment 
lay  in  district  courts  for  criminal  cases,  presided  over  by  Indian  judges. 
Appeal  lay  from  them  to  the  nizamat  adalat,  now  under  the  super- 
vision of  the  governor-general  in  council.  The  final  power,  therefore, 
in  civil  cases  directly,  and  in  criminal  cases  indirectly,  lay  with 
the  Supreme  Council,  but  the  local  courts  were  almost  every- 
where outside  the  control  of  the  Company's  collectors.  In  most 
districts  then  there  were  collectors  of  revenue,  judges  of  the  diwanni 
adalat,  and  in  some  also  commercial  residents,  all  of  them 
Company's  servants,  with  functions  in  many  particulars  defined 
rather  by  tradition  than  by  regulation;  all  of  them  in  the  minds 
of  critics  at  home  suspected  of  too  great  concentration  on  "private 
interests". 

In  1786,  Bengal  contained  all  the  pieces  that  were  to  form  the 
administrative  mosaic  of  British  India,  but  the  pattern  had  not  yet 
been  decided;  and  even  the  collector  was  not  yet  established  as  the 
centre-piece.  The  system  was  complicated,  illogical,  wasteful  and 

1  Cf.  pp.  417  sqq.  supra. 


THE  BOARD  OF  TRADE  441 

suspected  of  being  corrupt.   Cornwallis  had  justly  received  instruc- 
tions to  simplify,  to  purify  and  to  cheapen  the  administrative  system. 

In  a  letter  to  Cornwallis  of  12  April,  1786,  the  Secret  Committee 
pressed  on  him  the  urgency  of  removing  abuses  and  corruption  in 
the  Company's  service.  The  reforms  were  most  needed  in  the  com- 
mercial administration.  The  Board  of  Trade,  which  should  have 
acted  as  a  check,  was  suspected  of  collusion;  and  fraud  and  neglect 
went  alike  unpunished.  Cornwallis  was  directed  that  suits  should, 
if  necessary,  be  instituted  against  defrauding  officials,  and  that  they 
should  be  suspended  from  the  Company's  service. 

In  fact  the  task  of  Cornwallis  here,  as  in  the  question  of  revenues, 
was  two-fold.  He  had  to  cleanse  the  establishment  from  corruption, 
and  to  revise  the  system  into  which  the  corruption  had  grown.  It 
needed  only  a  few  weeks  to  convince  him  of  the  need  for  cleansing 
the  establishment;  there  would  be  no  lack  of  "legal  proofs"  of  both 
"corruption"  and  "shameful  negligence".  As  the  weeks  passed, 
information  poured  in  upon  him  as  to  the  methods  and  difficulties 
of  the  trade.  Requisitions  were  sent  to  the  commercial  residents 
for  accounts,  stretching  back  in  some  cases  over  twenty  years.  In 
October,  Cornwallis  summoned  Charles  Grant  from  Malda  to 
Calcutta,  to  obtain  his  information  and  advice. 

In  January,  1787,  Cornwallis  was  ready  to  act.  He  informed  a 
number  of  contractors  and  members  of  the  Board  of  Trade  that  bills 
in  equity  would  be  filed  against  them ;  pending  judgment  the  sus- 
pected persons  were  suspended  from  office.1  The  result  was  the 
dismissal  of  several  of  the  Company's  servants,  including  members  of 
the  old  Board  of  Trade.  The  directors  urged  further  enquiries,2  but 
Cornwallis  had  confidence  in  the  effect  of  these  examples,  and  a 
stricter  system  of  surveillance  for  the  future. 

Meanwhile  he  was  taking  measures  to  build  up  the  system  anew. 
In  January,  he  had  appointed  Charles  Grant  as  fourth  member  of 
the  Board  of  Trade,  and  with  his  help  set  himself  to  collect  informa- 
tion upon  which  to  base  a  revision  of  the  commercial  system.  Already 
he  had  decided  on  a  change.  Instead  of  contracts  with  the  commercial 
residents  and  others,  he  revived  the  system  of  agency  by  the  commercial 
residents.  It  was  possible,  as  yet,  to  introduce  the  new  plan  only 
partially,  but  "in  all  practicable  instances"  it  was  adopted  even  for 
the  1787  investments.  By  the  end  of  1788  Cornwallis  thought  the 
trial  had  been  sufficiently  long,  and  definitely  adopted  the  agency 
system.  The  decision  was  typical  of  the  early  period  of  Cornwallis' s 
reforms.  His  experience  of  the  culpability  of  the  Company's  servants 
did  not  prejudice  him  against  their  employment.  He  did  not  feel 
justified,  he  told  the  directors,  in  laying  down  "at  the  outset  as  a 

1  Ross,  op.  cit.  i,  242. 

*  P.R.O.,  Cornwallis  Papers,  Packet  xvm.  Charles  Stuart  to  Cornwallis,  18  August,  1 787. 


442     BENGAL  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM,  1786-1818 

determined  point,  that  fidelity  was  not  to  be  expected  from  your 
servants".  He  preferred  to  try  the  effect  of  "open  and  reasonable 
compensation  for  honest  service",  and  believed  that  many  would 
prefer  this  to  "concealed  emolument",  if  it  could  be  obtained.  So 
in  the  new  system  he  made  the  commercial  residents  the  representa- 
tives of  the  Company  in  the  direct  control  of  the  investment.  They 
were  responsible  to  the  Board  of  Trade,  but  even  so,  their  own 
responsibilities  were  great.  They  were  to  arrange  the  prices  with  the 
manufacturers,  to  make  the  necessary  advances  to  them,  to  receive 
from  them  the  goods  produced,  and  to  supervise  the  carrying  out  of 
the  work.  The  residents  were  to  be  paid  adequately  by  a  commission 
on  the  investments  passing  through  their  hands.  There  was  to  be  no 
prohibition  of  private  trade,  for  it  could  not  be  enforced,  and  in  such 
circumstances  "to  impose  restraints. .  .would  not  remove  supposed 
evils,  but  beget  new  ones". 

The  new  system  was  enforced  by  strict  regulations  issued  as  early 
as  March,  1 787.  There  was  to  be  no  oppression  of  the  Indian  producer, 
or  the  Indian  or  foreign  trader.  It  had  been  the  former  practice  to 
prevent  weavers,  working  for  the  Company,  from  undertaking  any 
other  work.  This  system,  which  had  tended  to  squeeze  out  all  Indian 
trade,  was  now  revoked,  and  it  was  required  only  that  work  should 
be  executed  in  the  order  of  the  advances  received  for  it.  Cornwallis, 
indeed,  looked  to  the  resident  for  the  protection  of  the  Indian  workers. 
These  commercial  servants  came  into  closer  contact  with  the  people 
than  did  the  collectors  of  reveniue,  and,  therefore,  acted  as  "useful 
barriers"  to  the  oppression  of  Indian  farmers  or  zamindars. 

The  bad  season  of  1788-9  was  a  severe  trial  to  the  new  system, 
but  Cornwallis  held  that  it  had  "stood  the  test".  From  this  time  he 
made  no  material  change  in  its  organisation.  The  investment,  he 
wrote  in  1789,  "is  now  reasonably  and  intelligently  purchased,  and 
delivered  to  the  Government  at  its  real  cost".  From  the  commercial 
standpoint,  this  was  what  had  so  long  been  wanted.  Characteristic- 
ally, he  went  further,  and  foresaw  the  spread  downwards,  "through 
the  wide  chain  of  the  natives"  connected  with  trade,  of  the  new 
"principle  of  integrity ";  and,  as  he  said,  "the  establishment  of  such 
a  principle  must. .  .be  regarded  as  a  solid  good  of  the  highest  kind",1 
If  the  system  did  not  prove  to  have  so  wide  an  effect  as  this,  it  was 
justified  in  its  more  immediate  results,  and  the  system  for  conducting 
the  Company's  trade  which  Cornwallis  set  up  was  not  materially 
altered  after  him.  These  reforms,  therefore,  were  among  the  lasting 
achievements  of  Cornwallis. 

While  Stuart  and  Grant  on  the  Board  of  Trade  were  reforming  the 
commercial  side,  a  similar  process  was  being  applied  to  the  adminis- 
tration of  revenue  and  justice.  Here  the  chief  instrument  and  adviser 

1  I.O.  Records, Bengal  Letters  Received,  xxvm,  310.  Letter  dated  i  August,  1789. 


REVENUE  REFORMS,  1787  443 

of  Cornwallis  was  John  Shore.  Already  a  member  of  the  Supreme 
Council  and  the  Board  of  Revenue,  he  was  appointed  president  of  the 
Board  of  Revenue  in  January,  1 787,  and  was  largely  responsible  for 
the  character  of  the  changes. 

The  preceding  reforms,  under  Macpherson,  had  created  thirty-five 
revenue  districts,  each  under  a  European  collector.  This  officer  was 
the  real  authority  in  revenue  matters  in  the  district.  For  a  post  of 
such  importance  his  salary  was  ludicrously  small,  only  1200  rupees 
per  month.  The  collectors  were  "almost  all",  Cornwallis  said,  "in 
collusion  with  some  relative  or  friend  engaged  in  commerce",  and  it 
was  suspected  that  even  less  honourable  means  were  sometimes  used. 
The  reforms  in  relation  to  the  collector  aimed  at  three  things: 
economy,  simplification  and  purification.  In  the  interests  of  economy, 
the  number  of  districts  was  to  be  reduced;  in  the  interests  of  both 
economy  and  simplification,  the  divorce  of  revenue  from  justice  was 
to  cease;  in  the  interests  of  purification  adequate  payment  was  to 
obviate  the  need  for  illicit  gains. 

Rumours  of  these  changes  were  current  as  early  as  January,  1787, 
but  it  was  not  until  March  (the  end  of  the  Bengal  year)  that  definite 
steps  were  taken.  Then,  in  accordance  with  a  scheme  drawn  up  by 
the  Board  of  Revenue,  the  number  of  districts  was  reduced  to  twenty- 
three;  a  reduction  that  brought  down  upon  Cornwallis  the  protests 
of  the  dispossessed.  At  the  same  time,  preparations  were  made  for  a 
second  change:  the  union  of  revenue  and  judicial  duties.  In  February 
a  preliminary  investigation  was  made.  By  June  it  was  complete,  and 
regulations  were  issued  to  enforce  it.  The  collectors  were  given  once 
more  the  office  of  judge  of  the  courts  of  diwanni  adalat.  In  this 
capacity  they  dealt  with  civil  cases,  appeal  lying  for  the  more  im- 
portant to  the  sadr  diwanni  adalat.  To  relieve  the  collector,  an  Indian 
"register"  was  attached  to  each  court  to  try  cases  up  to  200  rupees. 
The  courts  were  prohibited  from  dealing  with  revenue  cases,  these 
being  reserved  for  the  Board  of  Revenue.  At  the  same  time  (27  June, 
1787)  the  collectors  were  also  given  powers  in  criminal  justice.  The 
authority  of  the  magistrates  was  increased  and  conferred  on  the 
collectors.  They  now  had  power,  not  merely  of  arrest,  but  of  hearing 
and  deciding  cases  of  affray,  and  of  inflicting  punishments  up  to 
certain  prescribed  limits.  The  trial  of  more  important  cases  lay  still 
with  the  Indian  courts,  and  appeal  lay  with  the  nizamat  adalat  at 
Murshidabad. 

The  new  collectors  had,  therefore,  larger  districts  and  far  greater 
powers,  for  with  the  exception  of  the  fifteen  commercial  residents  they 
were  the  only  instruments  of  the  Company's  authority  in  the  districts. 
It  was  an  essential  feature  of  the  scheme  that  they  should  be  ade- 
quately paid.  "For  if  all  chance  of  saving  any  money. .  .without 
acting  dishonestly,  is  removed,  there  will  be  an  end  of  my  reforma- 
tion." And  so,  instead  of  the  1 200  rupees  per  month  formerly  received, 


444     BENGAL  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM,  1786-1818 

they  were  now  to  have  a  salary  of  1500.  But  this  was  to  be  regarded 
as  "the  means  of  subsistence".  "In  the  nature  of  reward"  they  had 
a  commission  on  the  revenue  they  collected.  Fixed  at  an  average 
rate  of  "rather  short  of  i  per  cent,  on  the  actual  collections",  it 
varied  according  to  the  size  of  their  charge.  For  the  largest  collector- 
ship — Burdwan — the  amount  expected  to  be  realised  was  27,500 
rupees  per  annum.  The  collectors  were  provided  further  with  adequate 
assistance.  Two  European  assistants  were  given  to  each  district:  the 
first  to  receive  500  rupees  per  month  and  the  other  400.  Where  a 
third  was  necessary  he  should  receive  300.  So  rewarded,  the  collectors 
were  forbidden,  by  letter  of  1 8  July,  1787,  directly  or  indirectly  to 
enter  upon  trade.  In  their  case,  unlike  that  of  the  commercial 
residents,  breach  of  this  rule  could  easily  be  detected;  and  Cornwallis, 
therefore,  did  not  hesitate  to  assert  it. 

With  these  changes  the  more  fundamental  reforms  in  the  ad- 
ministrative system  were  for  the  time  complete,  and  Cornwallis  was 
able  to  issue  detailed  regulations  covering  all  sides  of  the  collectors' 
work.  By  the  regulations  of  July  details  of  establishment  and  pro- 
cedure were  prescribed  and  rules  laid  down  to  govern  the  action  of 
the  collectors  in  their  judicial  and  magisterial  functions. 

Later  changes  elaborated  and  extended  what  had  already  been 
done.  Instructions  to  collectors  in  November,  1788,  further  defined 
their  duties,  and  finally  these  were  consolidated  in  a  code  of  8  June, 
1789.  It  was  required  that  henceforth  all  the  Company's  servants 
must  belong  definitely  either  to  the  revenue  or  the  commercial  line. 
At  the  time  this  aimed  at  greater  efficiency,  but  it  was  important 
later  as  facilitating  the  change  that  came  when  the  Company  lost 
its  monopoly  of  trade. 

In  May,  1790,  still  more  functions  were  added  to  the  collectors. 
The  trial  of  revenue  cases  took  up  too  much  time  at  the  Board  of 
Revenue  and  arrears  and  delays  resulted.  New  local  courts  were 
instituted — courts  of  mal  adalat — presided  over  like  the  local  civil 
courts  by  the  collector.  From  these  new  courts  appeal  lay  to  the 
council.  This  change  marks  the  culmination  of  the  collector's  power. 
Later  Cornwallis  realised  that  he  had  gone  too  far;  hence  the 
revolution  of  1793. 

In  the  years  1788-90  the  most  important  work  lay  in  the  sphere 
of  criminal  justice.  Here  it  was  soon  clear  that  the  reforms  of  1787 
had  removed  only  part  of  the  abuses.  In  this  matter  Cornwallis 
proceeded  cautiously,  being  far  less  certain,  than  in  the  case  of 
revenue  administration  and  civil  justice,  that  he  knew  the  cause  of 
the  defect.  An  enquiry  from  the  magistrates  set  on  foot  in  November, 
1 789,  confirmed  the  rumours  of  defective  justice.  The  reports  suggested 
two  main  causes  for  the  evils.  There  were  defects  in  the  Muhammadan 
law,  as  judged  by  English  ideas  of  justice;  and  there  were  defects  in 
the  constitution  of  the  courts.  Both  must  be  remedied.  The  first  was 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  445 

a  difficult  matter.  Upon  the  question  of  authority  Cornwallis  had  no 
misgiving.  The  difficulty  was  one  of  knowledge,  and  it  was  necessary 
to  go  forward  slowly.  Certain  changes  were  embodied  in  the  reso- 
lution of  3  December,  1790;  others  were  left  over  until  further 
advance  had  been  made  in  the  researches  of  Sir  William  Jones. 

Upon  the  side  of  administration  (the  remedying  of  the  defects  in 
the  constitution  of  the  courts)  the  reforms  of  3  December,  1790, 
proceeded  on  the  principles  which  Cornwallis  followed  in  other 
matters.  The  system  of  1787  left  the  control  of  criminal  justice  largely, 
though  not  wholly,  in  Indian  hands.  From  Muhammad  Reza  Khan, 
who^  presided  over  the  chief  criminal  court  (nizamat  adalat)  at 
Murshidabad,  to  the  judges  of  the  provincial  courts,  the  adminis- 
tration of  justice  lay  in  Indian  hands.  The  ultimate  control  of  the 
governor-general  in  council  (an  authority  difficult  to  exercise)  and 
the  magisterial  functions  of  the  collectors  alone  represented  the  Euro- 
pean share  in  this  branch  of  administration.  "I  conceive",  Corn- 
wallis wrote  on  2  August,  1789,  "that  all  regulations  for  the  reform 
of  that  department  would  be  useless  and  nugatory  whilst  the  execu- 
tion of  them  depends  upon  any  native  whatever . . . ." x  "  We  ought  not, 
I  think",  he  wrote  in  his  minute  of  3  December,  "to  leave  the  future 
control  of  so  important  a  branch  of  government  to  the  sole  discretion 
of  any  Native,  or,  indeed,  of  any  single  person  whosoever."  To 
remedy  this  Muhammad  Reza  Khan  was  deprived  of  his  office.  The 
nizamat  adalat  was  again  moved  from  Murshidabad  to  Calcutta. 
In  the  place  of  Muhammad  Reza  Khan  as  sole  judge,  the  governor- 
general  and  the  members  of  his  Supreme  Council  presided  over  the 
court,  expert  knowledge  being  provided  by  Indian  advisers. 

The  same  distrust  of  Indian  agencies  was  seen  in  the  reorganisation 
of  the  provincial  courts.  In  the  place  of  the  local  courts  in  each 
district,  with  their  native  darogas,  four  courts  of  circuit  were  estab- 
lished. Over  each  of  them  two  covenanted  civil  servants  presided, 
assisted  again  by  Indian  advisers.  These  courts  were  to  sit  at  Calcutta, 
Murshidabad,  Dacca,  and  Patna,  but  they  were  to  make  tours  twice 
a  year  through  their  divisions.  Lastly,  the  magisterial  duties  of  the 
collectors  were  increased.  These  duties  were  again  set  forth  in  detail: 
the  most  important  additions  to  them  being  the  custody  of  prisoners 
confined  under  sentence  or  for  trial  and  the  superintendence  of  the 
execution  of  sentences  passed  by  the  courts  of  circuit. 

The  reforms  of  criminal,  like  those  of  civil  justice,  then,  added  new 
powers  to  the  collector.  This  was,  however,  only  one  aspect  of  the 
general  principle  underlying  a  number  of  the  changes  of  Cornwallis, 
the  substitution  of  an  English  for  an  Indian  agency.  Despite  the  need 
for  purification  in  all  branches  of  the  Company's  service,  and  the 
candid  recognition  which  Cornwallis  gave  to  it,  he  seems  to  have  been 
persuaded  of  the  need  for  further  encroachments  by  Europeans.  In 

1  I.O.  Records,  Bengal  Letters  Received,  xxvm,  274.  Letter  of  2  August,  1789. 


446    BENGAL  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM,  1786-1818 

the  sphere  of  criminal  justice  he  had,  indeed,  an  important  justifica- 
tion. Although  the  actual  changes  were  cautiously  made,  there  seems 
no  doubt  that  he  aimed  ultimately  at  bringing  the  law  administered 
into  line  with  that  of  England.  Such  an  aim  was  irreconcilable  with 
the  continuance  of  Indian  administration.  The  appointment  of 
English  judges,  therefore,  paved  the  way  for  the  modification  of  the 
laws,  and  this  intention  is  clearly  revealed  in  Cornwallis's  minute  of 
3  December,  1790. 

The  work  of  reorganising  the  district  system  of  the  province  was 
in  part  accomplished  piece  by  piece  during  the  reform  of  1786-7, 
and  was  systematically  reviewed  after  that  reform  was  complete.  This 
systematic  examination  embraced  all  parts  of  the  service,  central  and 
local.  The  greatest  changes  were  those  carried  out  at  headquarters' 
offices.  Even  here,  however,  a  measure  of  reform  had  already  taken 
place  before  Cornwallis  arrived.  Business  had  been  divided  between 
the  public,  secret  and  commercial  departments,  and  the  secretarial 
work  and  correspondence  reorganised  accordingly.  In  the  secret 
department  there  was  already  a  section  engaged  on  the  reform  of 
the  establishment,  and  early  in  1 786  this  had  been  regularised  as  a 
sub-department  of  reform.  Its  work  was  to  carry  out  the  decisions 
of  the  Supreme  Council,  when  it  met  to  deal  with  reform  business. 

This  system  was  continued  unchanged  by  Cornwallis  until  the 
beginning  of  1788.  Then  the  "Secret  Department  of  Reform"  was 
reorganised  as  the  "Secret  and  Separate  Department  of  Reform", 
and  it  was  required  that  the  Supreme  Council  should  set  aside  one 
day  a  week  for  the  examination  of  the  state  of  the  public  offices.  The 
result  was  a  thorough  overhauling  of  the  machinery,  completed  by 
January,  1789.  The  most  business-like  procedure  was  followed. 
Before  the  actual  changes  were  prescribed,  rules  upon  which  they 
were  to  be  based  were  drawn  up.  The  number  of  offices  was  to  be  as 
few  as  possible;  the  establishment  proportionate  to  the  work  done; 
the  salaries  paid  were  to  be  adequate,  but  no  unauthorised  gains  should 
be  made;  all  principal  offices  were  to  be  held  by  Company's  servants, 
and  no  servant  should  hold  office  under  two  different  departments. 
So  far  as  was  compatible  with  these  principles  there  was  to  be  the 
strictest  economy.1 

Considerable  changes  were  necessary  to  enforce  these  principles. 
There  were  at  the  time  three  main  departments,  the  general  (or 
public)  department  (i.e.  civil,  military  and  marine),  the  revenue 
department,  and  the  commercial.  Within  these  the  duties  of  all 
authorities  were  prescribed.  In  some  cases  all  that  was  required  was 
a  restatement  of  reforms  already  carried  out.  The  secretariat  had  been 

1  An  account  of  the  reforms  is  given  in  I.O.  Records,  Home  Miscellaneous  Series, 
vol.  CCGLIX.  See  also  the  report  of  Cornwallis  to  the  directors,  Bengal  Letters  Received, 
vol.  xxvii ;  letter  of  9  January,  1789. 


THE  SECRETARIAT  447 

reorganised  in  July,  1787,  there  being  henceforth  one  secretary- 
general  with  three  assistants,  instead  of  two  joint  secretaries.  The 
establishment  of  the  revenue  department  had  already  been  the 
subject  of  a  number  of  changes,  and  that  of  the  commercial  had  been 
thoroughly  overhauled.  The  changes  made,  therefore,  in  departments 
were  of  minor  importance.  In  the  revenue  department  regulations 
were  issued  regarding  the  treatment  of  Company's  servants  when  out 
of  employment,  and  the  office  of  saristadar  was  marked  out  for 
abolition  when  James  Grant  should  cease  to  hold  it.  In  the  commer- 
cial department  little  change  was  made,  save  a  regulation  that 
henceforth  the  posts  of  export  and  import  warehousekeepers  should 
no  longer  be  held  by  members  of  the  Board  of  Trade.  In  other 
branches  the  changes  were  more  radical.  The  treasury,  the  pay- 
master's office,  and  the  accountant-general's  office  were  all  reformed ; 
the  duties  of  the  Khalsa  (the  exchequer)  defined;  the  establishment  of 
the  customs  reduced.  New  regulations  were  prescribed  for  the  postal 
service.  A  detailed  examination  was  made  of  the  inferior  servants 
employed  on  the  staffs  of  all  the  headquarters'  offices,  and  the  whole 
system  regulated.  For  each  department  a  special  list  of  rules  for  the 
conduct  of  business  was  drawn  up,  defining  the  duties  to  be  carried 
out  and  the  restrictions  placed  on  the  actions  of  their  members.  The 
regulations  on  these  matters  were  among  the  lasting  achievements  of 
Cornwallis.  For,  although  the  increase  in  business  of  later  years 
necessitated  further  elaboration  of  the  machinery,  the  later  changes 
did  not  affect  the  main  structure. 

By  January,  1789,  much  of  the  preliminary  work  of  Cornwallis  was 
over.  He  was  still,  it  is  true,  in  the  midst  of  overhauling  the  systems  of 
civil  and  criminal  justice.  The  end  of  the  first  stage  of  reform  in  these 
departments  did  not  come  until  his  resolutions  of  3  December,  1790. 
But  the  system  of  the  investment  was  settled,  and  the  purification  of 
the  civil  service  complete.  In  1 789-90,  side  by  side  with  the  comple- 
tion of  the  judicial  reforms  went  the  revenue  settlement.  In  this  he 
had  been  most  cautious,  despite  the  definite  orders  from  home. 
A  year  of  experiment  sufficed  to  decide  the  method  of  the  investment, 
but,  in  the  matter  of  land  revenue  as  in  that  of  the  administration 
of  justice,  it  was  desirable  to  go  warily,  and  to  examine  fully  the 
evidence  before  any  irrevocable  step  was  taken.  Hence  the  annual 
settlement  of  1 787  was  followed  by  another  in  1 788  and  yet  another 
in  1789;  it  was  not  until  the  end  of  1789  and  the  first  weeks  of  1790 
that  the  final  decision  was  made. 

When  Cornwallis  landed  in  1786  the  question  was  already  the 
subject  of  vigorous  debate.  The  land  system  of  Bengal  was  a  difficult 
one  for  Europeans  to  understand ;  and  under  the  alternative  influence 
of  Grant  and  Shore,  the  old  Committee  and  the  new  Board  of  Revenue 
had  taken  opposite  views  on  its  character.  The  old  Committee  of 


448    BENGAL  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM,  1786-1818 

Revenue,  under  the  influence  of  Grant,  argued  that  the  state  was  in 
legal  conception  the  owner  of  the  land.  It  was,  therefore,  open  to  the 
government  to  use  either  the  zamindar  or  any  other  farmer  as  the 
agent  for  collecting  revenue.  Nor  were  they  bound  to  definite  limits 
in  the  amount  of  their  exactions.  The  zamindar  was  an  official  rather 
than  a  landowner.  The  opposing  theory,  which  was  maintained  by 
the  new  Board  of  Revenue  under  the  influence  of  Shore,  was  that  the 
zamindar  was  the  legal  owner  of  the  land,  and  the  state  was  entitled 
only  to  a  customary  revenue  from  him.  If  this  was  right,  a  settlement 
through  the  zamindar  was  the  only  right  one.  But  although  the  debate 
was  vigorous,  the  issue,  from  the  point  of  view  of  Gornwallis,  was 
already  settled.  The  act  of  parliament  of  1 784  and  the  instructions 
of  the  directors  had  decided  for  the  zamindar.  This  indeed  Grant 
himself  had  recognised  before  the  arrival  of  Cornwallis;  for  the  office 
of  saristadar  which  he  had  accepted  had  no  meaning  save  under  a 
zamindari  system. 

The  rival  views,  however,  influenced  materially  the  question  of  the 
amount  and  duration  of  the  settlement.  On  Grant's  theory  the  amount 
of  the  revenue  was  limited  only  by  the  productivity  of  the  land.  As 
a  result  of  his  investigations  he  had  concluded  that  this  limit  had 
never  been  approached  since  the  Company  obtained  the  diwanni. 
He  recommended,  therefore,  that  the  basis  taken  should  be  the  assess- 
ment of  1 765 ;  but  insisted  that  considerable  further  examination  of 
local  conditions  must  be  made  before  any  settlement  was  concluded. 
This  with  less  learning  but  more  experience,  and  with  far  greater 
clarity,  was  refuted  by  Shore  in  his  minutes  of  1 8  June  and  18  Sep- 
tember, 1789.  According  to  Shore,  not  only  was  Grant  wrong  in 
his  conception  of  the  status  of  the  zamindar  (to  Cornwallis,  if  not  to 
Shore  and  Grant,  only  of  theoretic  interest)  but  in  his  estimate  of  the 
yield  of  the  land.  Against  the  Moghul  assessment,  of  1765,  Shore 
proposed  as  a  basis  the  actual  collection  by  zamindars  and  farmers 
in  recent  years.  Only  by  careful  examination  could  this  be  ascer- 
tained. 

From  the  beginning,  Cornwallis  preferred  Shore  to  Grant  as  his 
adviser  in  revenue  matters.  While  their  discussions  were  taking  place, 
he  was  making  experiments  in  revenue  assessment  with  the  help  of 
Shore,  and  collecting  materials  upon  which  a  lasting  system  could 
be  based.  In  January,  1 787,  Shore  took  his  place  as  president  of  the 
Board  of  Revenue :  in  February  the  board  began  its  work  of  making 
preparation  for  a  revenue  settlement  "for  a  long  term  of  years".1 

The  board  passed  on  its  instructions  to  the  collectors.  The  work 
took  longer  than  Cornwallis  expected,  and  it  was  not  until  the  end 
of  1789  that  all  the  required  reports  were  received.  It  was  at  this 
point  that  Cornwallis  left  his  wise  caution,  and  threw  aside  the  counsel 
both  of  Grant  and  Shore.  Unlike  them  he  held  that  there  was  now 

1  Ross,  op.  cit.  I,  541. 


THE  DECENNIAL  SETTLEMENT  449 

sufficient  information  to  warrant  a  settlement  not  merely  for  ten 
years  but  for  perpetuity.  Against  this  Shore  and  Grant  protested. 
Permanence  was  unjustified,  according  to  Shore,  without  a  survey, 
or,  according  to  Grant,  without  an  exhaustive  study  of  the  records. 
Cornwallis,  however,  had  the  approval  of  Duncan,  and  the  support 
of  Shore's  fellow-counsellor,  Stuart.  He  had,  further,  his  instructions 
to  justify  him,  and  with  him  these  were  final.  He  decided  therefore 
provisionally  for  perpetuity,  referring  the  matter  home  for  ultimate 
decision.  At  the  end  of  1  790,  in  Bengal,  the  collectors  were  circular- 
ised with  instructions  to  carry  out  the  settlement.  A  proclamation 
of  10  February,  1790,  announced  the  ten-years'  settlement  with 
zamindars  and  other  landholders  ;  the  settlement  to  be  made  perpetual 
if  the  home  government  should  authorise  it. 

The  settlement  gave  great  and  undefined  powers  to  the  zamindars, 
and  Cornwallis  has  been  criticised  severely  for  his  disregard  of  the 
interests  of  the  ryots.  But  he  was  not  indifferent  to  the  possibilities 
of  oppression.  The  lesser  landholders,  the  talukdars,  were  to  be  dealt 
with  separately  whenever  they  were  "the  actual  proprietors  of  the 
lands".  Whereas  in  many  cases  formerly  the  zamindars  had  collected 
revenue  from  them,  henceforth  they  were  to  be  exempt  from  such 
control,  and  pay  their  revenues  immediately  to  the  public  treasury 
of  the  district.  In  some  districts  of  Bengal  where  the  number  of  petty 
landholders  was  great  the  collectors  were  directed  to  appoint  Indian 
assistants,  tahsildars,  as  was  already  the  practice  in  Bihar.  The 
zamindars,  therefore,  were  to  be  confirmed  in  the  tenure  of  what  was 
looked  upon  as  their  own  land  :  but  not  in  their  position  as  collectors 
for  other  landholders.  The  principle  of  settlement  with  the  "actual 
proprietors  of  the  soil"  enjoined  by  the  directors  was  thus  observed, 
in  accordance  with  their  interpretation  of  the  term  proprietor. 

For  the  protection  of  the  ryots  Cornwallis  looked  to  the  local  control 
of  the  collectors,  reinforced  by  information  from  the  commercial 
residents.  No  specific  measures  for  their  protection  accompanied  the 
Decennial  Settlement,  save  the  abolition  of  the  sair  duties  of  1790. 
These  incidents  were  collected  by  the  zamindar,  and  it  was  held  that 
the  only  way  to  avoid  oppression  was  to  abolish  all  duties  so  collected, 
In  1792  by  resolution  of  the  Supreme  Council,  and  in  1793  by  regu- 
lation, the  zamindar's  authority  over  his  under-tenants  was  further 
limited. 

The  settlement  thus  completed  was,  it  is  clear,  in  the  mind  of 
Cornwallis  a  means  to  an  important  end.  Until  such  a  settlement 
was  made  "the  constitution  of  our  internal  government  in  the  coj 
will  never  take  that  form  which  alone  can  lead  to  the 
of  good  laws,  and  ensure  a  due  administration  of  them".  ' 
Council  and  the  Company's  servants  must  alike  be 
"unremitted  application"  to  revenue  business.  HencjBbrth/Tt  would 
be  possible  for  the  servants  "of  the  first  abilities 


cmv 


450    BENGAL  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM,  1786-1818 

established  integrity"  to  attend  first  to  other  work.1  In  the  mind  of 
Cornwallis  the  administration  of  justice  was  of  greater  importance 
than  that  of  revenue.  Perhaps  he  did  not  realise  how  closely  revenue 
administration,  like  that  of  trade,  was  bound  up  with  the  welfare 
of  the  people.  Other  reasons  also  were  advanced — above  all  the 
encouragement  it  would  give  to  the  development  of  the  land  and  the 
reclamation  of  the  waste — but  the  fact  that  it  would  make  possible 
better  judicial  administration  seems  the  final  factor.  With  such 
explanations,  therefore,  the  ten-years'  settlement  was  sent  home  for 
the  decision  of  the  point  of  difference  between  Cornwallis  and  Shore. 
At  the  end  of  1 789  Shore  left  Bengal  for  England,  so  the  authorities 
at  home  could  consult  him  if  they  wished. 

The  completion  of  the  Decennial  Settlement  took  longer  than 
Cornwallis  had  expected.  It  was  not  until  the  autumn  of  1791  that 
a  full  code  of  regulations  could  be  issued :  and  in  some  districts  the 
system  did  not  come  into  force  until  nearly  two  more  years  had  passed. 

By  the  end  of  1 790,  however,  the  final  arrangements  were  in  sight, 
and  Cornwallis  fully  intended  to  return  home  at  the  beginning  of 
the  next  year.  He  was  well  satisfied  with  his  work.  He  had  laid  the 
basis  of  a  sound  system  by  his  administrative  purification;  his  reforms 
of  justice,  of  revenue,  and  of  trade  had  gone  far  enough  to  show  the 
character  of  the  structure  which  he  had  planned.  What  was  now 
needed  was  to  carry  out  schemes  already  started;  and  to  maintain 
the  principles  of  no  patronage,  and  no  corruption :  and  further  to 
develop  the  judicial  and  administrative  systems.  But  from  the  autumn 
of  1790  until  June,  1792,  he  was  absorbed  in  the  Mysore  War.  Then 
he  had  fifteen  months  of  peace,  till  he  left  for  home  in  October,  1793. 

These  last  years,  however,  saw  the  culmination  of  his  work  in 
several  directions.  They  were  the  years  of  the  proclamation  of  the 
Permanent  Settlement  of  the  land  revenue,  and  of  the  promulgation 
of  comprehensive  regulations  regarding  the  police  system. 

Of  the  first  it  is  not  necessary  to  say  much.  The  minute  of  10 
February,  1 790,  announcing  the  Decennial  Settlement,  had  contem- 
plated its  transformation  into  one  for  perpetuity.  A  perpetual 
settlement  had  formally  been  promised  "provided  such  continuance 
should  meet  with  the  approbation  of  the. .  .court. .  .of  directors. . . 
and  not  otherwise".  The  decision  lay  therefore  with  the  Court  of 
Directors  and  the  Board  of  Control.  The  answer  came  in  a  letter  from 
the  court  of  29  August,  1792.  But  the  decision  had  been  reached  by 
the  board.  Dundas  waited  for  a  year,  fully  conscious  of  the  import- 
ance of  the  matter,  and  in  the  end  he  went  to  Pitt  for  the  decision* 
At  Pitt's  house  in  Wimbledon  they  went  into  the  details  and  the 
principles  of  the  plan,  for  ten  days,  and  Charles  Grant  (the  commercial 
adviser  of  Cornwallis)  was  with  them  "a  great  part  of  the  time". 

A  Minute  by  Cornwallis,  10  February,  1790.  Printed  ap.  Ross,  op.  dt.  n,  459-74. 


THE  PERMANENT  SETTLEMENT  451 

They  decided  in  favour  of  permanence.  In  principle  the  matter  was 
prejudged;  for  the  idea  of  permanence  lay  behind  the  agitation  of  the 
'eighties.  But  respect  for  Shore  made  Dundas  hesitate;  and  he  and 
Pitt  seem  to  have  been  genuinely  undecided  in  1791. 
f  The  authorisation  reached  Cornwallis  in  1 793,  and  the  change  was 
immediately  announced  by  proclamation  (22  March).  All  that 
remained  therefore  was  to  watch  the  working  out  of  this  contested 
system.  So  far  the  full  effect  had  not  been  seen.  Some  of  the  dangers 
of  the  system  were,  however,  apparent  in  the  frequent  sales  of  zamin- 
dari  estates  and  in  the  oppressions  of  sub-tenants  by  the  zamindars. 
Regulations  in  1 793  attempted  to  deal  with  these,  but  without  much 
effect. 

One  accidental  result  followed  the  settlement.  In  1793,  Cornwallis 
wets  about  to  leave  Bengal :  and  at  last  a  successor  had  been  found  for 
him.  The  choice  was  Shore.  The  man  who  was  to  see  the  first  results 
of  the  Permanent  Settlement,  was  the  man  who  had  opposed  its 
permanence.  And  the  decision  was  deliberate.  Cornwallis  had 
written  home  in  1789  that  their  differences  had  been  marked  by 
great  good  humour.  Dundas  and  Pitt,  in  their  discussions  with  Shore, 
were  struck  with  his  "talents,  industry  and  candour".  And  so  Shore 
was  appointed  to  take  the  lead  at  Calcutta,  expressing  himself 
characteristically  as  ready  to  step  aside  and  "become  second  in 
Council"  if  on  further  enquiry  someone  else  seemed  more  suitable.  It 
is  the  best  defence  of  the  administration  which  Cornwallis  "purified" 
that  it  contained  such  men  as  Shore  and  Grant,  who  were  willing  to 
do  their  best  to  ensure  the  good  working  of  schemes  of  which  they 
disapproved  in  principle.  If  not  perhaps  the  qualification  best  suited 
to  a  governor-general,  the  humble-minded  zeal  for  duty  that  charac- 
terised Shore  was  an  excellent  testimony  to  the  Bengal  service. 

The  authorisation  of  the  Permanent  Settlement  reached  Cornwallis 
in  time  to  head  the  list  of  great  reforms  that  mark  the  year  1 793.  It  is 
regulation  I  of  the  long  series  of  regulations  passed  by  the  Supreme 
Council  on  i  May,  and  known  collectively  as  "the  Cornwallis  Code". 

For  by  this  time  Cornwallis  had  prepared  the  series  of  changes  that 
mark  his  second  period  of  reform.  Some,  indeed  most,  of  them  were 
the  result  of  his  earlier  work:  either  elaborating  or  reversing  what 
had  been  done.  The  chief  new  reform  was  the  reorganisation  of  the 
system  of  police.  Cornwallis  had  long  realised  that  the  police  system 
of  Calcutta  was  defective,  and  he  had  drafted  a  scheme  for  reform 
as  far  back  as  1788.  He  thought,  however,  at  this  time  that  his 
legislative  powers  were  not  sufficient  for  this,  and  he  proceeded 
therefore  by  drafting  an  act  to  be  laid  before  parliament.  As  this, 
however,  involved  considerable  delay,  he  decided  at  the  end  of  1 788 
to  appoint  a  committee  to  enquire  into  the  complaints  that  had  been 
made.  As  the  result,  a  scheme  was  drawn  up,  and  it  was  published 
in  October,  1791.  The  regulations  were  said  to  be  provisional, 

29-2 


452    BENGAL  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM,  1786-1818 

pending  the  reply  from  home  relative  to  the  passing  of  an  act  of 
parliament. 

The  regulations  applied  only  to  the  town  of  Calcutta.  By  the  new 
system,  superintendents  of  police  were  appointed,  with  functions 
confined  to  the  maintenance  of  order  and  to  the  arrest  of  suspected, 
persons.  They  were  no  longer  to  share  the  attention  of  the  super- 
intendents with  magisterial  and  judicial  functions.  By  subsequent 
regulations  of  December,  1791,  duties  were  defined  and  salaries 
fixed. 

The  next  stage  was  the  application  of  the  new  system  to  the  whole 
province.  This,  the  work  of  April  to  December,  1792,  involved  a 
further  exemplification  of  the  principle  of  employing  Europeans  in 
the  place  of  Indians.  The  zamindars  were  relieved  of  their  responsi- 
bilities for  maintaining  the  peace  and  were  ordered  to  disband  their 
local  police  forces.  In  each  district  small  areas  were  to  be  portioned 
off,  and  placed  under  the  control  of  a  daroga  or  superintendent,  under 
the  supervision  of  the  Company's  representative  in  the  district.  These 
regulations  were  issued  provisionally  in  December,  1792.  They  were 
accompanied  by  a  project  for  the  erection  of  gaols  in  all  the  collector- 
ships  of  the  province.  The  police  regulations  were  provisionally  con- 
firmed from  home  early  in  1793,  and  were  embodied  in  the  general 
restatement  of  the  regulations,  the  Cornwallis  Code  of  May,  1793. 

The  regulations  of  i  May,  1 793,  covered  the  whole  field  of  ad- 
ministration. In  many  respects  they  were  of  importance  merely  as 
defining  the  existing  system.  This  work  of  definition  Cornwallis  and 
the  directors  agreed  was  of  first  importance.  His  reforms  were  in  a 
precarious  position  if  they  depended  only  upon  personal  support. 
One  year  of  negligence  would  destroy  the  whole  system.  The  ex- 
haustive regulations  of  1 793  aimed  at  stereotyping  the  rules  which 
Cornwallis  had  introduced.  They  dealt  with  the  commercial  system, 
with  civil  and  criminal  justice,  with  the  police  and  with  the  land 
revenue.  While  restating  the  existing  position,  they  contemplated 
further  changes,  for  by  regulation  xx  special  procedure  was  laid  down 
for  the  proposal  of  new  regulations  by  the  officials  charged  with 
working  the  present  system.  And,  even  where  in  substance  the  regu- 
lations restated  former  rules,  minor  alterations  showed  a  readiness 
to  profit  by  experience. 

Among  the  changes  effected  by  the  code  one  of  the  most  important 
was  the  separation  of  the  judicial  from  the  revenue  administration. 
The  junction  of  the  two,  which  had  given  unprecedented  power  to 
the  collector  from  1787  to  1790,  had  been  due  to  the  need  both  of 
economy  and  of  simplification.  In  the  hierarchy  of  the  administration 
the  collector  had  become  by  1 790  the  bottle-neck  through  which  all 
lines  of  control  must  pass.  Though  in  all  his  functions  responsible  to 
some  superior  authority,  he  was  in  practice  virtually  independent. 
As  early  as  1790  Cornwallis  realised  the  dangers  of  this  position,  even 


SEPARATION  OF  POWERS  453 

though  he  was  then  making  it  still  more  powerful.  As  it  stood,  nothing 
but  the  character  of  the  collectors  was  a  real  safeguard  to  the  subject. 
He  had  long  been  of  opinion,  he  wrote,  that  this  was  a  mistake. 

...  No  system  will  ever  be  carried  into  effect  so  long  as  the  personal  qualifications 
of  the  individuals  that  may  be  appointed  to  superintend  it,  form  the  only  security 
for  the  due  exercise  of  it. 

In  his  view  the  conclusion  of  the  Permanent  Settlement  was  a 
necessary  preliminary  to  change :  and  it  was  not  therefore  until  1 793 
that  change  could  be  made.  In  the  regulations  of  May  detailed 
instructions  prescribed  the  action  of  the  Company's  servants,  and  a 
system  of  check  and  counter-check  was  substituted  for  the  quasi- 
independence  of  1 787.  By  regulation  n  of  1 793  the  Board  of  Revenue 
and  the  collectors  were  deprived  of  all  judicial  powers.  The  new  courts 
of  1790 — of  mal  adalat — for  the  trial  of  revenue  causes  were  abolished. 
These  causes  were  transferred  to  the  other  district  courts,  those  of 
diwanni  adalat.  These,  too,  had  hitherto  been  presided  over  by  the 
collector.  But  now  the  offices  of  judge  and  collector  were  separated. 
Judges  were  to  be  appointed  to  preside  over  the  courts,  renamed 
Zillah  or  district  courts,  responsible  for  all  civil  cases.  From  them 
appeal  was  to  lie  to  four  provincial  courts  of  appeal,  situated,  like  the 
criminal  courts,  at  Patna,  Dacca,  Murshidabad  and  Calcutta.  From 
them  in  the  larger  causes  appeal  lay  to  the  Supreme  Council  in  its 
capacity  as  a  court  of  sadr  diwanni  adalat.  Over  each  of  these 
provincial  courts  were  three  English  judges.  And  these  judges,  it  was 
provided,  were  also  to  preside  over  the  criminal  courts  of  circuit 
stationed  at  the  same  towns.  The  administration  of  justice,  both  civil 
and  criminal,  was  therefore  vested  in  the  same  hands.  To  make  the 
system  of  checks  upon  the  revenue  administration  more  complete,  it 
was  provided  that 

the  collectors  of  revenue  and  their  officer*,  and  indeed  all  the  officers  of  Government, 
shall  be  amenable  to  the  courts  for  acts  done  in  their  official  capacities,  and  that 
Government  itself,  in  cases  in  which  it  may  be  a  party  with  its  subjects  in  matters 
of  property,  shall  submit  its  rights  to  be  tried  in  these  courts  under  the  existing  laws 
and  regulations.1 

In  the  reforms  of  the  early  period  the  chief  aims  had  been  economy, 
purification  and  simplification.  Cornwallis  had  come  to  India  assured 
that  to  purify  the  Company's  service  it  was  essential  that  the  holders 
of  office  should  be  Englishmen,  adequately  remunerated,  and  not 
foisted  on  the  Company  by  influence.  In  the  interests  of  economy 
and  simplification  he  had  given  to  these  Englishmen  almost  un- 
paralleled powers.  It  seems  to  have  been  felt  that  while  he  was  in  office 
no  great  danger  would  result.  But  now  in  this  second  period  of 
reform  the  outstanding  aim  was  the  safeguarding  of  the  Indian  from 
oppression.  Cornwallis  himself  had  completed  the  process  by  which 
Bengal  swarnfed  with  Englishmen  in  commercial  or  administrative 

1  Ross,  op.  cit.  n,  558. 


454    BENGAL  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM,  1786-1818 

offices;  he  seems  to  have  reflected  that  it  was  at  least  necessary  that 
they  should  not  be  free  to  add  to  the  oppression  of  Indians  the  old 
practice  of  making  a  fortune.  So  the  Company's  servants  and  all 
other  English  residents  were  to  be  subject  to  the  courts.  The  revenue 
and  judicial  systems  were  separated,  and  the  collector  of  revenue 
confined  rigidly  to  the  position  suggested  by  his  name 

Such  a  change  operating  without  delay  might  well  be  expected  to 
rouse  discontent  in  the  Company's  service.  But  Cornwallis  was  able 
to  allay  this.  The  new  district  courts  required  judges,  and  it  was  part 
of  his  scheme  that  the  collectors  of  the  district,  chosen  formerly  as 
being  "of  the  first  abilities  and  most  established  integrity",  were 
transferred  to  this  office.  As  judges  of  the  zillah  courts  they  exercised 
jurisdiction  in  revenue  and  other  civil  causes:  upon  them  was  con- 
ferred the  magisterial  power  of  the  collector.  The  revenue  duties, 
which  they  left,  devolved  upon  the  assistants  in  the  various  districts. 
Thus,  under  the  new  system,  judicial  administration  was  marked  as 
separate  from,  and  as  of  much  more  importance  than,  revenue  and 
the  executive  functions  associated  with  it. 

The  new  system  then  created  three  branches  of  the  service,  instead 
of  two.  The  "  commercial  line"  remained  unchanged :  the  commercial 
residents  lived  still  at  the  various  factories  or  stations,  responsible  to 
the  Board  of  Trade,  and  ultimately  to  the  Supreme  Council.  The 
revenue  service,  shorn  of  the  important  duty  of  the  assessment,  was 
now  the  sole  function  of  the  new  collectors  of  revenue.  They  were 
responsible  as  before  to  the  Board  of  Revenue,  and  then  to  the 
Supreme  Council.  The  district  judges  exercised  civil  jurisdiction  and 
the  petty  criminal  jurisdiction  of  the  magistrate.  They  were  responsible 
to  the  judges  of  the  provincial  courts  in  civil  causes,  and  to  those  same 
judges  in  the  courts  of  circuit  in  criminal  causes.  The  system  did  not 
lack  simplicity.  It  was  not  extravagant  and  it  observed  the  important 
principle  of  responsibility  towards  the  inhabitants  which  had  been  one 
of  the  chief  characteristics  of  the  new  policy  Cornwallis  came  in  to 
enforce. 

With  the  Cornwallis  Code  the  work  of  Cornwallis  in  India  was 
ended.  But  he  was  fully  aware  that  it  was  only  a  beginning.  He  had 
set  up  the  machinery :  established  the  recognition  of  certain  prin- 
ciples :  but  there  was  still  no  provision  of  a  code  of  law.  The  resolu- 
tions of  December,  1790,  and  the  regulations  of  1793,  had  done 
something  to  amend  what  seemed  the  greatest  deficiencies  of  the 
existing  system.  The  law  administered  remained,  however,  in  its 
main  features  unchanged.  The  regulations  of  1793  improved  the 
position  a  little  by  defining  the  qualifications  of  the  Indian  inter- 
preters of  the  law,  who  were  attached  to  the  various  courts.  But 
Cornwallis  judged  rightly  that  no  greater  innovation,  was  possible 
at  present.  "A  good  system  of  laws"  was  a  thing  more*hard  to  come 
by  even  than  "a  due  administration  of  them,  and  &  well-established 


THE  CORNWALLIS  CODE  455 

peace".  Sir  William  Jones  was  preparing  the  way  by  his  treatise  on 
Indian  laws.  Cornwallis  hoped  that  something  would  be  done  by 
the  building  up  of  a  case-made  law  on  the  findings  of  judges  of  the 
courts.  The  developments  of  the  future  alone  could  fulfil  the  aim  of 
Cornwallis.  He  had  created  the  machinery:  upon  the  spirit  that 
informed  it  depended  its  success. 

For  twenty  years  after  the  retirement  of  Cornwallis,  the  system  of 
his  code  remained  substantially  unaltered.  The  periodical  renewal  of 
the  Company's  Charter  was  due  in  1793,  but  it  took  place  without 
any  of  the  close  scrutiny  of  administration  which  had  heralded  the 
acts  of  1773  and  1784.  Cornwallis  himself  was  of  the  view  that  little 
real  change  was  necessary;  and  the  Company  kept  for  another  twenty 
years  its  dual  character  as  a  commercial  monopolist,  and  an  instru- 
ment of  administration.  It  is  in  the  events  of  this  period  that  the 
strength  and  weakness  of  the  Cornwallis  Code  arc  most  clearly  seen. 

The  continued  observance  of  Cornwallis's  principles  of  adminis- 
tration was  due  to  some  extent  to  the  pressure  of  political  cares.  But 
the  lack  of  revolutionary  change  was  in  large  measure  a  deliberate 
policy.  The  preference  for  "steady  adherence  to  almost  any  one 
system"  had  become  an  accepted  tenet:  and  the  rulers  of  British 
India  did  not  attempt  either  a  reversion  to  older  ideas  or  the  formu- 
lation of  new  ones.  The  permanent  settlement  of  the  land  revenue,  the 
severance  of  judicial  from  revenue  administration,  and  the  restriction 
of  Indians  to  offices  of  lesser  responsibility  were  faithfully  observed  by 
Cornwallis's  successors.  In  the  first  half  of  the  period,  indeed,  the 
respect  for  the  Cornwallis  Code  was  so  great  that  it  was  introduced 
to  the  furthest  degree  possible  into  the  new  lands  of  the  Ganges  basin, 
and  even  applied  to  Madras.  Yet  even  the  greatest  reverence  could 
not  hide  the  defects  of  the  code,  nor  the  utmost  piety  avoid  some 
attempt  to  correct  them.  The  regulations  of  the  period  1793  to  1813 
are  filled  with  amendments.  Some  were  necessitated  by  the  faulty 
wording  of  the  code,  for  which  Barlow  rather  than  Cornwallis  was 
responsible;  but  many  were  due  to  the  defects  and  the  rigidity  of 
Cornwallis's  own  principles.  In  the  last  three  years  of  his  rule  he  had 
added  distrust  of  the  covenanted  servants  of  the  Company  to  his 
initial  dislike  of  Indian  agency.  He  deliberately  placed  confidence 
in  the  system  rather  than  in  individuals,  and  he  seems  to  have  ignored 
the  fact  that  systems,  like  individuals,  are  bound  to  be  faulty.  The 
great  fault  of  his  system  was  that  he  confounded  courts  of  justice  with 
justice  itself.  In  a  land  where  the  laws  were  still  vague  and  unknown, 
and  the  new  system  of  administration  was  alien  to  the  ideas  of  the 
natives,  the.  multiplication  of  court-made  justice  was  no  advantage 
in  itself.  In  theory,  the  Indians  were  protected  by  courts  of  justice 
from  the  oppression  of  officials :  zamindars  and  talukdars  against 
revenue  collectors,  ryots  against  zamindars.  But  the  courts  were  both 
unsuited  and  inadequate  for  the  task.  Delays  were  so  serious  that 


456    BENGAL  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM,  1786-1818 

suits,  it  was  said,  were  not  decided  in  the  normal  course  of  a  lifetime. 
Protection  of  this  kind  was  not  of  much  value,  and,  without  the 
gravest  unconcern  for  the  welfare  of  the  people,  it  was  impossible  to 
disregard  the  need  for  reform. 

The  changes  of  the  period  1793  to  1813  were  mainly  in  two 
directions,  in  connection  with  the  Permanent  Settlement,  and  with 
the  speeding  up  of  civil  and  criminal  justice.  The  reform  of  the  system 
of  police  was  left  over  to  the  next  period,  but  measures,  on  the  whole 
successful,  were  taken  to  deal  with  dacoits. 

The  general  approval  of  the  Permanent  Settlement  by  the  authori- 
ties in  India  and  at  home  did  not  hide  the  defects  that  resulted  from 
the  system.  It  was  soon  found  that  the  evil  of  "balances"  continued 
as  before :  that  the  efforts  made  to  prevent  the  oppression  of  tenants 
and  ryots  led  only  to  the  complete  blocking  of  the  courts  of  justice: 
that  the  attempts  made  to  realise  the  revenue  without  personal 
coercion  of  the  zamindars  resulted  in  frequent  sales  of  estates.  More- 
over the  provision  that  talukdars  could  claim  exemption  from  the 
zamindars'  control  increased  the  business  before  the  courts,  and  led 
to  the  cutting  up  of  estates. 

The  measures  taken  by  Shore  were  in  two  directions.  A  regulation 
of  1 795  modified  the  rules  as  to  the  actions  of  zamindars  in  collecting 
rents  from  their  tenants  and  ryots.  In  effect,  their  powers  of  coercion 
were  increased.  Secondly,  additional  civil  courts  were  established, 
and  additional  powers  granted  to  the  Indians  who  were  responsible 
for  deciding  minor  causes.  By  these  two  measures  it  was  hoped  that 
the  "balances"  would  diminish  and  sales  become  less  frequent. 
Above  all,  they  would  remedy  the  existing  state  of  affairs  by  which 
"the  determination  of  a  cause  could  not. .  .be  expected. .  .in  the 
ordinary  course  of  the  plaintiff's  life".  Despite  these  measures, 
however,  the  delays  in  the  settlement  of  suits  continued ;  and  so  did 
sales  and  the  dismemberment  of  estates.  The  latter  were  due  to  the 
numerous  claims  of  exemption  from  the  control  of  zamindars  on  the 
ground  of  talukdari  rights,  and,  in  1801,  Lord  Wellesley  met  this  by 
a  regulation  giving  a  date  after  which  no  such  claim  could  be  recog- 
nised. The  evil  of  sales  was  not  so  soon  settled.  A  regulation  passed 
by  Wellesley  in  1 799  gave  still  further  powers  of  coercion  to  the 
zamindars,  and  over  them  the  former  practice  of  arrest  was  reinstated. 
The  latter  measure  was  a  return  to  the  procedure  of  Cornwallis,  the 
regulation  of  1 793  making  the  zamindar  liable  to  arrest  as  well  as  to 
the  sale  of  his  land  having  been  amended  by  Shore.  Now,  in  1 799, 
the  practice  of  personal  coercion  was  restored,  again  with  the  object  of 
checking  the  flood  of  sales.  Even  so,  Lord  Minto  found  the  same 
defect,  and  attempted  further  to  restrict  sales  by  a  regulation  of  1807. 
In  fact  the  position  was  intrinsically  difficult,  and  no  mere  regulation 
would  alter  it.  By  Lord  Minto's  time  the  difficulties  were  beginning 


THE  JUDICIAL  SYSTEM  457 

to  grow  less,  but  this  was  due  more  to  the  greater  goodwill  of  the 
zamindars  than  to  the  revised  regulations.  So  long  as  the  system  was 
regarded  with  suspicion  the  difficulties  continued.  In  fact  it  is  clear 
that  in  the  years  following  its  establishment  the  Permanent  Settlement 
was  neither  profitable  to  government  nor  popular  with  the  people. 
Such  advantages  as  it  had  did  not  begin  to  operate  until  a  later  time, 

In  his  advocacy  of  the  Permanent  Settlement,  Cornwallis  had  put 
high  among  the  advantages  the  freeing  of  the  Company's  servants 
from  their  absorption  in  revenue  matters.  In  fact  the  difficulties  in 
the  working  out  of  the  system  made  the  task  of  a  collector  much  less 
simple  than  had  been  intended.  Moreover,  the  mass  of  revenue  suits 
filled  the  ztflah  courts  beyond  measure,  and  the  old  collectors  who 
were  now  judges  in  these  courts  were  certainly  no  freer  than  before 
to  concern  themselves  with  the  interests  of  the  people.  One  of  the 
first  and  most  pressing  changes  was  therefore  the  limitation  of  suits. 
Various  regulations  with  this  object  date  from  the  years  1795-1802. 
They  start  with  the  reimposition  of  a  fee  upon  registering  a  suit.  This 
was  the  work  of  Shore,  as  was  also  the  increase  in  the  number  of 
courts,  and  of  Indians  qualified  to  settle  minor  suits.  Then,  under 
Wellesley,  the  regulation  as  to  appeals  was  stiffened,  and  assistant 
judges  were  appointed.  The  seriousness  of  the  pressure  extended  even 
to  the  sadr  court,  and  Lord  Wellesley  thought  it  undesirable  that 
the  governor-general  and  council  should  continue  to  act  as  its  judges. 
A  reorganisation  therefore  took  place  in  1805,  and  three  judges  took 
over  the  responsibilities  of  the  court.  The  reforms  of  Wellesley,  like 
those  of  Shore,  did  not  stop  the  evil  of  delay.  Lord  Minto  attempted 
further  to  remedy  it.  In  1807  the  number  of  judges  in  the  sadr 
court  was  increased  to  four:  in  181 1  it  was  enacted  that  the  number 
of  district  judges  should  be  increased  as  necessity  occurred.  Another 
expedient  for  remedying  the  congestion  of  business  was  the  reorgani- 
sation of  the  system  of  circuit.  According  to  the  regulations  of  1 793 
the  provincial  court  of  appeal  was  necessarily  closed  while  the  three 
judges  went  on  circuit  in  their  capacity  of  circuit  judges.  A  regulation 
of  1 794  provided  for  the  unbroken  session  of  the  court.  A  further 
change  of  1 797  made  possible  the  trial  of  appeal  cases  during  the 
absence  of  the  judges  on  circuit.  Similar  congestion  in  the  trials  of 
criminal  cases  was  met  by  the  increase  in  the  power  of  magistrates 
in  petty  cases,  and  by  conferring  on  them  the  right  of  delegating  power 
to  their  assistants.  Special  rules  for  the  punishment  of  dacoits  were 
enacted  in  1807. 

None  of  the  changes,  however,  did  more  than  palliate  the  evils  of 
the  system.  These  evils  were  still  formidable  when  they  were  submitted 
to  the  clear  scrutiny  of  the  next  few  years. 

The  unhesitating  acquiescence  in  the  Cornwallis  system  ended  in 
1808,  and  the  work  of  reform  started  in  earnest  five  years  later. 


458    BENGAL  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM,  1786-1818 

Unlike  the  act  of  1793  the  Charter  Act  of  1813  made  important 
changes  in  the  position  of  the  Company;  and,  again  unlike  that  act, 
it  was  the  result  of  the  careful  examination  of  several  years.  This  new 
reform  movement  started  on  u  March,  1808,  when  Robert  Dundas 
moved  the  appointment  of  a  select  committee  to  enquire  into  the 
affairs  of  the  Company.  The  committee  issued  five  reports,  and  the 
fifth,  issued  in  1812,  contained  a  detailed  analysis  of  the  Bengal 
system.  Together  with  its  appendices  (and  with  some  of  the  material 
contained  in  the  second  report  of  1810),  it  is  a  valuable  exposition 
of  the  history  and  the  results  of  the  Cornwallis  Code.  Above  all,  it 
makes  clear  some,  if  not  all,  of  its  defects. 

The  period  of  the  Select  Committee  saw  also  the  beginning  of  an 
enquiry  in  Bengal.  The  defects  of  the  early  system  forced  themselves 
especially  on  the  judges  of  the  courts,  and  in  the  summer  of  1809 
Lord  Minto  set  on  foot  an  enquiry  as  to  the  best  lines  of  change.  The 
investigation,  however,  was  not  completed  by  him.  In  1813  he  was 
succeeded  by  the  Marquess  of  Hastings  and  it  was  in  the  ten  years  of 
his  rule  that  the  most  thorough  enquiry  was  made.  In  1813  the 
Charter  Act  embodied  one  aspect  of  the  new  reform  movement.  On 
9  November,  1814,  a  dispatch  of  the  court  of  directors1  emphasised 
the  other. 

The  act  of  1813  abolished  the  Company's  monopoly  of  trade  in 
India.  The  change  in  administration  involved  was  not  at  first  of  much 
importance,  since  the  monopoly  and  not  the  trade  was  abolished. 
The  Board  of  Trade  continued  its  work  until  1835:  the  commercial 
residents  remained  at  their  factories,  although  their  number  decreased 
as  the  trade  diminished.  The  most  immediate  alteration  was  at  the 
presidency  offices,  for  the  act  required  a  rigid  separation  of  the 
commercial  and  administrative  accounts. 

The  instructions  of  9  November,  1814,  prescribed  a  far  more  radical 
change.  The  pressure  on  the  civil  courts  dictated  a  resumption  by 
the  collector  of  his  powers  in  civil  justice :  the  difficulties  found  in 
administering  criminal  justice  and  in  the  regulation  of  the  police 
demanded  that  the  collectors  should  once  more  have  magisterial 
powers,  and  be  responsible  for  the  superintendence  of  the  police. 
With  the  same  object  of  improving  the  administration  of  justice, 
additional  powers  were  to  be  given  to  Indian  agents :  and  by  increasing 
the  criminal  jurisdiction  of  the  syllah  judges  the  pressure  on  the  higher 
courts  would  be  relieved.  At  the  same  time  the  judicial  interference 
of  the  collector  would  serve  to  increase  the  protection  of  the  ryots; 
and  with  the  latter  object  in  view  the  Board  of  Control  added  a  clause 
to  the  directors'dispatch  urging  the  observance  "in  all  possible  cases" 
of  "the  principle  of  realising  the  revenues  from  the  ryots  themselves". 

The  recommendations  of  the  dispatch  were  a  denial  of  Cornwallis's 

principles  in  several  respects.  If  they  were  carried  out,  the  separation 

1  I.O.  Records,  Bengal  Despatches,  vol.  LXVII,  Judicial  Despatch  of  9  November,  1814. 


FURTHER  REFORMS  459 

of  revenue  from  judicial  administration  would  once  more  disappear. 
The  collector  would  resume  in  some  measure  his  position  of  1 790  as 
the  bottle-neck  through  which  all  administration  must  pass.  It  was 
impossible  to  set  back  the  Permanent  Settlement  as  fully  as  this,  but 
the  dispatch  showed  at  least  that  the  authorities  at  home  were  alive 
to  its  dangers.  Even  the  prejudice  of  Cornwallis  against  the  employ- 
ment of  Indians  was  set  aside.  Such  revolutionary  measures  did  not 
commend  themselves  to  the  government  of  Bengal.  The  mistake  of 
Cornwallis  in  carrying  out  his  reform  without  sufficient  investigation 
was  not  repeated.  The  new  instructions  were  referred  for  opinion  to 
all  the  boards  and  courts  in  Bengal,  and  to  the  principal  servants  of 
the  Company.  The  repeated  pressure  of  the  court  of  directors  did  not 
obtain  an  answer  to  their  dispatch  until  22  February,  1827,  an(^  t'ien 
in  several  respects  the  attitude  of  the  government  of  India  was  more 
conservative  than  that  of  the  authorities  at  home. 

In  the  meantime,  however,  much  had  been  done  to  modify  the 
existing  system.  The  period  of  Hastings's  rule  saw  a  number  of  regu- 
lations which  improved  the  working  and  loosened  the  rigidity  of 
Cornwallis's  Code,  while  still  paying  rather  more  than  lip-service  to 
his  principles. 

The  first  changes  were  already  accomplished  when  the  reforming 
dispatch  arrived.1  Regulations  of  1813  and  1814  had  provided  a 
fairly  efficient  police  system  for  the  large  towns.  In  1813,  in  the  cities 
of  Dacca,  Murshidabad  and  Patna,  and  in  1814  at  the  headquarters 
of  every  district,  police  chowkidars  were  appointed  under  the  control 
of  the  superintendents  of  police.  The  system  was  said  to  be  working 
well  in  1816.  In  1817-19  the  system  of  village  watch  was  reformed. 
These  police  reforms  were  regarded  by  the  government  as  the  most 
urgent  and  the  most  satisfactory  of  the  reforms. 

The  necessity  for  lessening  the  burden  of  the  civil  courts  was  met 
by  a  series  of  measures.  The  powers  of  Indian  munsiffs  and  sadar  amins 
in  civil  justice  were  defined  in  1814  and  extended  in  1821.  The 
doctrine  that  no  class  of  Indian  officers  should  be  vested  with  final 
powers  was,  however,  maintained,  and  other  measures  were  necessary 
to  remedy  the  position.  The  procedure  in  appeal  was  laid  down  by 
a  regulation  of  1814;  and  steps  were  taken  to  relieve  the  pressure  in 
the  higher  courts.  The  burden  of  the  Calcutta  appeal  court  was 
diminished  by  the  establishment  of  a  separate  court  for  the  Western 
Provinces,  but  the  most  important  steps  were  the  appointment  of  a 
fifth  judge  and  the  systematic  division  of  labour  between  the  jydges. 
The  difficulties  of  the  lesser  courts  were  met  partly  by  the  establish- 
ment of  special  commissions  to  administer  justice  in  the  new  parts  of 
the  province.  But  the  more  effective  measures  for  relief  were  the 
increase  in  the  number  of  zttlah  judges,  and  the  transfer  of  certain 

1  I.O.  Records,  Bengal  Letters  Received,  vol.  LXX,  Judicial  Letter  of  29  November, 
1814. 


460    BENGAL  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM,  1786-1818 

judicial  functions  to  the  revenue  authorities.  The  latter  expedient 
was  adopted  very  slowly,  the  proposal  for  the  re-establishment  of  mal 
adalats  being  disregarded.  In  unsettled  districts  the  judicial  powers 
of  the  collectors  were  fairly  extensive,  but  they  were  still  slight  in 
Bengal.  There,  the  new  powers  were  chiefly  in  connection  with  the 
sale  of  liquor  and  the  manufacture  and  sale  of  opium.  Even  in  Bengal, 
however,  the  collectors  had  some  judicial  business  in  connection  with 
the  land  revenue.  In  1819  the  collectors  were  authorised  to  deal  with 
cases  relating  to  claims  to  freedom  from  assessment,  and  in  1822  to 
rectify  errors  committed  at  the  time  of  sales. 

Closely  connected  with  the  measures  to  facilitate  civil  justice,  are 
those  for  the  protection  of  the  ryot.  One  of  the  chief  reasons  asserted 
by  the  directors  (and  emphasised  by  the  Board  of  Control)  for 
conferring  power  of  civil  justice  on  collectors  had  been  the  greater 
protection  that  would  be  given  to  the  ryot.  The  increased  function 
of  the  collectors  would  not  be  enough  to  secure  this,  and  further 
measures  were  urged.  What  was  done  was  rather  to  prevent  further 
encroachment  than  to  reverse  what  had  already  taken  place.  The 
offices  of  kanungo  and  patwari  were  re-established  in  the  years 
1816-19,  and  the  institution  of  the  mufassal  record  committees  aimed 
at  stabilising  the  position  of  the  various  classes  concerned  in  land. 
This  was  furthered  also  by  the  comprehensive  definition  of  the  rights 
of  the  various  classes  concerned  in  land  by  regulation  vm  of  1819. 
That  more  was  not  done  was  due  to  the  fact  that  the  Permanent 
Settlement  made  a  satisfactory  system  impossible. 

The  aspect  of  the  directors'  instructions  to  which  least  observance 
was  secured,  was  that  which  was  concerned  with  criminal  justice. 
The  principles  of  Cornwallis  here  died  hard.  As  late  as  1827  ^e 
separation  of  the  administration  of  criminal  justice  from  the  work  of 
the  revenue  officers  was  looked  upon  with  respect  as  the  chief 
"principle  on  which  the  civil  administration  framed  by  Lord  Corn- 
wallis" was  founded.  The  length  of  time  that  that  system  had  been 
in  force  made  in  itself  a  substantial  argument  against  reversing  it, 
since  the  collectors  of  the  1820*8  were  practically  all  without  ex- 
perience in  judicial  affairs.  Another  principle  also  was  involved. 
The  collectors  were  assisted  in  most  districts  by  Indian  tahsildars,  and 
to  entrust  magisterial  powers  to  them  would  be  to  abandon  Corn- 
wallis's  refusal  to  vest  real  power  in  Indian  hands.  What  was  done  in 
this  direction  was  therefore  of  a  tentative  character.  In  criminal 
justice,  as  in  civil,  pressure  of  cases  necessitated  an  increase  in 
the  number  of  zillah  judges  and  the  addition  of  a  fifth  member  in 
the  appeal  court.  But  all  that  was  done  to  meet  the  instructions  to 
reunite  justice  and  revenue  was  the  permissive  regulation  of  1821. 
In  1818  the  first  step  in  this  direction  had  been  taken  when  three 
collectors  were  specially  empowered  to  act  as  magistrates.  Now  by 
regulation  iv  of  1821  such  power  might  be  granted  to  any  collector 


CORNWALLIS'S  WORK  461 

at  the  discretion  of  the  Supreme  Government.  In  the  following  years 
a  few  collectors  and  sub-collectors  were  granted  power  under  the 
regulation. 

When  Hastings  left  India  in  1823,  despite  his  absorption  in  political 
affairs,  considerable  changes  had  taken  place  in  the  system  of  Corn- 
wallis.  The  chief  need  as  Cornwallis  estimated  it  was  still  no  nearer 
completion.  "A  good  system  of  law"  was  not  yet  established,  for 
Sir  William  Jones  had  died  in  1795,  and  little  had  been  done  to 
continue  his  work.  It  is  true  that  the  code  which  Cornwallis  had 
promulgated  had  been  simplified,  and  redrawn  where  its  ambiguities 
were  greatest.  But  a  vast  body  of  new  regulations  had  followed,  and 
the  courts  had  piled  up  judicial  precedents.  No  comprehensive  code 
had  been  issued:  what  had  really  been  done  was  to  follow  up  the 
reforms  of  Cornwallis  by  further  changes  and  experiments.  In 
criminal  and  civil  justice,  perhaps  above  all  in  the  police  system, 
many  improvements  had  been  made.  The  position  of  the  collector 
had  once  more  been  changed :  for  if  he  had  not  recovered  the  over- 
whelming power  of  1790,  the  degradation  of  1793  had  been  consider- 
ably mitigated.  The  collector  was  climbing  back  to  his  position  as  the 
state's  man  of  all  work;  and  was  well  on  his  way  to  reach  it  in  time  to 
be  the  chief  instrument  of  the  next  reform  movement.  Yet  much  of 
the  work  of  Cornwallis  was  still  standing.  The  building  had  been 
extended  and  improved,  and  the  original  plans  had  been  modified; 
but  all  the  early  work  had  not  been  destroyed.  The  reforms  of  the 
civil  service  had  not  needed  to  be  done  again.  By  his  cleansing 
of  the  administrative  system,  Cornwallis  had  established  a  lasting 
tradition.  After  thirty  years  the  best  of  his  work,  the  result  of  his 
uprightness  and  zeal  for  the  public  service,  was  still  in  being.  In 
spite  of  his  mistakes,  therefore,  Cornwallis,  like  Warren  Hastings, 
had  left  a  lasting  impression  on  the  system  of  government:  and  it  was 
one  of  the  merits  of  his  successors  that  they  were  slow  to  experiment 
in  change. 


CHAPTER   XXVII 

THE  MADRAS  DISTRICT  SYSTEM  AND 
LAND  REVENUE  TO   1818 

1HROUGHOUT  the  eighteenth  century  up  to  the  last  decade 
no  power  in  South  India  felt  itself  secure  enough  to  spare  serious 
attention  for  the  improvement  of  the  territories  under  its  authority. 
The  more  energetic  rulers  found  their  time  fully  occupied  with  the 
task  of  suppressing  rivals  and  rebels  and  raising  the  armies  and  revenues 
necessary  for  this  end.  The  rest  were  content  to  make  hay  while  the 
sun  shone.  Thus  in  time  of  peace  the  chief  concern  of  every  ruler  was 
the  collection  of  the  revenue  and  especially  of  the  land  revenue,  which 
usually  produced  more  than  nine-tenths  of  the  total  state  income. 
The  insecurity  of  the  ruler's  position  compelled  him  to  raise  his 
demand  as  high  as  possible  and  to  take  the  quickest  and  easiest  means 
of  collecting  what  he  claimed  without  thought  for  the  future.  Checks 
and  precautions  were  relaxed  and  abuses  sprang  up  on  all  sides. 
A  strong  ruler  like  Hyder  of  Mysore  preferred  to  collect  through 
officers  of  his  own  appointment,  amildars  having  jurisdiction  over 
large  areas  containing  some  hundreds  of  villages.  The  amildar  usually 
dealt  with  the  village  through  the  village  headman  and  the  village 
accountant,  whose  records  were  supposed  to  show  what  the  villagers 
should  by  custom  pay.  As  it  was  difficult  to  prevent  the  village 
accountant  from  falsifying  his  accounts  the  amildar  frequently  struck 
a  bargain  with  the  village  headman,  or,  if  he  would  not  rise  to  the 
amildar's  terms,  rented  the  village  to  a  powerful  outsider  who  was 
left  to  collect  what  he  could. 

If  the  amildar  could  not  trust  the  village  officers,  neither  could  the 
ruler  trust  the  amildar,  who  took  presents  and  levied  extra  cesses  for 
which  lie  rendered  no  account,  securing  the  acquiescence  of  the 
villagers  partly  by  terror,  partly  by  lowering  the  public  demand 
on  the  plea  of  a  failure  of  the  crop.  Hyder  met  the  difficulty  by 
allowing  the  amildars  to  grow  rich  and  then  flogging  them  till 
they  disgorged.  Milder-mannered  princes,  such  as  the  nawab  of 
Arcot,  tended  to  supplant  the  amildars  by  renting  out  whole  districts 
to  rich  or  influential  speculators.  Where  this  was  done,  all  die 
authority  formerly  -exercised  by  the  amildar  in  practice  devolved 
upon  the  renter,  since  any  restriction  upon  his  proceedings  was  made 
an  excuse  for  withholding  the  sum  contracted  for.  Neither  the  amildar 
nor  the  renter  enjoyed  any  security  of  tenure.  As  a  rule  they  looked 
only  for  immediate  profit  regardless  of  longer  views.1 
But  South  Indian  rulers  were  not  everywhere  strong  enough  to 

1  Srinivasaraghava  Aiyangar,  Memorandum,  App.  pp.  xx  sqq. 


THE  POLIGARS  463 

collect  the  revenue  on  the  system  which  suited  them  best.  Half  the 
Northern  Sarkars  and  elsewhere  many  of  the  less  accessible  tracts 
were  under  local  chiefs  who  had  never  been  completely  subdued, 
feudal  nobles  who  had  succeeded  in  retaining  their  feudal  status,  local 
officials  and  adventurers  with  local  influence  who  had  seized  power 
and  asserted  a  partial  independence.  These  poligars  and  zamindars 
exercised  within  their  own  territory  all  the  functions  of  a  sovereign, 
even  making  war  on  their  own  account  upon  their  peers.  But  they 
acknowledged  an  obligation  to  pay  tribute  orpeshkash  to  the  sovereign 
and  to  serve  in  his  campaigns  with  a  certain  number  of  armed  retainers. 
The  peshkash  was  sometimes  fixed,  sometimes  it  varied  from  year  to 
year  with  the  state  of  cultivation.  But  its  amount  and  the  regularity 
with  which  it  was  paid  depended  less  upon  the  resources  of  the  poligar's 
territory  than  on  the  ease  with  which  he  could  be  coerced. 

Unlike  the  renters  and  the  amildars  the  zamindars  and  poligars 
had  an  hereditary  interest  in  the  territories  under  their  control.  But 
their  traditions  and  upbringing  were  as  a  rule  essentially  martial. 
"Eat  or  be  eaten"  was  the  condition  of  their  existence.  Their  grand 
aims  had  always  been  to  extend  their  territories  at  the  expense  of 
their  neighbours  and  to  strengthen  themselves  to  resist  the  central 
power.  Many  of  them  were  too  spirited  to  exchange  uncontrolled 
if  precarious  authority  for  the  assured  income  of  a  peaceful  landlord, 
and  very  few  of  them  were  capable  of  believing  that  the  central  power 
would  continue  to  allow  them  to  intercept  a  share  of  the  land  revenue 
once  they  had  been  disarmed.  The  central  power  usually  aimed  at 
extirpating  these  territorial  chiefs,  as  opportunity  offered.  Hyder 
and  Tipu  of  Mysore  were  especially  active  in  pursuing  this  policy.  It 
is  unlikely  that  the  cultivators  often  regretted  their  poligar  when  he 
was  hanged.  For  he  had  to  consider  first  the  interests  of  his  armed 
retainers  and  he  was  often  under  the  necessity  of  satisfying  their 
demands  for  arrears  of  pay  by  giving  them  authority  to  collect  the 
land  revenue  direct  from  the  villages.1 

The  workers  of  South  India,  the  agriculturists  and  the  artisans, 
living  for  the  most  part  in  villages,  hoped  little  and  feared  much  from 
their  rulers.  So  narrow  was  the  margin  on  which  the  cultivators  were 
living  that  advances  of  seed-grain  had  often  to  be  made  to  enable  them 
to  raise  a  crop.  In  many  South  Indian  villages  the  land  revenue 
depends  upon  the  upkeep  of  the  irrigation  works  and  some  amildars 
spent  pains  and  money  on  this  account.  But  as  a  rule  the  works  seem 
to  have  been  neglected  or  maintained  only  by  the  villagers.  Even 
for  protectipn  the  villagers  relied  chiefly  on  their  own  mud  walls  or 
thorn  fences  which  could  be  defended  by  stone-throwing  against  the 
predatory  horse  and  the  camp  followers  of  the  period.  Whether  these 
owed  allegiance  to  an  invading  power  or  to  the  country's  prince 
made  little  difference  in  the  feelings  which  they  inspired  among  the 

1  The  Fifth  Report  of  1812,  pp.  80  sqq. 


464    MADRAS  DISTRICT  SYSTEM  AND  LAND  REVENUE 

villagers.  There  were  no  made  roads,  no  bridges,  and  no  wheeled 
vehicles  outside  a  few  large  towns.  Trade  was  carried  on  by  pack  cattle. 
There  was  no  code  of  law  generally  recognised  as  being  in  force;  and 
even  where  Hindu  or  Muhammadan  law-books  were  supposed  to  have 
authority,  there  were  no  regular  courts  in  existence  to  interpret  or 
give  effect  to  them,  or  to  solidify  custom  and  precedent  into  law. 
Petty  crime  was  dealt  with  by  the  village  headman  and  most  civil 
disputes  were  settled  in  the  village  by  the  award  of  arbitrators  or 
by  the  decisions  of  village  panchayals  or  juries.  Caste  offences  were 
punished  by  caste  headmen  or  caste  panchqyats,  the  state  only  inter- 
fering to  raise  revenue  by  leasing  out  the  right  to  levy  fines.  Grave 
crimes  could  be  brought  before  the  amildar,  who  might  inflict  any 
punishment  short  of  death.  There  were  no  gaols,  and  imprisonment 
was  not  a  recognised  form  of  punishment.  Mutilation  for  the  poor 
and  fines  for  the  rich  were  the  order  of  the  day.  The  proceedings  of 
the  amildar  were  controlled  not  by  law,  but  by  his  sense  of  equity. 
The  powers  of  the  amildar  were  also  exercised  not  only  by  zamindars 
and  poligars,  but  also  by  renters  and  military  officers,  and  indeed  by 
any  person  who  had  at  his  command  the  force  necessary  to  give  effect 
to  his  decision.  The  same  authorities  could  sometimes  be  induced  to 
appoint  arbitrators  for  the  decision  of  important  civil  disputes.  There 
was  always  the  possibility  of  an  appeal  to  the  sovereign,  but  access  to 
him  was  difficult,  and  the  chance  of  a  careful  enquiry  small.1 

For  police  in  the  more  orderly  tracts  the  villagers  relied  chiefly  on 
the  hereditary  village-watchman.  But  where  criminal  tribes  or  the 
retainers  of  a  poligar  lived  in  the  neighbourhood,  they  usually  found 
it  expedient  to  invite  one  of  their  tormentors  to  become  their  kavalgar 
or  guard,  and  to  pay  him  to  save  the  village  from  theft,  or  at  least  to 
obtain  restitution  of  the  stolen  property  for  a  reasonable  consideration. 
A  poligar  or  other  person  of  local  influence  often  had  himself  recog- 
nised as  a  head-kavalgar  controlling  the  village  kavalgars  throughout  his 
sphere  of  influence  and  sharing  their  emoluments.  In  one  or  two  districts 
this  system  was  reported  to  work  well,  but  in  general  it  seems  to  have 
been  a  convenience  to  the  criminal  classes  rather  than  to  the  cultivators. 

But  if  the  sovereign  concerned  himself  little  with  most  aspects  of 
his  subjects'  lives,  his  interest  in  the  produce  of  their  agriculture  was 
close  and  persistent.  Everywhere  a  share  in  the  produce  of  the  land 
was  claimed  either  by  the  sovereign,  or  by  a  grantee  of  the  land 
revenue  deriving  his  right  from  the  sovereign,  or  by  a  zamindar  or 
poligar  who  claimed  this  among  other  rights  of  sovereignty.  In  the 
absence  of  any  court  of  law,  the  nature  of  the  sovereign's  rights  and 
the  cultivators'  tenure  was  determined  not  by  law  but  by  the  interplay 
of  three  forces — the  power  of  the  sovereign,  the  custom  of  the  village, 
and  the  economic  condition  of  the  district.  The  Hindu  family  system 
and  the  lack  of  stock  tended  to  divide  up  the  land  into  small  holdings. 

1  Cf.  Gleig,  Munro,  I,  405  sqq. 


POSITION  OF  THE  RYOT  465 

In  many  villages,  especially  in  the  irrigated  tracts,  there  was  a  tradition 
of  a  joint  settlement  and  a  common  ancestry,  and  the  whole  village  was 
owned  in  shares,  the  lands  in  some  of  them  being  periodically  re- 
distributed1. In  such  villages  there  was  a  habit  of  common  action 
which  enabled  the  villagers  to  oppose  a  certain  resistance  to  the 
sovereign  and  his  agents.  Elsewhere  rights  were  derived  from  the 
individual  occupation  of  waste  land,  and  the  power  of  resistance  was 
very  small.  Almost  everywhere  there  was  more  cultivable  land  than 
could  be  cultivated  by  the  labour  and  stock  of  the  inhabitants.  The 
ruler  therefore  had  seldom  any  reason  to  assert  a  claim  to  the  land 
itself  or  to  oust  a  cultivator  from  it.  His  anxiety  was  to  find  cultivators 
for  the  land  and  to  secure  the  largest  possible  share  of  the  product 
of  their  industry.  The  share  of  the  crop  which  he  succeeded  in 
obtaining  was  usually  so  high  as  to  leave  the  cultivator  no  more  than 
a  bare  subsistence.  This,  taken  together  with  the  presence  of  land 
waiting  to  be  brought  under  cultivation,  prevented  the  land  from 
acquiring  any  saleable  value  except  in  Tanjore  and  in  a  few  other 
specially  favoured  localities.  The  cultivator  therefore  had  all  the 
security  of  tenure  that  he  desired.  Hereditary  rights  were  seldom  in 
question.  The  ryot  was  more  concerned  to  assert  his  right  to  relinquish 
a  holding — a  right  which  the  amildar  was  at  pains  to  deny.  To  the 
ruler's  demands  for  an  increasing  land  revenue  the  cultivator  could 
oppose  an  ill-defined  village  custom  and  sometimes  the  records  of  an 
old  assessment  which  showed  what  the  cultivator  ought  to  pay.  But 
the  state's  admitted  share  was  itself  very  high,  amounting  often  to 
more  than  half  the  whole  crop;  and  the  cultivator  was  unable  to  resist 
the  imposition  of  all  manner  of  extra  cesses  to  meet  the  needs  of  the 
ruler,  the  amildar  and  the  village  officers.2  It  was  said  that  in  practice 
the  ruler  and  his  agents  took  all  that  they  could  get,  sometimes  even 
the  whole  crop,  and  that  the  cultivator  often  kept  no  more  than  he 
could  conceal.  But  it  must  be  remembered  that,  in  the  circumstances 
of  the  time,  it  was  easy  for  the  cultivators  to  conceal  the  extent  of 
cultivation  and  to  misrepresent  the  out-turn  of  their  crops.  The 
village  accountants  and  the  revenue  underlings  who  estimated  or 
measured  the  out-turn  could  usually  be  propitiated  at  no  very 
extravagant  cost.  At  the  opening  of  our  period  the  uncertainty  and 
the  inequality  of  the  incidence  of  the  demand  was  probably  at  least 
as  great  an  evil  as  the  magnitude  of  the  total  sum  collected. 

To  prevent  fraud,  it  was  clearly  in  the  interest  of  the  ruler  that  his 
claim  should  be  commuted  for  a  fixed  sum  of  money  or  a  fixed 
quantity  of  grain  payable  annually  in  good  and  bad  seasons  alike, 
and  in  some  districts  there  were  in  the  hands  of  the  village  accountants 
records  of  old  surveys  in  which  the  sum  payable  on  each  field  or  on 
each  holding  was  defined.  Elsewhere  attempts  had  been  made  to 

1  Ellis,  Mirassi  Paper,  ap.  Rev.  and  Jud.  Set.  i,  810. 

8  Graeme's  Report  on  N.  Arcot,  31  March,  1818,  ap.  Rev.  and  Jud.  Sel.  i,  959. 

CHI  v  30 


466    MADRAS  DISTRICT  SYSTEM  AND  LAND  REVENUE 

fix  the  sum  payable  by  each  village.  But  so  long  as  the  state's  demand 
in  average  years  left  the  cultivators  little  more  than  a  bare  subsistence, 
it  could  not  be  paid  in  bad  years.  The  revenue  underlings  and  the 
village  officers  opposed  a  system  which  tended  to  curtail  the  sources 
of  illegitimate  gain;  and  the  cultivators  feared  that  the  fixed  demand 
might  operate  merely  as  a  minimum  and  would  not  protect  them 
against  extra  cesses. 

The  most  important  crop  in  South  India  was  the  rice  crop  cultivated 
on  the  irrigated  lands.  The  state's  share  of  this  crop  was  usually 
calculated  each  year  in  grain.  The  villagers  were  sometimes  required 
to  buy  back  the  state  share  at  a  price  fixed  at  the  discretion  of  the 
sovereign's  agent.  Sometimes  the  state's  share  was  stored  in  granaries 
to  be  consumed  by  the  state  servants,  or  sold  when  prices  rose.1  To 
eliminate  competition  the  villagers  were  often  forbidden  to  sell  their 
grain  till  the  state  had  disposed  of  its  stock.  The  unirrigated  lands  of 
South  India  were  far  more  extensive  than  the  irrigated.  A  great  variety 
of  crops  was  raised  and  many  of  these  crops  were  harvested  piecemeal. 
To  assess,  collect,  store  and  market  the  state's  share  in  all  these  crops 
would  have  been  an  impossible  task.  It  was  therefore  commuted  for 
a  money  payment.  This  was  sometimes  fixed  on  each  field,  sometimes 
for  each  kind  of  crop  cultivated;  and  sometimes  it  varied- with  the 
state  of  the  season. 

The  net  result  was  that  every  year  saw  a  struggle  between  the 
state's  agent  and  the  villagers  to  raise  or  lower  the  assessment,  and 
a  good  crop  well  cultivated  might  cost  the  village  dear.  When  the 
demand  on  the  whole  village  had  been  fixed  for  the  year,  the  appor- 
tionment of  it  among  the  villagers  was  usually  left  to  the  discretion 
of  the  village  headmen,  or  other  principal  inhabitants,  who  might 
or  might  not  be  charitably  disposed  to  the  poor,  but  were  very 
unlikely  to  encourage  exceptional  enterprise,  industry,  or  thrift. 
There  was  thus  everything  to  discourage  improvement  and  the 
cultivator  lost  all  interest  in  his  land.  So  much  was  this  the  case  that 
there  had  grown  up  among  the  revenue  officers  a  tradition  that  the 
cultivator  was  idle,  and  that  it  was  their  duty  to  drive  him  and  to 
force  him  to  cultivate  more  land  than  he  was  willing  to  be  responsible 
for.2  The  cultivator  on  his  side  was  often  on  the  look-out  for  an 
opportunity  to  relinquish  old  land  in  order  to  take  up  waste  that 
happened  to  be  more  leniently  assessed.  He  would  even  leave  his 
village  for  this  purpose.  Indeed  the  most  effective  check  on  the 
activities  of  the  revenue  officers  was  the  readiness  of  the  cultivator 
to  fly  to  some  adjoining  district  where  the  administration  was  less 
exacting. 

Beside  the  land  revenue  there  were  a  host  of  miscellaneous  taxes, 
licences  and  monopolies,  designed  to  secure  the  sovereign  a  share  in 

1  Revenue  letter  from  Madras,  6  February,  1810,  ap.  Rev.  andjud.  Sel.  i,  502. 
*  Gf.  Morcland,  India  at  the  death  ofAkbar,  p.  97. 


SAIR  REVENUE  467 

the  income  arising  from  every  source.  Thus  there  were  taxes  on 
houses,  on  looms,  on  oil  presses,  on  stonemasons,  on  dancing  girls, 
and  on  most  petty  industries;  taxes  on  forest  produce;  monopolies 
of  salt,  of  liquor,  and  of  ghee,  and  duties  on  the  transport  of  goods. 
The  revenue  derived  from  these  sources  was  small,  partly  because 
of  the  prevailing  poverty,  partly  because  the  machinery  for  collection 
was  neither  trustworthy  nor  efficient.  By  far  the  most  important  of 
these  miscellaneous  taxes  were  the  duties  levied  on  the  transport  of 
goods.  The  right  to  levy  these  taxes  was  usually  farmed  out.  The  rates 
of  duty  and  the  location  of  the  stations  at  which  they  were  levied 
were  governed  partly  by  custom,  partly  by  the  discretion  of  the  farmer. 
The  stations  were  very  numerous.  On  some  routes  they  were  on  the 
average  not  more  than  ten  miles  apart,  and  duties  had  to  be  paid  at 
each  one.  But  trade  is  more  easily  killed  or  frightened  away  than 
agriculture,  and  the  farmers  of  the  transit  duties  were  therefore  less 
oppressive  than  the  land  revenue  officials.1 

In  European  eyes  the  three  radical  evils  in  South  India  were 
the  insubordination  of  the  zamindars  and  poligars,  the  lack  of 
recognised  laws  and  law  courts,  and  the  uncertainties  of  the  land 
revenue  system.  Since  1775  the  court  of  directors  had  been  pressing 
the  Madras  Government  to  take  steps  towards  correcting  these  evils 
in  the  territories  under  their  control,  that  is  in  the  Northern  Sarkars 
and  the  jagir.2  But  when  Lord  Cornwallis  came  to  India,  there  was 
as  yet  little  to  distinguish  the  administration  of  these  territories  from 
that  of  the  adjoining  native  states.  A  blank  ignorance  of  the  people, 
their  customs,  and  their  languages,  inclined  the  Company's  servants 
to  give  unlimited  discretion  to  the  persons  whom  they  chose  to  exercise 
authority  in  their  stead.  All  business  was  transacted  through  in- 
terpreters.3 There  was  no  incentive  to  exertion.  Money  was  the 
chief  consideration,  and  it  could  only  be  acquired  by  corrupt  means. 
But  a  new  spirit  was  soon  to  be  infused.  In  1792,  the  defeat  of  Tipu 
Sultan  and  the  annexation  of  the  Baramahal  and  Dindigul  to  the 
Madras  Presidency  made  it  plain  that  the  administration  of  the 
Company's  territories  would  henceforth  be  the  chief  duty  of  the 
Company's  servants,  and  that  there  was  a  career  for  those  who 
equipped  themselves  for  this  work.  A  stimulus  to  industry  was 
supplied  by  the  fact  that  for  lack  of  civil  servants  with  a  knowledge 
of  the  languages  and  customs  of  the  people,  Captain  Read  with  three 
military  assistants  was  appointed  to  take  charge  of  the  land  revenue 
administration  of  the  Baramahal.  A  central  Board  of  Revenue  had 
been  set  up  in  1 786,  and  the  working  of  the  new  spirit  led  it  to  fall 
foul  of  the  corrupt  and  inefficient  chiefs  and  councils  in  the  Northern 
Sarkars,  who  had  allowed  their  territories  to  go  from  bad  to  worse, 

1  Cf.  Baramahal  Records,  section  vn. 
*  Fifth  Report  of  1812,  pp.  78  sqq. 
8  Arbuthnot,  Selections,  p.  xxxvh. 

30-2 


468    MADRAS  DISTRICT  SYSTEM  AND  LAND  REVENUE 

obstructing  every  effort  towards  reform.  In  1794,  the  governor  of 
Madras,  Lord  Hobart,  was  induced  to  abolish  these  authorities  and 
to  substitute  district  collectors,  subordinate  to  the  Board  of  Revenue.1 
In  the  same  year  the  whole  of  the  jagir  was  put  under  a  single 
collector,  Lionel  Place.  The  district  collector,  having  an  interest  in 
his  work  and  exercising  a  wide  discretionary  authority  much  the 
same  as  that  which  was  vested  in  the  amildar  under  native  rulers, 
soon  showed  himself  far  better  fitted  to  overawe  opposition  and  to 
obtain  information  than  the  councils  and  committees  that  had 
preceded  him.2  Light  began  to  flow  in  on  the  foundations  of  the  land 
revenue  system,  the  land  tenures,  and  the  customs  of  the  villages. 
These  things  had  hitherto  been  regarded  as  impenetrable  mysteries, 
but  the  district  officers  now  began  to  understand  them,  and  to  see 
that  it  was  possible  and  advantageous  to  work  through  the  indigenous 
institutions,  reforming  and  adapting  them  to  suit  their  ends. 

In  the  jagir,  Place  found  the  villages  owned  in  heritable  shares 
by  mirasdars  who  exercised  the  right  of  disposing  of  their  shares  by 
mortgage,  gift,  or  sale.  This  discovery  upset  the  then  accepted  theory 
that  the  state  was  the  owner  of  the  soil,  and  that  the  cultivator  was 
little  more  than  a  tenant-at-will  with  at  most  a  preferential  right 
to  cultivate  on  the  terms  which  the  state  chose  to  offer.  The  principal 
mirasdars  had  been  accustomed  to  act  together  on  behalf  of  the  village, 
and  it  was  found  convenient  and  profitable  to  abandon  the  old 
practice  of  renting  out  the  jagir  in  parcels  to  speculators,  and  to 
settle  instead  with  the  mirasdars  of  each  village  for  a  lump  sum 
calculated  to  be  equivalent  to  the  state's  share  of  the  crop.  Place 
exerted  himself  to  restore  the  efficiency  of  the  village  accountants,  and 
he  acquired  a  close  knowledge  of  the  affairs  of  the  villages  under  his 
control.  The  system,  therefore,  worked  smoothly  enough  and  gave  an 
increasing  revenue  during  the  four  years  of  his  administration. 
A  similar  system  was  applied  in  the  government  villages  in  the 
Northern  Sarkars.  But  the  results  there  were  less  satisfactory,  partly 
because  the  villagers  were  less  capable  of  joint  action,  partly  because 
the  collectors  had  not  Place's  knowledge. 

The  conditions  with  which  Read  had  to  deal  in  the  Baramahal 
were  widely  different  from  those  which  Place  had  found  in  the  jagir. 
In  the  latter  was  a  tradition  of  an  original  colonisation,  and  the 
mirasdars  of  each  village  traced  their  tides  to  a  joint-occupation  of  its 
lands.  The  main  crop  was  rice,  which  was  threshed  on  a  common 
threshing-floor.  The  state's  share  was  calculated  in  grain  on  the  total 
produce  of  the  village,  and  its  amount  or  its  equivalent  in  cash  was 
demanded  in  the  lump  from  the  village,  the  apportionment  of  the 
demand  being  left  entirely  to  the  mirasdars.  But  in  the  Baramahal 
the  rice  crop  was  of  minor  importance.  The  majority  of  the  cultivators 


1  Fifth  Report  of  1812,  pp.  89-90,  and  App.  14. 

2  Idem,  App.  16;  cf.  Wclleslty  Despatches,  i,  230. 


ALEXANDER  READ  469 

» 

drew  their  living  from  the  unirrigated  lands.  The  population  was 
sparse,  the  waste  lands  extensive,  and  tides  were  derived  from  the 
individual's  occupation  of  waste.  The  ties  which  bound  the  villagers 
together  were  therefore  comparatively  weak,  and  the  habit  of  joint 
action  less  highly  developed.  Instead  of  a  committee  of  the  principal 
mirasdars,  there  was  a  village  headman  who  collected  the  state's  dues, 
sometimes  in  his  capacity  as  a  state  servant,  sometimes  as  the  renter 
who  had  leased  the  village  from  the  amildar.  In^either  case  he  dealt 
separately  with  each  individual  cultivator,  and  each  cultivator's  dues 
were  assessed  and  paid  in  cash.  Read  was  a  man  of  extraordinary 
integrity  and  industry.  He  studied  the  history  and  the  details  of  the 
land  revenue  system  in  force  in  his  district,  and  observed  its  effect 
on  the  cultivators.  The  scheme  which  he  devised  for  its  reform  based 
itself  on  existing  practice  and  deviated  but  little  from  the  lines  marked 
out  by  the  best  Indian  administrators  in  dealing  with  such  tracts. 
He  determined  to  dispense  with  all  renters  and  middlemen,  and  to 
deal  direct  with  the  individual  cultivator  through  his  own  servants, 
among  whom  he  included  the  village  accountant  and  the  village 
headman.  To  relieve  the  cultivator  from  all  uncertainty,  to  give  him 
confidence,  and  to  protect  his  improvements,  he  wished  to  fix  the 
land  revenue  due  from  each  field  once  for  all  in  terms  of  money, 
and  to  leave  the  cultivator  free  to  take  up  or  relinquish  such  fields 
as  he  chose.  For  this  purpose  a  detailed  survey  field  by  field  was 
necessary,  and  such  a  survey  was  undertaken  and  carried  through.1 
Read  actually  published  a  proclamation  outlining  his  scheme  of 
land  revenue  administration,  and  promising  the  cultivators  an 
assessment  fixed  in  perpetuity.  His  proclamation  was  neither  con- 
firmed nor  cancelled  by  superior  authority.  He  was  left  in  the  district 
and  tried  to  give  effect  to  his  plan.  But  he  had  made  certain  mis- 
calculations. In  proposing  to  fix  a  money  assessment  in  perpetuity 
he  had  ignored  the  chance  of  a  permanent  change  in  the  price  of 
grain.  In  fact  the  fall  in  the  price  of  grain  during  the  next  fifty  years 
would  have  converted  even  a  moderate  money  assessment  into  an 
intolerable  burden.  But  the  standard  of  assessment  which  Read  took 
for  his  guidance  was  far  too  high  for  the  success  of  his  scheme;  he 
took  into  consideration  the  theoretic  claim  of  the  state,  which  in  this 
district  was  usually  about  half  the  crop,  and  the  actual  collections 
made  by  Tipu ;  he  aimed  at  fixing  rates  that  would  be  a  little  below 
the  average  collections  made  by  Tipu.  But  by  discovering  concealed 
cultivation  and  improving  the  machinery  of  collection  he  actually 
drew  from  the  country  as  much  as  Tipu  and  his  officers  had  drawn 
to  prepare  for  war  and  to  satisfy  private  greed.  To  maintain  taxation 
at  such  a  level  would  have  been  a  fatal  obstacle  to  improvement,  and, 

1  Arbuthnot,  Selections,  pp.  xxxix-xl;  cf.  Munro  to  his  father,  21  September,  1798,  ap. 
Gleig,  Munro >  i,  204. 


470    MADRAS  DISTRICT  SYSTEM  AND  LAND  REVENUE 

even  if  improvement  had  been  no  object,  it  was  simply  impossible  to 
collect  such  an  assessment  in  bad  seasons  from  cultivators  who  had 
no  capital.  Again,  the  agency  which  Read  had  at  his  disposal  was 
neither  sufficiently  trustworthy,  nor  sufficiently  experienced,  to  make 
a  survey  which  could  be  accepted  as  final.  The  assessment  was  very 
unequal,  and  required  to  be  revised  as  mistakes  came  to  light.  The 
result  was  that  the  plan  of  a  fixed  assessment  was  never  rigidly  adhered 
to.  Remissions  had  to  be  allowed  on  account  of  poverty,  loss  of  crops, 
loss  of  cattle,  death  of  working  members  of  the  family,  and  such  like 
reasons.  Nor  did  Read  succeed  in  fulfilling  his  intention  to  protect 
the  cultivator's  improvements  and  give  him  full  freedom  to  relinquish 
the  land  he  did  not  want.  Half  a  century  had  to  elapse  before  the 
obvious  wisdom  of  Read's  ideas  could  overcome  the  bad  traditions 
of  the  revenue  administration. 

But  though  Read's  plan  could  not  be  carried  into  effect  in  its 
entirety,  it  was  worked  in  a  modified  form  and  gave  good  results. 
Among  Read's  assistants  was  another  soldier,  Thomas  Munro,  who 
was  Read's  equal  in  industry  and  integrity,  and  had  besides  a  clear 
head  and  a  reflective  disposition.  After  the  fall  of  Seringapatam, 
Munro  was  transferred  to  the  newly  annexed  district  of  Kanara  to 
take  charge  of  the  land  revenue  administration  there.  Kanara  was  in 
many  respects  very  unlike  the  Baramahal,  but  the  native  land  revenue 
system  had  been  even  more  definitely  ryotwari.  A  money  assessment 
had  been  fixed  on  each  holding  centuries  before  and,  though  extra 
assessments  had  been  superimposed  upon  this,  the  original  assessment 
was  still  known  and  recorded.  Munro  was  thus  confirmed  in  the  belief 
that  the  ryotwari  system  was  the  indigenous  system  of  South  India, 
and  therefore  presnrnah1;:  ^e  system  best  suited  to  the  needs  of 
the  country,  iJ^p^  e^eJafection  it  gave  good  results  in  Kanara. 
There,  too,  Muril^  ^  ^  surviving  a  strong  sense  of  private  property 
in  land,  of  which  he  IfiL  vf?«ai  no  trace  in  the  Baramahal.  He  traced 
the  existence  of  this  sense  of  property  to  the  original  low  level  of  the 
land  assessment.  He  held  that  the  development  of  this  sense  of 
property  was  the  only  road  to  the  improvement  of  the  country.  He 
argued  that  it  could  not  exist  where,  as  in  the  Baramahal  and  through- 
out the  Carnatic  districts,  the  assessment  was  so  high  as  to  swallow  up 
the  whole  of  the  economic  rent,  and  thus  became  a  steady  advocate  of 
a  policy  of  lowering  the  assessment.  But  he  held  that  it  was  for  govern- 
ment to  decide  whether  the  standard  of  assessment  should  be  lowered 
to  promote  improvement,  and  that  his  duty  as  collector  was  to  be 
guided  by  the  standard  set  up  by  previous  rulers,  taking  care  only  to 
see  that  his  demand  was  not  so  high  as  to  discourage  the  cultivator 
or  encroach  upon  his  stock,  and  thereby  occasion  a  future  deteriora- 
tion of  the  revenue.  Acting  on  this  principle,  he  allowed  at  once  a 
small  remission  on  his  own  responsibility,  and  recommended  govern- 
ment to  grant  a  further  remission  later,  though  he  gave  reason  to 


THE  RYOTWARI  SYSTEM  471 

believe  that  the  government's  demand  in  Kanara  was  lower  than  that 
usual  on  the  east  coast.1 

From  *  Kanara,  Munro  was  transferred  in  1800  to  the  Deccan 
districts  newly  ceded  by  Hyderabad.  These  districts  were  overrun 
by  poligars  and  extraordinarily  lawless,  but  otherwise  conditions 
were  not  unlike  those  with  which  Munro  had  been  familiar  in  the 
Baramahal.  The  ryotwari  system  was  clearly  applicable.  Starting 
with  four  surveyors,  and  training  his  men  as  he  went  along,  Munro 
surveyed  and  assessed  the  tract  field  by  field.  As  elsewhere  the 
standard  assessment  fixed  was  intended  to  be  a  little  below  the 
average  actual  collections  made  under  the  native  rulers.  But  the 
tract  had  suffered  from  a  decade  of  anarchy  under  the  Nizam,  and 
Munro  won  the  Board  of  Revenue's  applause  by  the  patience  with 
which  he  nursed  its  revenue,  keeping  the  demand  low  at  first  and 
raising  it  gradually  to  the  standard  as  the  ryots  accumulated  stock, 
gained  confidence,  and  extended  their  cultivation.2  Munro  himself 
was  not  wholly  satisfied.  He  still  held  that  a  general  lowering  of  the 
standard  of  the  assessment  was  the  crying  need  of  the  country,  and 
he  was  alarmed  by  the  pressure  from  above  for  increased  revenue. 
He  obeyed  this  pressure,  but  when  he  left  the  district  in  1807  he  put 
on  record  a  recommendation  for  a  25  per  cent,  reduction  in  the 
standard  assessment. 

In  1799  Tanjore  and  Coimbatore,  and  in  1801  Malabar  and  the 
territory  of  the  nawab  of  Arcot,  were  annexed  to  the  Madras  Presi- 
dency. The  ryotwari  system  of  management  was  as  a  rule  found 
easily  applicable,  but  in  some  tracts,  notably  in  Tanjore,  the  village 
organisation  resembled  that  which  Place  had  found  in  the  jagir,  and 
village  settlements  were  customary.  But  the  Board  of  Revenue  was 
at  this  time  much  impressed  by  the  tyranny  exercised  by  the  principal 
inhabitants  under  the  village  settlements.  Preference  was  therefore 
given  to  the  ryotwari  system,  and  in  1805  it  was  at  least  nominally 
in  force  in  all  these  districts,  and  surveys  had  been  or  were  being 
carried  out  in  most  of  them.  Many  of  the  collectors  of  districts  had 
been  trained  under  Read  or  Munro,  but  not  all  of  them  showed 
equal  discretion  in  adapting  the  system  to  the  circumstances  of  their 
districts.  In  Malabar,  Macleod  provoked  a  fresh  outbreak  of  rebellion 
by  trying  to  raise  the  land  assessment  nearer  to  the  standard  recog- 
nised on  the  east  coast,  ignoring  the  peculiar  history  of  Malabar  where 
the  land  tax  was  an  innovation  introduced  after  the  Mysore  conquest.3 
In  South  Arcot  the  Board  of  Revenue  supported  the  collector  in 
demanding  a  share  in  the  crop  which  the  government  later  con- 
demned as  "excessive  beyond  measure  and  we  hope  beyond  example 

1  Gf.  Munro  to  Cockburn,  7  October,  1800,  and  to  Read,  16  June,  1801,  ap.  Gleig, 
Munro,  i,  288,  and  ni,  161. 

8  Cf.  Munro  to  Board  of  Revenue,  30  November,  1806,  and  15  August,  1807,  ap.  Rev. 
andjud.  SeL  I,  94  sqq.t  and  1 15  sqq. 

8  Logan,  Malabar  Manual,  p.  540. 


472    MADRAS  DISTRICT  SYSTEM  AND  LAND  REVENUE 

in  other  parts  of  the  Company's  territory".  Nowhere  was  it  found 
possible  to  give  full  effect  to  Read's  original  plan.  Annual  settlements 
had  everywhere  to  be  made  not  only  because  cultivation  extended 
and  shrank  with  the  rainfall,  but  because  the  survey  assessment  could 
only  be  treated  as  a  maximum.  Collectors  had  to  exercise  their 
discretion  freely  in  granting  remissions  in  view  of  the  poverty  of  the 
cultivator  or  the  failure  of  his  crop.  Still  the  system  did  work.  If  the 
state  demand  was  not  rigidly  fixed  the  collector  had  a  standard  for 
his  guidance  in  making  the  annual  settlement.  The  cultivator  at  least 
knew  his  maximum  liability  before  he  began  to  sow,  and  later  on  he 
could  get  a  bill  under  the  collector's  signature  showing  the  details  of 
the  demand  upon  him  for  the  year.  It  was  thus  easier  for  him  to 
distinguish  between  authorised  and  unauthorised  exactions,  and  to 
explain  his  grievance  when  he  had  been  wronged.  Above  all,  the 
system  had  in  itself  the  seed  of  improvement.  The  government  and 
the  collector  felt  a  direct  responsibility  for  all  that  was  done  or  left 
undone  in  the  assessment  and  collection  of  the  land  revenue.  They 
were  therefore  impelled  to  reform  abuses  rather  than  to  treat  them  as 
inevitable.  The  collectors  were  brought  into  close  touch  with  the 
affairs  of  the  village.  They  learnt  to  know  something  of  the  cultivator's 
needs,  his  rights,  and  the  wrongs  he  suffered.  They  had  to  make 
frequent  reports  to  the  Board  of  Revenue,  and  a  store  of  experience 
and  information  thus  accumulated  steadily  year  after  year. 

Where  the  ryotwari  system  was  in  force,  civil  and  criminal  justice 
usually  continued  to  be  administered  much  as  it  had  been  under  the 
native  rulers,  the  collector  taking  the  place  of  the  amildar.  But  the 
authority  of  poligars  and  kavalgars  in  police  matters  was  no  longer 
recognised,  and  the  fees  formerly  paid  to  them  were  claimed  by 
government.  Reliance  was  placed  instead  on  the  village  headman 
and  the  village  watcher,  who  was  restored  to  his  emoluments  where 
these  had  been  encroached  upon  by  the  kavalgar.  The  work  that  could 
not  be  done  by  village  police  was  entrusted  to  the  collector's  revenue 
subordinates  assisted  where  necessary  by  armed  irregulars  locally 
levied.  This  concentration  of  all  authority  in  the  collector's  hands  was 
useful  not  only  in  enabling  him  to  overawe  poligars  and  protect  the 
cultivator  against  their  retainers,  but  also  because  it  made  it  easier 
to  brush  aside  a  rank  growth  of  inconvenient  customs  such  as  that 
by  which  the  same  village  office  might  be  shared  among  different 
members  of  a  family. 

But  before  Place,  Read,  and  Munro  had  had  time  to  show  what 
could  be  done  by  working  along  the  lines  of  indigenous  systems,  the 
Bengal  Government  was  pressing  for  the  introduction  into  Madras  of 
the  exotic  revenue  and  judicial  systems  it  had  recently  planted  in 
Bengal.1  The  Madras  Government  wished  to  move  slowly,  but  in 
1798  the  governor-general,  Lord  Wellesley,  ordered  the  Madras 

1  Malcolm  to  Lord  Hobart,  ap.  Kaye,  Malcolm,  i,  176;  and  Wellesley  Despatches,  n,  121. 


THE  PERMANENT  SETTLEMENT  473 

Government  to  introduce  the  Bengal  system  without  delay.  The 
Board  of  Revenue  was  accordingly  asked  to  report  how  this  could 
be  done.  Now  one  main  object  of  the  Bengal  Permanent  Settlement 
had  been  to  promote  the  cultivation  of  the  land.  In  Bengal  almost 
the  whole  country  was  in  the  possession  of  great  zamindars  whose 
position  bore  at  least  a  superficial  resemblance  to  that  of  English 
landlords.  It  was  therefore  possible  to  suppose  that  the  object  in 
view  could  be  attained  by  giving  them  a  guarantee  against  any  future 
enhancement  of  the  state's  demand  from  the  land.  But  there  were 
no  zamindars  in  the  greater  part  of  the  territories  then  included  in 
the  presidency  of  Madras.  Even  in  the  Northern  Sarkars  hardly  half, 
and  that  not  the  richer  half,  was  in  their  possession.  Elsewhere  there 
were  only  a  few  unimportant  poligars.  It  was  evidently  good  policy 
to  confirm  the  zamindars  and  poligars  in  their  existing  possessions  if 
that  would  induce  them  to  acquiesce  in  the  extinction  of  their  military 
power.  But  there  was  nothing  to  suggest  that  they  would  make  good 
landlords,  or  that  it  was  desirable  to  extend  their  control  over  neigh- 
bouring villages.  Neither  in  the  jagir  nor  in  the  Baramahal  was  there 
any  landlord  class  or  any  other  class  which  seemed  capable  of  supplying 
good  landlords.  To  achieve  the  object  in  view,  to  encourage  the 
improvement  and  extension  of  cultivation,  there  was  no  need  to  set 
landlords  over  independent  villages.  The  end  could  more  easily  be 
attained  either  by  making  a  permanent  settlement  with  each  village 
or  by  fixing  a  moderate  assessment  on  each  field.  But  the  Board  of 
Revenue  was  very  anxious  to  get  rid  of  the  uncertainties  of  the 
existing  system  as  soon  as  possible.  It  still  felt  itself  to  be  groping 
hopelessly  in  the  dark,  and  it  doubted  whether  its  officers  could  ever 
acquire  sufficient  knowledge  to  enable  them  to  deal  successfully  with 
the  villages.  It  was  therefore  glad  to  follow  the  beaten  path  and  to 
rid  itself  of  responsibility  by  a  zamindari  settlement.1  To  meet  the 
difficulty  caused  by  the  non-existence  of  zamindars  the  board  proposed 
the  simple  expedient  of  grouping  villages  to  form  estates  of  con- 
venient size,  and  selling  them  by  auction  to  the  highest  bidder.  The 
original  object  of  the  Permanent  Settlement  had  almost  dropped  out 
of  view.  No  one  can  seriously  have  supposed  that  the  purchasers 
would  or  could  promote  the  improvement  or  extension  of  cultivation. 
The  argument  pressed  by  the  champions  of  the  Permanent  Settlement 
in  Madras  was  that  it  would  relieve  government  of  the  duty  of  assessing 
and  collecting  the  land  revenue,  a  duty  which  government  officers 
were  judged  incompetent  to  perform.  The  Madras  Government 
accepted  the  board's  proposals,  and  in  1800  it  received  authority 
from  Bengal  to  effect  a  permanent  settlement  on  those  lines  through- 
out the  presidency.  In  the  following  year  the  court  of  directors 
concurred,  but  warned  the  Madras  Government  that  the  work  should 
be  done  well  rather  than  quickly,  and  that  the  military  establishments 

1  Cf.  Minute  of  the  Board  of  Revenue,  ap.  Kaye,  Administration,  p.  225. 


474    MADRAS  DISTRICT  SYSTEM  AND  LAND  REVENUE 

of  the  zamindars  and  the  spirit  of  insubordination  should  first  be 
suppressed. 1  A  special  commission  was  appointed  in  1 802  and  between 
1802  and  1804  the  Northern  Sarkars,  the  jagir,  the  Baramahal,  and 
Dindigul  were  settled  on  the  lines  prescribed.  The  zamindars  were 
forbidden  to  keep  up  a  military  establishment,  and  were  deprived 
of  their  police  authority  and  their  control  over  the  miscellaneous 
sources  of  revenue.  They  were  declared  to  be  proprietors  of  their 
estates  with  the  cultivators  for  their  tenants.  They  were  given  the 
power  of  distraint  and  were  authorised  to  collect  rent  at  the  rates 
which  prevailed  in  the  year  preceding  the  Permanent  Settlement.  In 
return  they  were  required  to  pay  yearly  &  peshkash  fixed  in  perpetuity; 
if  thepeshkash  fell  into  arrears  their  estate  could  be  attached  and  sold. 
The  peshkash  was  usually  calculated  to  be  the  equivalent  of  one-third 
of  the  gross  produce,  or  two-thirds  of  the  gross  rental,  of  the  estate ; 
but  deviations  from  the  standard  were  allowed  in  special  cases. 

Simultaneously  with  the  introduction  of  the  zamindari  system  in 
each  district  came  a  new  judicial  system  and  a  code  of  regulations 
modelled  on  those  of  Bengal.  The  collector  ceased  to  exercise  civil  or 
criminal  jurisdiction  or  to  be  concerned  with  the  police.  A  zillah  (or 
district)  judge  was  appointed  with  a  jurisdiction  in  all  civil  cases. 
Attached  to  him  was  a  native  commissioner  empowered  to  try  and 
decide  petty  suits.  Appeals  lay  from  the  zillah  judge  to  a  provincial 
court.  Serious  criminal  cases  were  tried  by  judges  of  this  court  touring 
as  a  court  of  circuit.  The  zillah  judge  was  also  district  magistrate,  and 
in  this  capacity  he  controlled  the  new  police  force  of  thanadars  and 
darogas  who  were  posted  at  selected  stations  throughout  the  district, 
the  village  watchmen  being  put  under  their  authority.  The  new  courts 
and  the  new  code  of  regulations  were  intended  to  protect  the  culti- 
vator's existing  rights  against  the  landlord  whom  the  zamindari 
settlement  had  set  over  him.  But  the  courts  were  fettered  by  British 
rules  of  procedure  and  evidence,  and  litigation  was  tedious  and 
costly.  Ignorant,  illiterate,  and  poverty-stricken  cultivators  could 
rarely  venture  to  challenge  their  landlords'  proceedings  before  an 
unfamiliar  and  distant  authority.  The  protection  given  them  by  the 
courts  was  in  fact  little  more  than  an  illusion.2 

The  principles  of  the  permanent  zamindari  settlement  were  at  the 
same  time  applied  in  dealing  with  the  palayams  of  the  Carnatic.  The 
armed  force  which  the  Carnatic  poligar  had  at  his  disposal  was  often 
formidable,  the  peshkash  due  from  him  was  small,  and  it  was  rarely 
paid  except  under  duress.  By  the  treaty  of  1792  Lord  Cornwallis  had 
made 'the  Company  responsible  for  the  collection  of  the  peshkash;  but 
the  nawab's  sovereignty  continued,  and  the  Madras  Government 

1  General  letter  from  England,  11  February,  1801,  ap.  Rev.  andjud.  Sel.  i,  601. 
*  Report  of  Board  of  Revenue,  18  December,  1815,  idem,  n,  391;  Bengal  to  Madras, 
*9  Juty*  1804  (idem,  iv,  924);  Gleig,  Munro,  I,  413  sqq.,  especially  Munro's  letters  to 

Cur  —  ' 


Jumming. 


THE  POLIGARS  475 

found  themselves  thwarted  in  their  efforts  to  reduce  the  poligars  to 
subordination.  The  court  of  directors  insisted  that  the  military  power 
of  the  poligars  must  be  suppressed  and  their  peshkash  raised  to  a  level 
at  which  it  would  absorb  the  resources  that  had  formerly  been  applied 
to  secure  the  allegiance  of  hordes  of  armed  retainers.  It  was  im- 
possible to  give  effect  to  these  orders  while  a  war  with  Mysore  was 
in  prospect;  but  after  the  fall  of  Seringapatam  a  military  force  was 
sent  to  overawe  the  poligars  of  Tinnevelly,  who  were  particularly 
formidable  and  refractory.  Most  of  the  poligars  chose  to  fight.  Two 
severe  campaigns  and  some  executions  and  forfeitures  were  necessary 
before  their  spirit  could  be  broken,  but  by  the  end  of  1801  the  work 
was  done.  A  permanent  settlement  was  then  made  with  twenty-four 
poligars.  Of  the  six  forfeited  estates,  three  were  sold  by  auction  and 
three  went  to  reward  poligars  who  had  rendered  service  to  the  Com- 
pany. Elsewhere  less  difficulty  was  experienced.  Ramnad  was  in  the 
Company's  possession  and  the  poligar  of  Sivaganga  was  under  the 
district  collector's  influence.  There  was  some  trouble  in  Dindigul, 
and  an  expedition  had  to  be  sent  to  reduce  the  small  poligars  of 
Chittur;  but  the  four  great  western  poligars  acquiesced  in  the 
arrangements  proposed  to  them.  In  the  Ceded  Districts  the  poligars 
had  defied  the  Nizam's  officers,  but  they  were  quickly  brought  to 
order  by  Munro  who  had  a  military  force  at  call.  As  in  the  Carnatic 
they  were  forbidden  to  maintain  any  armed  force  and  were  deprived 
of  their  police  authority;  and  Munro  further  took  the  opportunity 
to  fix  definitely  the  rents  which  they  were  entitled  to  demand  from 
the  cultivators.  The  peshkash  which  they  were  required  to  pay  was 
calculated  to  leave  them  sufficient  to  support  their  dignity. 

Regarded  as  a  measure  designed  to  induce  the  existing  zamindars 
and  poligars  to  acquiesce  in  the  loss  of  their  military  power  and  to 
become  quiet  subjects  of  the  Company,  the  Madras  zamindari  settle- 
ment was  on  the  whole  a  success.  The  peshkash  fixed  on  the  old 
zamindaris  andpalqyams  was  usually  paid  punctually,  and  even  when 
the  collector  found  it  necessary  to  attach  or  sell  the  estate,  there  was 
rarely  any  reason  to  fear  a  disturbance.  But  the  scheme  for  creating 
new  zamindaris  had  only  bad  results.  The  speculators  who  bought 
the  newly-formed  estates  proved,  as  might  have  been  expected, 
thoroughly  unsatisfactory,  whether  they  were  regarded  as  landlords 
or  as  farmers  of  the  land  revenue.  Some  extorted  what  they  could 
from  the  cultivators  and  defaulted,  leaving  government  to  recover 
the  arrears  from  an  impoverished  estate;  but  what  wrecked  the  scheme 
was  less  the  character  of  the  purchasers  than  the  level  at  which  the 
peshkash  had  been  fixed.  Though  the  standard  set  up  left  the  proprietors 
only  a  narrow  margin  of  profit,  the  tendency  in  Madras  at  this  time 
was  against  leniency,  and  in  calculating  the  actual  peshkash  the 
collectors  were  inclined  to  err  in  favour  of  government  and  to 
anticipate  improvements  which  were  long  in  coming.  Few  of  the 


476    MADRAS  DISTRICT  SYSTEM  AND  LAND  REVENUE 

purchasers  had  the  capital  necessary  to  meet  the  loss  in  a  bad  year. 
From  the  first  many  of  the  newly-created  estates  in  the  jagir  and  the 
Baramahal  began  to  fall  into  arrears.  1806-7  was  a  bad  season. 
Many  estates  came  to  sale  and  the  trouble  spread  even  to  the  old 
zamindaris  in  the  Northern  Sarkars  which  had  been  assessed  on  more 
favourable  terms.  Bidders  were  few;  and  when  estates  began  to  lapse 
into  government  management,  it  was  often  found  that  the  villages 
had  deteriorated  under  the  exactions  of  the  late  proprietor.  Mean- 
while the  whole  theory  and  practice  of  the  Bengal  system  had  come 
to  be  challenged,  and  men  now  doubted  the  wisdom  of  thrusting  an 
exotic  system  on  Madras  where  two  indigenous  systems  had  already 
been  made  to  work  tolerably,  and  seemed  capable  of  being  adapted 
to  give  still  better  results.  In  1804  the  court  of  directors  again  warned 
the  Madras  Government  of  the  danger  of  concluding  permanent 
settlements  in  haste.  Munro  and  the  assistants  trained  under  him 
had  by  this  time  gained  much  influence,  and  Lord  William  Bentinck, 
who  was  governor  of  Madras  from  1803  to  1807,  was  attracted  by 
their  doctrine.  Further  progress  with  the  zamindari  settlement  was 
stayed;  but,  instead  of  working  along  the  lines  of  the  ryotwari  system, 
the  Board  of  Revenue  in  1 808  sought  and  obtained  from  Lord  William 
Bentinck's  successor  permission  to  experiment  again  with  village 
settlements. 

The  ryotwari  system  found  its  champion  in  Munro,  whose  ex- 
perience had  been  gained  in  districts  where  the  corporate  life  of  the 
village  was  comparatively  undeveloped,  and  the  revenue  officers  had 
been  in  the  habit  of  dealing  with  individual  villagers  rather  than  with 
the  village  as  a  whole.  But  the  leading  spirit  in  the  Board  of  Revenue 
at  this  time  was  Hodgson.  The  district  with  which  he  was  best 
acquainted  was  Tanjore,  where  the  corporate  life  of  the  village  was 
vigorous,  and  the  leading  mirasdars  Had  been  accustomed  to  settling 
with  the  revenue  officers  on  behalf  of  the  village.  Hodgson  succeeded 
in  persuading  his  colleagues  that  the  village  system  might  be  made  the 
foundation  of  a  satisfactory  land  revenue  system  for  the  whole  presi- 
dency. The  average  produce  or  the  average  collections  of  each  village 
could  be  estimated  or  calculated  and  a  fair  demand  arrived  at  from 
those  data.  The  right  of  collecting  the  government  share  of  the  crop 
could  then  be  leased  to  the  principal  inhabitants  at  that  sum  for  a 
term  of  years.  Later  a  lease  in  perpetuity  might  be  substituted  for 
the  temporary  lease.  Where  there  was  no  body  of  mirasdars  accustomed 
to  act  on  behalf  of  the  village,  the  lease  could  be  given  to  the  village 
headman.  It  was  true  that  at  an  earlier  date  the  board  had  been 
impressed  by  the  manner  in  which  headmen  and  principal  inhabitants 
had  abused  the  powers  which  these  village  settlements  gave  them. 
But  the  new  judicial  system  had  in  1806  been  extended  to  the  ryotwari 
districts,  and  the  oppressed  could  now  seek  protection  from  the  courts, 
A  variety  of  motives  induced  the  board  to  prefer  the  village  system 


VILLAGE  SETTLEMENTS  477 

to  the  ryotwari.  Hodgson  was  influenced  by  the  belief  that  it  would 
keep  alive  and  stimulate  the  habit  of  village  self-government,  a 
habit  which  the  ryotwari  system  tended  to  destroy.  He  also  realised 
that  it  was  not  only  principal  inhabitants  who  could  be  oppressive. 
All  collectors  were  not  Munros.  Some  were  corrupt  and  many  were 
lazy.  The  Indian  agency  at  their  command  was  by  tradition  high- 
handed, extortionate,  and  venal.  Under  a  corrupt  or  slack  collector 
the  ryotwari  system  gave  these  men  ample  opportunities  and  govern- 
ment would  share  the  discredit  of  their  misdeeds.  The  board  also 
hoped  for  some  saving  in  expenditure  under  the  village  lease  system, 
since  the  task  of  assessing  and  collecting  the  dues  of  each  cultivator 
would  be  left  to  the  villagers. 

But  the  decisive  motive  seems  to  have  been  the  fear  of  the  newly- 
established  courts  of  judicature.  It  appeared  a  hopeless  task  to  train 
the  petty  agents  of  government,  long  accustomed  to  be  a  law  unto 
themselves,  to  observe  the  elaborate  procedure  laid  down  in  an 
unfamiliar  code.  It  was  doubtful  whether  the  provisions  of  a  code 
drawn  up  d  priori  would  prove  workable  when  applied  to  existing 
conditions,  and  there  was  reason  to  fear  that  an  inexperienced 
judicature  would  show  little  respect  for  the  practical  necessities  of 
administration.  The  board,  therefore,  thought  it  desirable  to  throw  the 
responsibility  for  the  apportionment  and  the  collection  of  the  land 
revenue  on  to  the  villagers,  and  the  government  accepted  the  board's 
view.1 

Accordingly,  in  1808-9  the  collectors  of  most  districts  were  required 
to  lease  out  all  villages  not  included  in  a  permanently  settled  estate 
to  the  principal  inhabitants  or  headmen  for  a  term  of  years.  The 
lease  amounts  were  to  be  fixed  with  reference  to  the  actual  collections 
of  the  past,  with  a  view  to  maintaining  the  land  revenue  at  the  level 
then  reached.  Full  effect  could  not  be  given  to  the  board's  scheme, 
because  many  villages  feared  to  bind  themselves  to  pay  a  fixed  sum 
for  three  years.  They  had  little  credit,  and  the  risk  of  loss  in  a  bad 
year  far  outweighed  the  hope  of  gain  in  a  good.  Even  where  the 
leases  were  accepted,  the  scheme  did  not  always  work  smoothly. ,  In 
some  villages  the  lessees  were  too  weak  to  collect  their  dues.  Elsewhere 
they  were  strong  enough  to  throw  an  unfair  share  of  the  burden  on  to 
their  weaker  neighbours.  But  the  most  serious  obstacle  to  the  success 
of  the  scheme  was  the  same  as  that  which  had  already  upset  Read's 
plan  for  a  permanent  ryotwari  settlement,  and  wrecked  the  permanent 
zamindari  settlement.  The  state  demand  had  been  fixed  too  high  to 
be  collected  every  year  without  regard  to  the  state  of  the  season  and 
the  circumstances  of  the  individual  cultivator.  Munro  knew  this,  and 
had  in  1807  submitted  a  new  scheme  for  a  permanent  ryotwari  settle- 
ment, the  essential  feature  in  which  was  a  reduction  of  25  per  cent. 

1  Revenue  letter  from  Madras,  24  October,  1808,  ap.  Rev.  and  Jud.  Set.  I,  475;  Minute 
of  Board  of  Revenue,  5  January,  1818,  ap.  Kaye,  Administration,  p.  222. 


478    MADRAS  DISTRICT  SYSTEM  AND  LAND  REVENUE 

in  the  survey  assessment.  Government  ruled  out  the  possibility  of 
such  a  reduction,  and  preferred  the  board's  village  lease  scheme, 
not  seeing  that  a  reduction  was  more  necessary  under  this  scheme 
than  under  the  ryotwari  system.  For  without  a  general  reduction 
seasonal  remissions  could  not  be  dispensed  with,  and,  except  under 
the  ryotwari  system  of  dealing  separately  with  each  cultivator,  it  was 
rarely  possible  for  the  revenue  authorities  to  ensure  that  the  remissions 
given  were  such  as  the  season  required  or  that  they  reached  the 
cultivator  who  stood  in  need  of  them. 

Though  the  reports  of  the  district  collectors  on  the  working  of  the 
village  leases  were  generally  unfavourable,  the  government  decided 
to  try  new  leases  for  a  period  of  ten  years,  and  even  proposed  that 
they  should  be  made  perpetual;1  but  the  court  of  directors  had 
prohibited  the  conclusion  of  any  arrangement  in  perpetuity  without 
the  court's  specific  sanction.  Reductions  were  made  in  the  lease 
amounts  demanded,  but  they  were  generally  inadequate.  It  was  still 
found  necessary  to  allow  remissions  in  bad  seasons  and  a  door  was 
opened  for  fraud.  Having  been  relieved  of  the  duty  of  a  detailed 
scrutiny  of  the  village  accounts,  which  the  ryotwari  system  had 
imposed  on  them,  the  collector  and  his  staff  were  relapsing  into  their 
former  state  of  ignorance,  and  the  village  accountants  found  them- 
selves masters  of  the  situation. 

But  hardly  had  the  ten-year  leases  begun  to  run  when  the  affairs 
of  the  Madras  Presidency  were  reviewed  in  the  fifth  report  of  the 
Select  Committee  of  the  House  of  Commons.  The  committee  was 
impressed  by  the  doctrine  and  achievements  of  Munro  and  his  school. 
They  doubted  the  wisdom  of  forcing  zamindars  on  districts  where 
no  zamindars  were  found.  They  saw  that  Munro  had  made  his  system 
work  smoothly  and  bring  in  an  increasing  revenue  in  regions  so 
disturbed,  so  distant,  and  so  dissimilar  as  Kanara  and  the  Ceded 
Districts.  They  did  not  consider  that  the  theoretic  advantages  claimed 
for  the  village  lease  system  justified  the  substitution  of  that  experiment 
for  a  system  which  had  given  good  results  under  trial.  They  saw  that 
a  sound  land  revenue  system  was  the  chief  need  of  South  India,  and 
concluded  that,  if  it  was  incompatible  with  the  new  judicial  system, 
it  was  the  latter  and  not  the  former  that  should  be  modified. 

The  report  was  thus  decisively  in  favour  of  the  ryotwari  system  and 
Munro  henceforward  had  the  ear  of  the  court  of  directors  and  made 
use  of  this  advantage  to  remodel  the  Madras  administrative  system 
in  accordance  with  his  own  ideas. 

Though  the  policy  of  forcing  Cornwallis's  zamindari  settlement 
upon  Madras  had  been  discredited  since  1804,  the  Cornwallis  judicial 
system  had  been  allowed  to  establish  itself  and  the  ideas  of  the  Corn- 
wallis school  had  still  numerous  and  influential  champions.  To 
prevent  oppression,  reliance  was  placed  on  codes  and  courts  adminis- 

1  Revenue  letter  from  Madras,  5  March,  1813,  ap.  Rtv.  andjud.  Sel.  i,  556. 


MUNRO'S  VIEWS  479 

tering  law  on  British  lines.  Magisterial  and  police  work  could  best 
be  supervised  by  a  judicial  officer  both  because  of  his  legal  knowledge 
and  because  he  would  act  as  a  check  on  the  executive  activities  of  the 
revenue  department.  The  administration  of  justice  was  to  be  kept 
as  far  as  possible  in  the  hands  of  British  officers,  Indian  agency  being 
assumed  to  be  incorrigibly  untrustworthy.  Since  the  new  judicial 
courts  had  been  allowed  to  banish  the  ryotwari  system,  these  ideas 
had  begun  to  dominate  the  Madras  administration.  Munro  criticised 
them  with  great  effect.  The  men  who  stood  in  need  of  protection 
were  poor  and  illiterate  cultivators,  accustomed  to  acquiesce  in 
oppression.  They  would  never  seek,  nor,  if  they  did  seek,  could  they 
obtain,  protection  from  the  complicated  and  costly  procedure 
of  strange  and  distant  courts.  Our  British  judges  had  not  and 
could  not  through  their  court  work  acquire  a  real  knowledge  of  the 
life  of  the  villages  which  they  had  no  occasion  or  leisure  to  visit. 
They  were  therefore  unfit  to  be  magistrates  or  to  control  the  police. 
The  Company  could  not  supply  British  judges  in  numbers  adequate  to 
the  business  arising  in  so  wide  and  populous  a  country.  If  it  could 
the  expense  would  be  ruinous.  Further,  the  systematic  exclusion  of 
Indians  from  all  offices  of  trust  was  a  cruel  policy  calculated  to  destroy 
all  vestiges  of  self-respect  and  to  crush  the  springs  of  improvement.1 

Munro's  own  view  was  that  the  incidence  of  the  land  revenue  more 
than  anything  else  decided  the  cultivator's  fortune.  The  collector 
should,  therefore,  take  direct  responsibility  for  its  assessment  and 
collection.  To  enable  him  to  fulfil  his  responsibility,  and  because  his 
revenue  duties  gave  him  an  intimate  knowledge  of  the  life  of  the 
people,  magisterial  power  and  the  control  of  the  police  should  be 
concentrated  in  his  hands.  This  was  the  native  system,  and  in  governing 
the  country  we  should  make  the  greatest  possible  use  of  native 
institutions  and  native  agency.  Even  in  apportioning  the  land 
revenue  the  collectors  should  aim  at  ascertaining  and  acting  upon 
the  genuine  opinion  of  the  villages,  and  for  determining  civil  disputes 
the  village  panchayat  should  be  kept  active.  Such  disputes  as  could 
not  be  dealt  with  by  the  panchayat  should  go  in  the  first  instance  before 
Indian  judges,  little  but  the  appellate  work  and  the  trial  of  grave 
criminal  cases  being  reserved  for  British  judges. 

This  view  was  now  to  prevail.  In  1812  the  Madras  Government 
received  orders  to  revert  to  the  ryotwari  system,  and  in  1814  the  court 
of  directors  required  them  to  make  certain  other  administrative 
changes  which  went  a  long  way  towards  meeting  Munro's  views. 
Munro  himself  was  sent  out  as  a  special  commissioner  to  see  that 
the  orders  were  carried  out,  and  in  1816  the  Madras  Government 
sanctioned  a  series  of  regulations  giving  effect  to  the  changes  proposed. 
The  office  of  district  magistrate  and  the  control  of  the  police  were 
transferred  from  the  syllah  judge  to  the  collector.  The  new  police 

1  Cf.  Judicial  letter  to  Madras,  29  April,  1814,  ap.  Rev.  and  Jud.  Sel.  n,  236-56. 


480    MADRAS  DISTRICT  SYSTEM  AND  LAND  REVENUE 

force  of  darogas  and  thanadars  was  disbanded,  and  the  police  work 
was  left  to  be  carried  out  by  the  village  watchmen  and  the  collector's 
revenue  servants.  Native  district  munsiffs,  with  jurisdiction  to  decide 
civil  suits  of  value  up  to  200  rupees,  were  appointed  in  adequate 
numbers  and  stationed  at  convenient  centres;  and  a  suitable  re- 
muneration was  attached  to  the  office.  Power  was  given  to  village 
headmen  to  try  petty  civil  suits  and  to  summon  village  panchayats 
which  were  authorised  to  determine  all  suits  without  limit  of  value 
if  the  parties  agreed  to  submit  to  their  jurisdiction.  In  1817  the 
Board  of  Control  concurred  with  the  court  of  directors  in  pronouncing 
the  creation  of  artificial  zamindars  highly  inexpedient.  Thus  all  idea 
of  extending  the  zamindari  system  was  finally  abandoned,  and  in 
1818  the  Board  of  Revenue  issued  instructions  to  the  collectors  for  the 
introduction  of  a  revised  ryotwari  system.  This  was  admittedly  based 
on  that  of  Read  and  Munro,  and  such  changes  as  were  introduced 
were  not  in  practice  important.  It  had  been  proposed  to  give  the 
force  of  law  to  these  instructions  by  embodying  them  in  a  regulation, 
but  Munro  advised  against  this  in  pursuance  of  his  policy  of  reserving 
for  government  the  power  of  controlling  the  collector's  discretion  and 
limiting  the  opportunities  for  the  interference  of  the  courts.1 

Looking  back  across  the  interval  traversed  in  this  chapter  we  see 
that  by  the  year  1818  the  administration  of  the  Madras  Presidency 
had  come  to  be  quite  unlike  anything  that  could  be  found  in  the 
South  India  of  1786.  The  government  possessed  a  military  force 
which  was  without  any  external  rival  and  their  territories  were  all 
but  completely  immune  from  invasion.  In  all  districts  they  had 
agents  who  were  capable  of  supplying  information  and  could  be 
trusted  to  carry  out  the  instructions  sent  them.  No  inferior  authority 
was  in  a  position  to  question  their  orders.  The  zamindars  and  poligars 
had  been  reduced  to  subordination  and  their  military  organisation 
broken  up.  This  last  was  a  most  beneficial  change.  It  was  estimated 
that  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  southern  poligars  alone 
maintained  100,000  armed  retainers,  who  were  employed  in  resisting 
the  central  power,  in  making  war  upon  one  another,  and  in  plundering 
peaceable  cultivators.  By  1818  the  poligars'  retainers  were  hardly 
anywhere  a  serious  menace.  Most  of  them  had  settled  down  to 
cultivate  the  land  in  earnest.  Those  who  belonged  to  criminal  tribes 
could  not  forsake  their  traditions  so  readily,  but  their  activities  were 
no  longer  public  and  unrestrained.  Though  no  regular  police  force 
was  in  existence,  the  military  power  of  the  government  made  it  easy 
for  the  collector  to  maintain  order  by  means  of  his  revenue  servants 
and  the  village  watchmen.  Regular  judicial  courts  had  been  set  up 
and  were  freely  resorted  to  by  those  who  could  afford  the  cost  of 
litigation.  Indeed  so  popular  were  these  innovations  that  Munro 
failed  in  his  attempt  to  give  new  life  to  the  village  panchqyat,  which 

1  Cf.  Baden-Powell,  Land  Systems,  m,  32. 


RESULTS  481 

could  hardly  survive  in  competition  with  professional  lawyers  and 
judges.  The  uncertainties  of  the  land  revenue  system  continued  but 
had  become  less  alarming.  In  many  districts  there  was  a  fixed 
maximum  assessment  on  record.  The  cultivators  no  longer  ran  the 
risk  of  being  handed  over  to  a  stranger  who  had  rented  a  district  for 
a  short  term  of  years  and  was  anxious  to  see  what  could  be  made  out 
of  it  in  the  time  allowed  him.  The  collector  was  now  almost  as  free 
from  legal  restraint  as  the  renter  had  been.  But  he  was  influenced " 
by  longer  views  and  feared  the  future  effect  of  his  current  demands. 
And  even  where  the  collector  was  too  severe,  there  was  a  chance  of 
redress.  As  early  as  1804  the  government  had  overridden  the  Board 
of  Revenue  and  removed  a  collector  whose  assessments  were  inju- 
diciously high.  But  with  the  strengthening  of  the  administration  had 
come  a  great  increase  in  the  efficiency  of  the  assessing  and  collecting 
agency.  This  had  its  danger,  since  the  recognised  standard  of  assess- 
ment was  still  that  which  had  been  sanctioned  by  the  practice  of 
Indian  rulers.  If  the  proportion  of  the  annual  crop  actually  taken  by 
the  state  agents  was  not  higher  than  it  had  been  in  1 786,  certainly  it 
was  usually  too  high  to  allow  the  cultivator  to  accumulate  stock.  There 
was  a  persistent  pressure  for  revenue  to  meet  the  heavy  military  and 
administrative  expenses  of  the  presidency,  and  no  attention  had  been 
paid  to  Munro's  plea  for  a  substantial  reduction  in  the  standard 
assessment.  Turning  to  the  miscellaneous  sources  of  revenue  we  find 
that  some  of  the  most  vexatious  and  unprofitable  imposts  had  been 
swept  away  but  others  were  unnecessarily  retained.  The  inland 
transit  duties  had  been  replaced  by  the  hardly  less  objectionable 
town  duties.  The  new  salt  monopoly  was  a  far  more  powerful  instru- 
ment for  raising  money  than  the  medley  of  systems  which  it  replaced, 
and  the  new  stamp  tax  produced  very  considerable  sums.  The 
Company's  subjects  suffered  less  from  vexatious  methods  of  taxation 
but  more  money  was  drawn  from  them. 

The  subjugation  of  the  poligars,  the  establishment  of  judicial  courts, 
and  the  improvement  of  the  revenue  system  had  absorbed  the  chief 
of  the  government's  energy.  Little  thought  or  money  could  be  spared 
for  other  matters.  It  was  during  our  period  that  India  was  converted 
from  an  exporter  to  an  importer  of  cotton  cloth.  A  French  missionary 
has  left  us  a  vivid  description  of  the  ruin  which  that  revolution 
brought  upon  the  cloth  weavers  of  South  India,  but  this  aspect  of  the 
matter  hardly  attracted  the  attention  of  the  Madras  Government. 
Information  was  gathered  about  the  prevalence  of  slavery  in  the 
Tamil  country  and  on  the  west  coast,  but  no  action  was  taken.  It 
was  not  till  1822  that  an  enquiry  into  the  state  of  education  was  set 
on  foot.  Munro  seems  to  have  been  almost  the  only  Madras  official 
who  had  considered  the  advisability  of  employing  Indian  officers  in 
positions  of  trust.  Famines  were  dealt  with  when  they  came  by 
opening  relief  works  and  granting  remissions,  but  the  government 
an  v  31 


482    MADRAS  DISTRICT  SYSTEM  AND  LAND  REVENUE 

had  not  yet  learnt  to  regard  them  as  recurring  visitations  against 
whose  coming  preparations  should  be  made  in  advance.  Even  Munro 
supposed  that  they  could  only  arise  from  war  or  gross  misgovernment, 
and  that  there  was  never  likely  to  be  a  succession  of  crop  failures  bad 
enough  to  produce  a  famine.  Some  collectors,  notably  Place  in 
Chingleput,  had  shown  great  activity  in  repairing  the  irrigation 
works;  and  for  this  purpose,  and  for  the  improvement  of  the  roads, 
the  nucleus  of  a  public  works  organisation  had  been  brought  into 
being.  But  its  activities  were  narrowly  restricted,  because  no  adequate 
funds  were  placed  at  its  disposal.  Much  less  was  there  any  serious 
thought  of  providing  money  for  the  construction  of  great  new  irri- 
gation works,  though  the  existence  of  so  many  ancient  works  was 
recognised  as  a  challenge  inviting  honourable  emulation. 


CHAPTER   XXVIII 

AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

XHE  student  of  Indian  history  hardly  needs  the  caution  that  the 
British  India  of  the  earlier  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  vastly 
different  in  size  and  in  environment  from  that  of  to-day.  The  boundary 
to  the  north-west  was  the  Satlej  for  but  a  very  short  distance; 
Bahawalpur  and  the  desert  bordering  Rajputana  lay  further  south; 
whilst  beyond  the  frontier  were  two  great  states,  of  one  of  which  at 
least  little  was  known,  the  Panjab  and  Sind.  The  frontier  problems 
were  necessarily  different  from  those  of  our  own  time,  different  and 
much  more  important.  In  the  eighteenth  century  the  French  had 
been  the  great  rivals  of  the  English  in  the  East;  but  their  place  was 
now  taken  by  Russia,  a  power  which  had  natural  connections  with 
Central  Asia,  and  one  whose  mission  and  intentions  were  dreaded 
and  much  misunderstood  for  the  rest  of  the  century.  It  is  one  of  the 
few  claims  to  statesmanship  which  can  be  urged  on  behalf  of  Auckland 
that  he  refused  to  be  frightened  of  Russia,  and  that  almost  alone  of 
the  men  of  his  time  he  took  a  moderate  view  of  what  she  could  do 
that  might  harm  the  Indian  Empire. 

The  modern  kingdom  of  Kabul  came  into  existence  on  the  break 
up  of  the  great  empire  of  Nadir  Shah,  the  Persian.  That  famous 
adventurer  himself  came  from  Khorassan  and  when  he  was,  perhaps 
owing  to  Persian  jealousy  of  the  Afghans,  assassinated  in  1747  Ahmad 
Khan  of  the  Abdali  tribe,  chief  of  the  sacred  Sadozai  clan,  the  most 
important  in  Afghanistan,  was  chosen  king  by  the  revolting  nation. 
He  changed  the  name  of  his  tribe  from  Abdali  to  Durani,  and  after 
the  change  was  always  known  as  Ahmad  Shah  Durani.  Having  been 
crowned  at  Kandahar  he  proceeded  to  build  up  a  state,  understanding, 
what  it  would  have  been  well  if  the  English  had  remembered,  that 
he  who  would  maintain  any  hold  upon  the  Afghans  must  keep  them 
busy  with  constant  warfare.  He  resolved  that  wherever  there  were 
Afghans  there  should  his  rule  extend,  and  so  when  he  died  in  1773 
he  left  his  family  firmly  established  in  a  kingdom  which,  as  defined 
by  Ferrier,  was  bounded  on  the  north  by  the  Oxus  and  the  mountains 
of  Kafaristan ;  on  the  south  by  the  sea  of  Oman;  on  the  east  by  the 
mountains  of  Tibet,  the  Satlej,  and  the  Indus;  and  on  the  west  by 
Khorassan,  Persia,  and  Kirman ;  and  if  this  empire  was  to  some  extent 
what  Sir  Henry  Maine  would  have  called  a  tributary  empire,  there 
was  present  a  strong  national  feeling  which  would  keep  the  centre 
at  any  rate  vigorous  and  independent. 

Ahmad  Shah  left  eight  sons,  of  whom  he  had  designated  the 
second,  Taimur  Mirza,  as  his  successor.  He  was  governing  Herat 

31-2 


484  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

when  his  father  died,  and  his  elder  brother,  Sulaiman  Mirza,  at 
once  proclaimed  himself  king  at  Kandahar.  Sulaiman  had  married 
the  daughter  of  Shah  Wall  Khan,  wazir  of  Ahmad  Shah,  and 
this  gave  him  confidence.  Shah  Wali  Khan,  however,  when  Taimur 
approached,  at  once  deserted  to  him,  and  together  with  others  of  his 
party  was  promptly  executed.  Sulaiman  finding  himself  without 
sufficient  support  fled  to  India.  Taimur  was  now  crowned,  and 
having  learned  to  distrust  the  Duranis,  though  one  himself,  he  decided 
to  move  the  seat  of  government  from  Kandahar,  their  city,  to  Kabul. 
Kandahar  was  placed  under  his  son,  Mahmud  Mirza,  and  his  general 
policy  is  described  as  one  designed  to  curb  the  powers  of  the  tribal 
chiefs.  Near  the  throne  was  Payandah  Khan,  the  chief  of  the 
Barakzai  tribe,  whose  father  had  given  way  when  Ahmad  Shah  was 
chosen  king. 

But  Taimur  though  able  was  indolent,  and  his  vast  dominions  were, 
perhaps,  too  great  a  tax  upon  his  energy.  He  had  great  difficulty  in 
crushing  a  revolt  in  Khorassan,  which  had  hitherto  acknowledged 
the  overlordship  of  Afghanistan,  and  he  exercised  but  nominal  control 
over  Balkh  and  Akhshah.  In  Sind  he  was  even  less  successful.  Ahmad 
Shah  had  had  difficulties  in  that  country  and  had  given  the  tide  of 
Amir  of  Sind  to  one  of  the  chiefs.  This  man,  the  head  of  the  Kalora 
tribe,  was  attacked  in  1 779  by  Mir  Fath  'AH  Khan,  the  head  of  the  rival 
tribe,  the  Talpura.  Taimur,  on  being  appealed  to,  wasted  the  country 
round  Bahawalpur  and  restored  the  Kalora  amir,  but  the  conflict 
began  again  when  he  left  the  province;  his  generals  were  unable  to 
reduce  the  Talpuras,  who  were  secretly  helped  by  the  khan  of  Kalat, 
and  in  the  end  Mir  Fath  'Ali  Khan  was  made  governor  of  Sind  on 
promising  tribute.  This  was  in  1786.  Three  years  later  he  threw  off 
his  allegiance  and  Sind  was  independent  when  Taimur  died  in  1793. 
Afghanistan  then  consisted  of  the  principalities  of  Kashmir,  Lahore, 
Peshawar,  Kabul,  Balkh,  Kulu,  Kandahar,  Multan,  and  Herat. 
Kalat,  Balochistan,  and  Persian  Khorassan  acknowledged  overlord- 
ship,  and  there  was  still  a  claim  on  Sind  though,  as  has]  been  said, 
tribute  had  not  been  paid  for  some  years. 

As  Taimur  left  twenty-three  sons  there  was  ample  scope  for  am- 
bition; especially  as  they  were  born  of  many  different  mothers  and 
divided,  therefore,  into  corresponding  groups.  Nearly  all  the  mothers 
were  Afghans,  but  three  princes  were  by  a  great-granddaughter  of 
Nadir  Shah,  and  two  were  by  a  Moghul  princess  whom  Taimur  had 
married.  Several  of  the  sons  were  governors  of  provinces;  Humayun 
Mirza  was  at  Kandahar,  and  Mahmud  Mirza,  the  second  son,  who 
supported  his  elder  brother,  was  at  Herat.  Abbas  Mirza,  the  fourth, 
was  at  Peshawar,  and  seemed  the  most  popular  candidate  for  the 
throne.  Zaman  Mirza,  the  fifth,  who  actually  secured  it,  had  on  his 
side  Payandah  Khan,  the  chief  of  the  Barakzais.  Shuja-ul-Mulk  was 
at  Ghazni,  and  Kohan  Dil  was  in  Kashmir.  But  the  outstanding  factor 


ZAMAN  SHAH  485 

in  the  situation  was  the  influence  of  Payandah  Khan,  because  to  him 
and  to  the  Barakzais  the  people  looked  to  maintain  their  privileges 
as  against  their  kings.  When,  therefore,  he  pronounced  for  Zaman 
Mirza  he  drew  with  him  the  chief  Afghan  families  and,  what  was  not 
to  be  expected,  the  mercenary  Kizilbashis  of  Kabul,  and  decided  the 
preliminary  election. 

Zaman  Shah  had  constant  difficulties  in  the  Panjab  east  of  the 
Indus,  although  he  placed  Lahore  under  Ranjit  Singh,  formally, 
in  1799;  but  whenever  he  came  down  to  Peshawar  trouble  broke  out 
in  Afghanistan,  most  of  it  of  his  own  making.  He  had  chosen  his 
wazir  badly  and  the  result  was  the  long  and  tragic  conflict  between 
the  Durani  chiefs,  and  of  them  principally  the  Barakzais  and  the 
royal  house  or  Sadozais,  which  continued  for  the  next  half  century. 

Payandah  Khan,  the  head  of  the  Barakzais,  took  part  in  a  con- 
spiracy in  favour  of  Shuja-ul-Mulk,  Zaman's  brother,  and  with  other 
important  men  was  executed  in  1 799.  This  was  the  period  of  Zaman 
Shah's  glory  when  his  descent  upon  India,  improbable  as  it  seems 
now,  was  considered  as  a  national  peril  by  the  English  authorities. 
Indeed  it  was  to  prevent  any  such  movement  that  they  turned 
anxiously  towards  Persia,  knowing  that  the  Rohillas  had  invited 
Zaman  Shah  to  come  in  1796  and  fearing  combinations  of  the  Indian 
Muhammadans  in  his  favour.  Zaman  Shah  had,  however,  work 
enough  at  home.  The  Barakzai  brothers,  the  sons  of  Payandah  Khan, 
were  no  less  than  twenty-one  in  number  and  the  eldest,  Fath  Khan — 
the  kingmaker — fled  into  Khorassan,  joined  Prince  Mahmud  Mirza 
there  and  persuaded  him  to  revolt.  The  result  was  that  Zaman  Shah, 
who  was  troubled  with  risings  in  Peshawar  and  Kashmir  at  the  same 
time,  was  overthrown  and  blinded.  He  fled  to  Herat  and  later  to 
India  where  he  lived,  a  striking  and  pathetic  figure,  for  many  years. 

Mahmud  Shah  who  thus  became  the  monarch  of  Afghanistan 
(1800)  soon  sank  into  ease  and  indifference,  forgetting  that  the 
throne  was  easier  to  get  than  to  keep.  He  sent  his  son  Kamran  Mirza 
to  take  Peshawar  from  Shuja  Mirza,  whom  Zaman  Shah  had  made 
governor,  and  who  had  now  proclaimed  himself  king.  In  1801  Shuja 
Mirza  was  defeated  by  Fath  Khan  when  marching  on  Kabul,  and 
thus  Mahmud  secured  Peshawar,  though  he  had  the  mortification  of 
knowing  that  it  was  only  by  the  will  of  the  all-powerful  Barakzai  that 
he  remained  on  the  throne  at  all.  A  revolt  of  the  Ghilzais,  a  tur- 
bulent tribe,  was  suppressed  in  1801.  But  a  peaceful  prince  could 
never  hold  Afghanistan,  and  the  Kizilbashis  on  whom  Mahmud 
relied  were  unpopular  as  Shias ;  the  annexation  of  Khorassan  by  the 
Persians  in  1802  weakened  him;  and  in  1803  Shuja  Mirza  defeated 
his  army  and  secured  the  throne. 

Shah  Shuja  was  merciful  and  yet  always  unpopular.  He  loved 
pomp,  and  throughout  the  course  of  his  long  life,  which  cost  the 
English  so  dear,  he  showed  himself  singularly  incapable  either  of 


486  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

understanding  his  own  people  or  of  attaching  them  to  him.  His  great 
difficulty,  that  of  every  Afghan  monarch,  was  with  the  powerful 
chieftains.  He  made  the  mistake  of  pardoning  without  trusting  the 
great  Barakzai,  Fath  Khan,  with  the  result  that  Fath  Khan  stirred 
up  Prince  Kaysar,  son  of  Zaman  Shah,  who  had  been  made  governor 
of  Kandahar,  but  who  was  easily  persuaded  to  try  for  more.  This 
revolt  was  crushed  with  some  difficulty,  Prince  Kaysar  being  forgiven 
and  Fath  Khan  flying  to  Kamran  Mirza,  the  restless  son  of  Mahmud, 
at  Herat.  And  though  Sind  was  reduced  to  obedience  in  1805,  new 
revolts  followed,  Dost  Muhammad  Khan,  afterwards  so  famous, 
gliding  his  brother  Fath  Khan  and  appearing  for  the  first  time 
prominently.  Things,  however,  looked  a  little  brighter  in  1808,  though 
there  was  no  hope  of  recovering  the  southern  provinces;  the  Barakzais 
had  been  checked  if  not  conquered. 

Up  to  the  day  of  the  Treaty  of  Tilsit  the  attention  of  the  English 
in  India  had  had  perforce  to  be  concentrated  on  the  Marathas,  and 
it  was  not  till  the  early  months  of  1818  that  the  power  of  the  con- 
federacy was  broken  by  Lord  Hastings.  But  the  direction  that  things 
were  taking  was  well  understood  and  the  people  of  Sind  as  well  as 
the  Sikhs  were  aware  that  they  would  both  sooner  or  later  cfce'  t  under 
British  rule  unless  they  made  a  very  strong  attempt  to  prevent  it. 
This  steady  policy  of  concentration  and  annexation  was  interrupted, 
but  not  for  long,  by  the  course  of  western  events.  The  Persians  were 
not  really  strong  enough  to  threaten  India,  but  memories  are  long 
in  the  East;  Nadir  Shah  had  been  murdered  in  1747,  but  a  movement 
eastward  might  restore  some  of  the  territory  that  had  been  lost  since 
his  day.  In  1799  Lord  Wellesley  sent  Malcolm,  one  of  the  ablest 
men  of  his  time,  to  Fath  'Ali  Shah  who  had  been  on  the  throne  at 
Teheran  for  about  a  year;  and  Malcolm  arranged  the  two  famous 
treaties  signed  on  28  January,  iSoi.1  The  first  was  commercial  and 
provided  for  the  establishment  of  factories  in  Persia;  it  also  spoke  of 
the  cession  of  islands  in  the  Persian  Gulf  to  the  East  India  Company. 
The  second  was  political,  and  was  directed  against  the  aggressions 
of  Afghanistan  and  the  extension  of  French  influence  in  Persia.  But 
events  were  more  powerful  than  treaties.  Georgia  was  annexed  by 
Russia  in  1801,  and  the  proclamations  of  the  Russians  indicated 
further  advances.  The  Persians  suffered  heavily  in  Armenia  in  1804, 
and  the  shah  appealed  to  the  French  for  help  in  1805,  as  England 
and  Russia  were  for  the  moment  on  the  same  side.  Hence  we  get 
French  influence  and  French  officers  in  Teheran.  Very  little  resulted 
of  a  positive  kind,  for  the  Treaty  of  Tilsit  in  1807  changed  the  whole 
position  and  France  and  Russia  were  now  in  alliance. 

The  government  of  Bengal  had  not  cared  much  for  Malcolm's 
treaties,  but  its  sense  of  the  importance  of  the  states  on  the  frontier 
to  the  west  had  increased,  especially  as  Afghanistan  became  more 

1  Aitchison,  op.  cit.  xn,  38. 


MISSIONS  TO  PERSIA  487 

and  more  distracted.  Their  policy  was  represented  by  a  series  of 
missions,  those  of  Seton  to  Sind,  Metcalfe  to  the  Sikhs,  Elphinstone 
to  Afghanistan,  and  Malcolm  once  more  to  Persia. 

As  Malcolm  set  out  from  Bombay  Sir  Harford  Jones  reached  India 
on  a  mission  from  the  court  of  St  James's  to  Teheran.  Finding  how 
things  were,  he  wisely  waited  till  Malcolm  had  failed  to  oust  the 
French  and  then  started.  He  was  more  successful  than  his  pre- 
decessor, reaching  Teheran  late  in  1808  and  satisfactorily  combating 
French  influence;  helped  no  doubt  by  the  fact  that  the  Russians 
remained  in  Georgia,  and  by  the  certainty  that  if  any  expedition 
came  through  Persia  to  India  it  would  be  Persia  that  would  suffer 
first.  By  the  treaty  of  12  March,  iSog,1  the  shah  promised  that  he 
would  not  allow  any  European  force  whatsoever  to  pass  through 
Persia  towards  either  India  or  its  ports.  If  India  were  attacked  by 
Afghanistan  or  any  other  power  the  shah  would  help,  and  if  Persia 
were  attacked  by  a  European  power  the  English  would  provide  either 
troops  or  a  subsidy  and  a  loan  of  officers.  The  projected  attack  on  the 
Island  of  Karrak — a  foolish  business — was  disowned.  From  this  time 
the  relations  with  Persia  were  chiefly  in  the  hands  of  the  Foreign 
Office.  The  only  treaty  that  needs  notice  in  a  brief  summary  is  that 
of  Teheran  concluded  in  1814  which,  inter  alia,  in  return  for  a  promise 
of  protection,  bound  the  Persians  to  attack  the  Afghans  if  they  invaded 
India.2 

Meanwhile  the  missions  to  the  Sikhs  and  the  Afghans  had  also  set 
out.  Elphinstone's  object  was  to  try  and  get  the  help  of  the  Afghans 
against  the  French,  and  if  necessary  against  the  Persians,  but  action 
was  to  be  limited  to  the  occasion  and  no  troops  were  to  be  promised. 
It  came  to  very  little  and  Elphinstone  never  got  further  than  Pesha- 
war. A  useless  treaty  against  an  imaginary  Franco- Persian  combina- 
tion was  made  on  17  June,  iSog,3  but  by  that  time  Shah  Shuja  had 
trouble  to  face  nearer  home  and  the  mission  was  hurriedly  sent  away. 

While  Shah  Shuja  lingered  at  Peshawar  he  sent  his  best  army  under 
Akram  Khan  into  Kashmir  where  it  was  defeated.  This  was  a  fatal 
blow  as  news  arrived  that  Mahmud  Shah  and  Fath  Khan  had  taken 
Kandahar.  Shah  Shuja  was  now  defeated  at  Nimula  near  Gandam- 
mak  (1809)  and  began  his  years  of  wandering  intrigue.  In  1812  he 
was  a  prisoner  in  Kashmir;  later  he  was  at  Lahore,  where  Ranjit 
Singh  took  the  great  Durani  diamond,  the  Koh-i-nur,  from  him,  and 
made  various  promises  of  help  which  he  did  not  intend  to  fulfil.  After 
more  adventures  and  much  journeying  he  reached  Ludhiana  in 
1816  and  there  he  remained  for  the  time  under  British  protection. 

Mahmud  Shah  owed  everything  to  the  Barakzais  and  for  a  time 
he  left  matters  in  the  strong  hand  of  Fath  Khan,  who  in  turn  confided 
most  of  the  governorships  to  his  brothers,  Herat  only  remaining  in 

1  Aitchison,  op.  cit.  xn,  46.  *  Idem,  p.  54. 

•  Idem,  xi,  336. 


488  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

the  hands  of  Firoz-ud-din,  the  brother  of  Mahmud  Shah.  His  great 
helper  now  was  his  brother  Dost  Muhammad  who,  as  the  son  of  a 
Kizilbashi  mother,  was  until  his  talents  became  known  but  little 
regarded  by  the  Barakzais.  Fath  Khan  asserted  the  Afghan  supremacy 
over  Sind  and  Balochistan.  In  alliance  with  Ranjit  Singh  he  recon- 
quered Kashmir,  which  had  rebelled,  and  made  his  brother  Muham- 
mad Azim  the  governor  there.  But  when  he  tried  to  avoid  paying 
the  promised  reward  to  the  Sikhs,  Ranjit  Singh  seized  Attock  and 
defeated  a  force  under  Dost  Muhammad. 

Fath  Khan,  however,  now  entered  on  a  disastrous  undertaking. 
He  resolved  to  lead  an  expedition  to  Khorassan  to  clear  out  the 
Persians  there;  his  real  motive  doubtless  was  to  obtain  possession  of 
Herat.  Dost  Muhammad  managed  by  a  stratagem  to  get  hold  of  the 
city,  killed  some  of  its  guards,  and  insulted  the  ladies  of  Firoz-ud-din's 
harem.  This  roused  the  feelings  of  their  relatives  to  madness  and 
Kamran  Shah  (son  of  Mahmud  Shah)  with  the  consent  of  his  father 
seized  Fath  Khan,  blinded  him  and  finally  hacked  him  to  pieces  with 
savage  cruelty.  This  was  in  1818.  Dost  Muhammad,  who  had  fled 
to  Kashmir,  raising  an  army  with  the  aid  of  Muhammad  Azim  Khan, 
marched  against  Kabul  which  was  held  by  Jahangir  the  son  of 
Kamran  Shah.  Mahmud  Shah  fled  to  Ghazni,  and  Dost  Muhammad 
obtained  possession  of  the  capital  by  the  treachery  of  Atta  Muham- 
mad, whom  the  Barakzais  promptly  blinded.  Soon  all  the  country 
was  in  Barakzai  hands  save  Herat  where  were  Shah  Mahmud  and 
Prince  Kamran,  who  acknowledged  the  suzerainty  of  Persia.  There 
Mahmud  lived  till  1829  when  he  died  and  was  succeeded  by  Kamran. 

Thus  fell  the  empire  of  the  Sadozais.  But  at  first  the  Barakzais 
were  too  much  divided  to  assert  any  claim  for  themselves.  Dost 
Muhammad  put  forward  Sultan  'Ali  of  the  royal  line.  Muhammad 
Azim  Khan  brought  forward  Shah  Shuja  and  later  Ayyab  Khan, 
another  son  of  Taimur  Shah.  The  foreign  situation  was  serious  and 
after  a  short  time  Ranjit  Singh  acquired  the  right  bank  of  the  Indus 
and  the  lordship  over  Peshawar,  of  which  Sultan  Muhammad  (one 
of  Muhammad  Azim's  brothers)  was  governor,  and  for  which  he 
paid  tribute.  The  position  at  home  seemed  clearer,  Muhammad  Azim 
holding  Kabul;  Dost  Muhammad,  Ghazni;  Pir  Dil  Khan,  Kohan 
Dil  Khan,  and  their  brothers,  Kandahar;  Jabbar  Khan,  the  Ghilzai 
country;  and  over  all  was  the  puppet  king  Ayyab  Khan.  But  there 
were  further  struggles  between  the  brothers  and  with  Ranjit  Singh, 
in  the  course  of  which  Muhammad  Azim  Khan  died  broken-hearted 
in  1823  B&er  Ranjit  Singh's  victory  at  Nawshahra.  The  leading 
feature  of  these  confused  struggles  was  the  gradual  rise  to  power  of 
Dost  Muhammad.  He  drove  his  brother,  Sultan  Muhammad,  in  1826 
back  to  Peshawar,  secured  Kabul,  holding  also  Ghazni  and  later 
Jallalabad.  In  considering  the  future  policy  of  England  in  the  matter 
we  have  to  remember  that  this  man,  no  worse  if  little  better  than  his 


RUSSIAN  DESIGNS  489 

contemporaries,  had  secured  the  throne  by  his  own  abilities;  that 
Shah  Shuja  with  all  the  advantages  that  descent  could  give  had  lost 
it;  and  that  Dost  Muhammad  ruled  for  the  next  twelve  years  with 
vigour  and  ability.  He  was  strong  enough  to  defeat  with  ease  Shah 
Shuja's  attempt  to  recover  the  throne  in  1834,  and  the  struggles  of 
that  time  revealed  in  Muhammad  Akbar  Khan  a  soldier  who  was  to 
prove  of  great  help  to  his  father  in  years  to  come.  He  strengthened 
himself  by  crushing  the  Durani  chieftains,  and  taking  away  their 
immunities.  But  he  had  to  suffer  one  result  of  the  treachery  of  his 
brothers  which  had  been  so  manifest  in  the  attempt  of  Shah  Shuja. 
Peshawar  was  lost  for  ever  to  the  Afghan  state  in  1834,  and  even  the 
successful  expedition  of  1837,  *n  which  Dost  Muhammad's  son  won 
the  battle  of  Jamrud  (i  May),  failed  to  retake  it. 

Meanwhile  Russia's  Eastern  ambitions,  shown  by  the  annexation  of 
Georgia  in  1801,  led  to  a  war  between  Russia  and  Persia  in  1811, 
ending  in  the  Treaty  of  Gulistan  (1813).  By  this  Russia  gained  very 
important  additions  to  her  territory  on  the  shores  of  the  Caspian  on 
which  Persia  was  to  keep  no  more  armed  vessels.  Persia  hoped  by 
the  aid  of  English  officers  to  strengthen  her  army,  and  a  certain 
number  were  lent  for  the  purpose;  England  thought  that  by  the 
Treaty  of  Teheran  (1814)  she  had  made  Persia  into  a  buffer  state 
for  the  defence  of  India.  Neither  result  was,  however,  attained. 

After  the  death  of  Alexander  I,  Shah  Fath  'Ali  was  driven  by 
the  fanatical  excitement  of  his  subjects  to  go  to  war  again,  and 
hostilities  began  afresh  in  1826.  The  Persians  were  very  unfortunate; 
they  were  defeated  by  the  Russians  at  Elizabethpol  and  elsewhere, 
and  Paskievich  crossed  the  Araxes,  secured  Erivan  and  Tabriz,  and 
forced  the  shah  to  conclude  the  humiliating  Treaty  of  Turkomanchai 
in  1828.  From  this  time  Russian  influence  grew  in  Persia,  while 
English  influence  declined. 

The  strength  of  Russia  received  great  addition  in  Europe  by  the 
conclusion  of  the  Treaty  of  Adrianople.  The  opinion  which  regarded 
Russia  as  a  danger  to  our  Indian  Empire  found  expression  in  much 
vague  talk  in  England  and  the  East;  it  is  represented  by  the  pamphlets 
(1829)  of  Sir  De  Lacy  Evans,  a  man  of  restless  and  enquiring  mind, 
which,  however,  secured  at  least  one  careful  answer.  Of  similar 
tendency  were  the  writings  of  Dr  J.  McNeill,  afterwards  minister  at 
Teheran. 

Lord  William  Bentinck  left  a  valuable  minute  for  Lord  Auckland 
on  the  subject  of  Russia's  designs.  At  this  time  she  was  working 
through  Persia  which  seemed  easier  than  herself  trying  to  reduce 
Khiva  and  Bokhara.  In  1831  Abbas  Mirza  with  (it  was  thought) 
Russian  encouragement  planned  an  expedition  against  Khiva,  and 
though  this  was  abandoned  for  the  moment  he  overran  Khorassan 
by  the  end  of  1832.  The  Khivan  scheme  with  possible  extensions  was 
then  taken  up  again,  and  in  1833  Muhammad  Mirza,  son  of  Abbas 


490  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

Mirza,  the  heir  apparent,  led  an  army  which  in  the  first  instance  was 
to  reduce  Herat.  However,  in  the  autumn  of  this  year  Abbas  Mirza 
died  at  Meshed,  and  Muhammad  Mirza  had  to  withdraw  to  secure 
his  own  recognition  as  heir  to  the  throne.  Scarcely  had  this  been 
settled  by  the  aid  of  England  and  Russia,  when  Fath  '  Ali  Shah  died 
(1834)  and  Muhammad  Mirza,  who  was  now  a  close  friend  of  Russia, 
became  shah  of  Persia.  Count  Simonich,  the  Russian  agent,  became 
all  powerful,  and  Ellis,  who  was  soon  to  be  succeeded  by  McNeill,  the 
English  representative,  sent  home  disquieting  reports  of  the  young 
king's  Eastern  projects,  including,  as  they  did,  not  only  the  capture  of 
Herat  but  that  of  Kandahar  also.  The  whole  matter  was  very  com- 
plicated. The  Russians  were  encouraging  the  idea  of  an  expedition 
against  Herat  and  the  English  were  trying  to  curb  the  shah's  ambi- 
tion. Kamran,  however,  led  on  by  Yar  Muhammad,  his  minister, 
had  given  ground  of  offence,  especially  by  asserting  a  claim  to  Sistan 
which  Persia  could  not  allow.  The  Barakzai  sirdars  of  Kandahar, 
against  Dost  Muhammad's  wish,  intrigued  with  the  shah,  and  the 
English  at  one  time  even  thought  of  giving  active  assistance  in  training 
the  amir  of  Afghanistan's  army. 

The  situation  in  1835  when  Lord  Auckland  was  appointed  governor- 
general  was  thus  very  difficult.  He  had  been  chosen  instead  of  Lord 
Heytesbury  by  Lord  Melbourne's  ministry,  and  was  regarded  as  a 
safe  man  who  would  devote  himself  to  the  internal  development  of 
the  country  rather  than  to  the  pursuit  of  a  vigorous  foreign  policy. 
But  we  must  never  forget  in  judging  him  that  he  was  not  his  own 
master.  He  came  out  as  the  exponent  of  the  views  of  others,  and  the 
study  of  his  correspondence  gives  one  the  impression  that,  while  he 
undoubtedly  made  mistakes,  his  own  opinions,  had  he  dared  to  assert 
them,  were  in  the  main  more  sensible  and  acute  than  those  which 
were  dictated  from  home  or  pressed  upon  him  by  men  whom  he 
trusted,  too  much  in  some  cases,  in  India.  The  dispatch  of  25  June, 
1836,  which  was  sent  to  him  by  the  Secret  Committee  has  sometimes 
been  forgotten,  and  yet  it  was  the  guide  of  his  conduct  throughout, 
even  perhaps  when  he  questioned  its  wisdom.  Attention  was  first 
drawn  to  it  by  Sir  Auckland  Colvin's  apologia  for  his  father.1 

Dost  Muhammad  already  had  a  grievance  against  the  English  for 
countenancing  Shuja  in  1834.  Ranjit  Singh,  too,  the  ally  of  the 
English,  still  kept  Peshawar;  the  wish  of  the  Afghan  king  to  recover 
this  city  is  often  considered  unreasonable,  but  it  was  a  natural  object 
of  Afghan  ambition,  and  Dost  Muhammad  had  sent  a  protest  on' the 
subject  to  Lord  William  Bentinck.  It  was  no  doubt  this  too  which 
induced  him  to  send  his  agent  to  St  Petersburg,  whose  visit  subsequently 
resulted  in  the  mission  of  Vitkevich. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  we  had  an  agent  named  Masson  at 
Kabul  in  1836,  though  his  position  was  not  publicly  recognised. 

1  Sir  Auckland  Colvin,  John  Russell  Colvin,  p.  86. 


BURNES'S  MISSION  491 

Information  that  he  gave  is  preserved  in  the  India  Office.  Dost 
Muhammad,  however,  in  May,  1836,  sent  a  formal  letter  to  Auckland 
congratulating  him  on  his  arrival,  speaking  frankly  of  his  difficulties 
with  the  Sikhs,  and  saying  that  he  would  be  guided  by  what  Auckland 
advised.1  In  reply  Auckland  said  that  he  hoped  that  Afghanistan 
would  be  a  flourishing  and  united  nation;  he  mentioned  the  project 
for  the  navigation  of  the  Indus ;  and  while  he  spoke  of  his  intention 
to  send  some  one  to  discuss  commercial  questions  at  Kabul  he  asserted 
his  neutrality  as  to  the  Sikh  dispute.  The  idea  of  a  commercial 
mission  (proposed  by  the  Secret  Committee)  was  not  new.  Kaye  thinks 
it  was  suggested  to  Lord  William  Bentinck  by  Sir  John  Malcolm, 
and  in  February,  1836,  it  had  been  mentioned  at  Ludhiana. 
As  long  before  as  1832  Alexander  Burncs,  an  Indian  officer  of 
great  intelligence  and  enterprise,  had  made  a  famous  journey 
through  Afghanistan  and  Persia,  and  on  his  return  to  India  had 
been  sent  on  a  mission  to  the  amirs  of  Sind  whom  he  persuaded 
to  agree  to  a  survey  of  the  Indus.  While  busy  about  this  matter 
he  was  instructed  to  undertake  the  commercial  mission  to 
Afghanistan. 

In  November,  1836,  Burnes  started  from  Bombay  on  his  mission. 
He  passed  through  Sind  and  at  Dehra  Ghazi  Khan  he  heard  of  the 
battle  of  Jamrud,  which  made  the  task  of  the  English  more  difficult 
owing  to  their  relations  with  Ranjit  Singh;  Dost  Muhammad,  as  we 
know  by  a  letter  of  30  January,  1837,  ^a<^  begged  for  English 
intervention.  Burnes  journeyed  through  the  Khaibar  and  on 
20  September,  1837,  the  mission  arrived  at  Kabul  and  lodged  in  the 
Bala  Hissar,  a  combination  of  palace  and  fortress  afterwards  to  become 
so  famous.  How  far  the  idea  of  a  commercial  mission  was  sincere  may 
be  judged  from  the  correspondence  that  has  come  down  to  us.  For 
instance  Auckland's  letter  of  6  January,  1838,  is  purely  political,  and 
on  26  July,  1837,  Colvin  had  written  to  Burnes  warning  him  as  regards 
peace  between  the  Sikhs  and  the  Afghans  not  to  enter  into  any 
negotiations  which  would  commit  the  government  after  the  death  of 
Ranjit  Singh  or  Dost  Muhammad,  and  he  adds  in  strange  contrast 
to  Auckland's  recent  letter: 

A  consolidated  and  powerful  Mahommedan  State  on  pur  frontier  might  be 
anything  rather  than  safe  and  useful  to  us.  The  existing  division  of  strength  seems 
far  preferable,  excepting  as  it  adds  to  the  risk  of  Herat's  being  attacked  by  Persia. 

Auckland's  real  views  are  to  be  found  in  a  letter  of  8  February,  1838, 
where  he  favours  the  then  divided  state  of  Central  Asia,  though  he 
would  like  to  see  Kandahar  and  Herat  on  friendly  terms.2  It  is  only 
fair  to  add  that  Colvin  had  written  to  Burnes  on  13  September,  1837, 

1  Kaye,  Afghan  War,  i,  170. 

*  ParKamenUuy  Papers,  1859  (2),  xxv,  283  (i,  273). 


492  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

to  the  effect  that  Auckland  entirely  approved  of  Burnes'  determination 
not  to  allow  Dost  Muhammad  to  play  off  any  other  power  against 
the  British. 

But  Burnes  could  not  get  very  far.  Dost  Muhammad  was  anxious 
to  recover  Peshawar  with  the  aid  of  the  British,  and  this  Auckland 
would  not  hear  of;  Burnes  could  only  offer  help  in  making  peace. 
He  said  that  he  thought  that  Ranjit  Singh  intended  to  make  some 
change  in  the  arrangements  for  the  control  of  the  city ;  that  this  change 
would  be  the  work  of  Ranjit  Singh  and  not  of  the  British;  and  that  it 
would  probably  take  the  form  of  the  city  being  given  over  to  Sultan 
Muhammad,  Dost  Muhammad's  brother,  to  be  held  under  the  control 
of  the  Sikhs.  But,  as  he  frankly  wrote,  the  Afghan  king  would  as  soon 
have  Peshawar  in  the  hands  of  the  Sikhs  as  in  those  of  his  brother. 
What  he  wished  was  to  hold  it  himself  even  if  he  held  it  nominally 
by  paying  tribute  under  Lahore.1   The  British,  however,  were  cer- 
tainly not  going  to  support  Dost  Muhammad  as  against  Ranjit  Singh, 
and  the  importance  of  this  attitude  when  a  Russian  agent  arrived  in 
December,  1837,  can  readily  be  realised.  We  must  not  forget  Burnes' 
opinion  expressed  in  his  letter  of  26  January,  1838,  that  Dost  Mu- 
hammad was  merely  acting  on  the  defensive,  and  that  his  views 
deserved  serious  consideration.    The  whole  letter  is  full  of  wise 
foresight.2  There  was  another  matter.   Mr  Moriarty  has  suggested 
that  it  was  as  a  counterstroke  to  Russian  activity  in  Teheran  that 
Auckland  sent  Burnes  to  Kabul3,  and  on  his  way  Burnes  had  written 
to  the  British  minister  in  Persia  to  the  effect  that  he  would  try  and 
stop  the  intrigues  between  the  Kandahar  chieftains  and  the  Russians; 
he  soon  found  it  necessary  to  threaten  Kohan  Dil  Khan  on  the 
subject.    Here  he  had  the  support  of  Dost  Muhammad,  who  really 
would  have  preferred  the  British  alliance  to  any  other.  Burnes  showed 
this  in  his  letter  of  23  December,  1837.* 

As  Kohan  Dil  Khan  altered  his  attitude  and  grew  afraid  of  the 
Persians  Burnes  hoped  for  a  more  friendly  relation.  So  he  wrote  and 
offered  British  help,  to  the  extent  of  money  at  least,  in  case  of  attack 
by  the  Persians,  who  were  now,  it  must  be  remembered,  besieging 
Herat.  Dost  Muhammad  was  in  a  difficult  position  with  regard  to 
Herat.  The  blood  feud  prevented  his  going  to  the  rescue  of  Kamran, 
who  on  the  other  hand  talked  of  recovering  Afghanistan  if  he 
were  successful.  The  Persians,  too,  made  no  secret  of  regarding 
Herat  as  the  first  step  towards  the  acquisition  of  the  domain  of 
Nadir  Shah.  Burnes  also  said  that  in  case  of  need  he  would 
go  with  Dost  Muhammad  to  the  rescue  of  Kandahar,  and  he  sent 
over  Lieutenant  Leech  who  had  accompanied  him  about  the  end  of 
December,  1837. 

To  all  this  Auckland  could  not  agree;    and   Macnaghten,   on 

1  Parliamentary  Papers,  1859  (2),  xxv,  43.         *  Idem,  p.  130. 

8  Cam.  Hist.  For.  Pol.  n,  204.  *  Parliamentary  Papers,  1859  (2),  xxv,  99. 


BURNES'S  FAILURE  493 

20  January,  1838,  told  Burnes  so.1  He  was  to  get  out  of  his  difficult 
position  in  the  best  way  he  could,  and  if  necessary,  he  was  to  tell  the 
chiefs  that  he  had  exceeded  his  instructions;  and  Colvin's  letter  of  the 
following  day  explains  the  position. 

In  the  end  it  is  said  that  Auckland  thought  that  Burnes  was  right, 
and  Hobhouse,  it  would  appear  from  one  of  his  letters,  thought  the 
same.  But  the  result  of  the  policy  of  the  government  of  India  was  to 
alienate  all  parties  in  Afghanistan.  Dost  Muhammad  said  that  if 
Sultan  Muhammad  held  Peshawar  it  meant  his  own  ruin,  for  he 
knew  that  the  latter  was  trying  to  arrange  a  combination  with  Shah 
Shuja  and  the  Kandahar  chiefs  against  him.  A  proposal  that  was 
put  forward  with  the  amir's  consent  that  there  should  be  joint  rule 
on  the  part  of  the  amir  and  Sultan  Muhammad  over  Peshawar  was 
rejected.  Peshawar  must  be  left  to  the  Sikhs.  And  all  that  Auckland 
had  to  offer  in  the  way  of  restraining  Ranjit  Singh  from  attacking, 
Afghanistan  was  regarded  as  worth  little  in  exchange,  as  it  was,  for 
a  request  that  Dost  Muhammad  would  promise  not  to  connect 
himself  with  any  other  state.  On  5  March,  1838,  a  list  of  demands 
from  the  amir  including  a  promise  to  protect  Kabul  and  Kandahar 
from  Persia,  the  surrender  of  Peshawar  by  Ranjit  Singh,  and  the 
protection  by  the  British  Government  of  those  who  might  return 
there,  supposing  it  were  restored  to  Sultan  Muhammad  Khan,  was 
declined  by  Burnes,  and  after  further  fruitless  talk  Burnes  left  on 
26  April,  i838.2  This  threw  the  amir  into  closer  relations  with  the 
Russians  with  whom  the  Kandahar  brothers  had  agreed  on  terms 
assuring  them  Ghorian  as  well  as  Herat.  The  Russian  envoy  even 
hoped  to  open  negotiations  with  Ranjit  Singh.  But  Dost  Muhammad 
was  far  from  satisfied. 

For  the  moment  things  looked  gloomy,  for  McNeill  had  lound  the 
Russian  agent,  Simonich,  too  strong  for  him,  and  had  not  been  able 
to  prevent  or  stop  the  siege  of  Herat.  Muhammad  Shah's  expedition 
had  started  with  the  approval  of  the  sirdars  of  Kandahar,  and  many 
of  the  people  of  Herat,  being  Shiahs  like  the  Persians,  might  have 
welcomed  a  change  of  masters  on  religious  grounds.  The  ruler, 
Kamran  Shah,  was  the  last  of  the  Sadozai  princes  to  retain  a  throne; 
but  he  was  old  and  degraded,  and  the  power  was  in  the  hands  of  the 
wazir,  Yar  Muhammad  Khan,  one  of  the  vilest  wretches  in  Asia.  In 
the  summer  of  1837,  then,  the  forces  of  the  state  had  to  hurry  back 
from  Sistan  because  it  was  reported  that,  far  from  helping  in  the 
conquest  of  Kandahar  and  Kabul  for  the  Sadozais,  the  Persians  were 
going  to  begin  by  taking  Herat  for  themselves.  Ghorian  fell  into 
their  hands  on  15  November,  1837,  and  on  the  23rd  of  the  same 
month  the  famous  siege  of  Herat  began. 

Eldred  Pottinger,  who  had  been  sent  by  his  uncle,  the  well-known 
resident  in  Sind,  was  in  the  city,  and  by  his  energetic  assistance  the 

1  Parliamentary  Papers,  x 859^2) ,  xxv,  121.      *  For  Auckland's  account  see  idem,  p.  293  sqq. 


494  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

defence  was  maintained  for  many  months.  McNeill,  the  English 
envoy,  reached  the  camp  on  6  April,  1838,  and  said  that  this  war  was  a 
violation  of  the  treaty  between  England  and  Persia.  His  mediation 
proved  useless  and  the  promises  from  Russia  and  Kandahar  raised 
the  Persian  hopes.  McNeilTs  influence  declined,  and  Herat  was  all 
but  taken  on  24  June.  Meanwhile,  on  19  June,  a  British  naval  force 
appeared  before  Karrak  in  the  Persian  Gulf  and  landed  troops  there. 
McNeill  at  once  sent  word  to  the  shah  that  the  occupation  of  Herat 
by  the  Persians  would  be  considered  as  a  hostile  act  by  the  English. 
Colonel  Stoddart,  who  arrived  in  the  Persian  camp  on  1 1  August, 
1838,  bore  the  message,  and  the  siege  was  raised,  and  by  9  September 
the  Persian  army  was  on  its  march  westward.  The  Russian  agents 
had  encouraged  the  shah  in  this  undertaking,  but  they  were  duly 
disowned,  and  one  of  them  committed  suicide  when  he  reached 
St  Petersburg.  On  20  October,  1838,  Count  Nesselrode  in  a  dispatch 
ito  Count  Pozzo  di  Borgo,  the  Russian  ambassador  in  London,  dealt 
with  the  Persian  question  and  the  English  apprehensions  as  to  the 
part  Russia  was  playing  in  the  matter.1  And  Palmerston  sent  a  very 
characteristic  dispatch  to  him  on  20  December,  i838,2  followed  by 
a  note  on  the  whole  question,  to  be  presented  to  Nesselrode  by  Lord 
Clarendon.  It  has  been  urged  with  some  force  that  it  was  rather 
difficult  for  England  to  claim  the  monopoly  of  intrigue  in  Central  Asia. 
In  India  there  was  general  unrest.  Auckland  was  worried;  he 
grumbled  that  he  had  to  manage  affairs  which  ranged  from  Canton 
to  Suez,  and  though  he  was  a  man  of  peace  he  made  the  unfortunate 
choice  of  a  strong  forward  policy.  How  much  the  fault  lay  with 
Macnaghten,  Torrens  and  Colvin,  whom  he  chiefly  relied  upon,  will 
probably  never  be  settled,  but  he  slowly  came  to  a  decision.  Though 
in  1837  he  had  written  to  Metcalfe  that  he  had  not  a  thought  of 
interfering  between  the  Afghans  and  the  Sikhs,  by  12  May,  1838,  he 
had  come  to  hold  very  different  views.  If  Persia  should  succeed  before 
Herat  and  advance  upon  Eastern  Afghanistan  he  thought  that  there 
would  be  three  possible  courses  open  to  him:3 

The  first  to  confine  our  defensive  measures  to  the  line  of  the  Indus,  and  to  leave 
Afghanistan  to  its  fate;  the  second  to  attempt  to  save  Afghanistan  by  granting 
succour  to  the  existing  chiefships  of  Caubul  and  Candahar;  the  third  to  permit 
or  to  encourage  the  advance  of  Ranjit  Singh's  armies  upon  Gaubal,  under  counsel 
and  restriction,  and  as  subsidiary  to  his  advance  to  organise  an  expedition  headed 
by  Shah  Shooja,  such  as  I  have  above  explained.  The  first  course  would  be  absolute 
defeat,  and  would  leave  a  free  opening  to  Russia  and  Persian  intrigue  upon  our 
frontiers.  The  second  would  be  only  to  give  power  to  those  who  feel  greater 
animosity  against  the  Sikhs,  than  they  do  against  the  Persians,  and  who  would 
probably  use  against  the  former  the  means  placed  at  their  disposal;  and  the  third 
course,  which,  in  the  event  of  the  successful  resistance  of  Herat  would  appear  to 
be  most  expedient,  would,  if  the  State  were  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  Persians, 
have  yet  more  to  recommend  it,  and  I  cannot  hesitate  to  say  that  the  inclination 
of  my  opinion  is,  for  the  reasons  which  will  be  gathered  from  this  paper,  very  strongly 
in  favour  of  it. ... 

1  Parliamentary  Papers,  1839,  XL,  501.  8  Idem,  p.  512.  *  Kayc,  i,  330. 


THE  TRIPARTITE  TREATY  495 

With  these  views,  as  their  dispatches  of  24  October  and  9  November, 
1838,  show,  the  home  authorities  were  in  accord,  and  though  there 
is  little  enthusiasm  in  their  letter  of  27  October  to  the  governor-general, 
they  speak  of  the  necessity  of  his  recovering  his  influence.  Three  days 
later  than  the  date  of  Auckland's  minute,1  Macnaghten  on  proceeding 
to  Lahore  received  instructions  which  suggested  two  alternative 
courses  as  possible.  The  one  was  that  the  Sikhs  should  advance  on 
Kabul  accompanied  by  British  agents,  whilst  a  demonstration  should 
be  made  by  a  division  of  the  British  army  occupying  Shikarpur  with 
the  Shah  Shuja  in  their  company;  the  British  Government  advancing 
him  money  and  lending  him  officers.  The  other  was  that  the  maharaja 
should  take  his  own  course  against  Dost  Muhammad,  only  using 
Shah  Shuja  if  success  seemed  certain,  and  if  Shah  Shuja  was  agreeable. 
The  governor-general  thought  the  former  plan  the  more  efficient, 
but  the  second  the  simpler,  and  on  the  whole  the  more  expedient. 

There  was  a  good  deal  of  reconsideration,  but  in  the  end  Ranjit 
Singh  seems  to  have  got  the  better  of  Macnaghten.  He  agreed  to 
recognise  the  independence  of  the  amirs  of  Sind,  and  withdrew  his 
claim  to  Shikarpur  on  receiving  a  money  compensation.  The  inde- 
pendence of  Herat  as  a  principle  was  also  agreed  to.  But  he  clearly 
showed  that  as  to  Afghanistan  he  wished  to  act  with  the  British 
Government  and  not  independently.  But  while  it  seems  clear  that 
Auckland  had  never  contemplated  taking  the  leading  part  in  the 
proceedings  which  were  to  follow,  it  is  equally  clear  that  Ranjit  Singh 
gradually  forced  him  to  do  so;  thus  the  Sikh  secured  the  greatest 
advantage  from  the  bargain.  We  do  not  know  all  that  Macnaghten 
did  say,  but  he  gave  it  to  be  understood  that  the  English  would  in 
certain  circumstances  advance  with  their  own  troops  in  support  of 
Shah  Shuja.  The  point  is  a  very  delicate  one,  but  it  seems  that 
Macnaghten  told  Ranjit  Singh,  not  that  if  Ranjit  Singh  would  not 
co-operate  with  Shah  Shuja  the  English  would  restore  him  them- 
selves, but  that  they  might  find  it  necessary  to  do  so.  This  brought 
Ranjit  Singh  round,  and  when  he  ceased  to  press  for  Jallalabad, 
which  he  did  not  really  want,  the  way  was  open  for  the  famous 
"Tripartite  Treaty",  signed  by  the  maharaja  on  26  June,  1838.2 

This  treaty,  which  was  a  new  and  enlarged  version  of  that  made 
between  Ranjit  Singh  and  Shah  Shuja  in  1833,  confirmed  the 
maharaja  in  the  possessions  which  he  held  on  the  banks  of  the  Indus 
with  their  dependencies,  thus  assuring  to  him  Kashmir,  Peshawar, 
Bannu,  Dehra  Ismail  Khan,  Dehra  Ghazi  Khan,  and  Multan.  No  one 
was  to  cross  the  Indus  or  the  Satlej  without  the  maharaja's  permission. 
As  to  Shikarpur  and  the  Sind  territory  lying  on  the  right  bank  of  the 
Indus,  Shah  Shuja  would  agree  to  what  might  be  determined  between 
the  maharaja  and  the  British.  Should  the  maharaja  require  any  of 
the  shah's  troops  to  carry  out  the  object  of  the  treaty  they  were  to 

1  12  May,  1838.  *  Aitchison,  op.  cit.  vm,  154. 


496  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

be  sent,  and  in  the  same  way  Muhammadan  troops  were  to  be  sent 
by  the  maharaja  as  far  as  Kabul.  The  shah  was  to  give  up  all  claim 
on  Sind,  which  was  to  belong  to  the  amirs  for  ever,  on  such  money 
payment  being  made  by  the  amirs  as  should  be  decided  by  the  British 
and  handed  over  to  the  maharaja.  Payment  was  to  be  made  by  the 
shah  to  the  maharaja  of  two  lakhs  a  year  under  the  guarantee  of  the 
British  Government  in  return  for  the  assistance  furnished.  When  the 
shah  should  have  established  his  authority  in  Afghanistan  he  would 
not  molest  his  nephew  in  Herat.  The  shah  bound  himself  and  his 
successors  not  to  enter  into  any  negotiations  with  any  foreign  state 
without  the  consent  of  the  British  and  the  Sikh  governments. 

Such  was  the  treaty.  Auckland  before  signing  it  sent  it  to  Shah 
Shuja  at  Ludhiana  by  the  hands  of  Macnaghten,  Wade  and  Mackeson, 
who  arrived  there  on  15  July,  1838.  The  shah  objected  to  various 
articles.  He  secured,  however,  various  assurances  from  the  British 
Government,  and  on  17  July,  1838,  the  mission  left  Ludhiana  with 
the  signed  treaty. 

Kaye  has  pointed  out  that  there  were  three  different  ideas  as  to  the 
projected  invasion.  Auckland  originally  wished  it  to  be  undertaken 
by  the  Sikhs,  aided  perhaps  by  some  Afghan  levies.  Even  in  the 
negotiations  with  Shah  Shuja  the  project  only  took  the  form  of  an 
alliance  which  the  British  guaranteed,  Shah  Shuja  and  the  Sikhs 
each  marching  into  the  country  his  own  way.  And  Shah  Shuja 
evidently  thought  that  he  would  take  the  leading  part  himself.  But 
when  the  matter  was  finally  deliberated  at  Simla,  it  was  settled, 
possibly  against  the  better  judgment  of  Auckland,  that  the  British 
should  do  the  work.  There  was  to  be  a  great  army  employed  and  it 
was  to  be  the  force  that  would  set  Shah  Shuja  on  the  throne.  Probably 
Macnaghten  knew  that  the  maharaja  wished  to  do  as  little  as  possible 
in  the  matter;  Auckland  did  not  want  to  displease  the  maharaja. 
We  do  not  know  what  Burnes  advised.  He  joined  Macnaghten  at 
Lahore  when  it  was  too  late  to  oppose  the  policy  of  the  treaty,  and 
he  certainly  told  Ranjit  Singh  that  the  restoration  of  Shah  Shuja 
would  be  to  his  advantage.  His  real  opinion  is  probably  to  be  found 
in  his  well-known  letter  of  2  June,  1838: 

It  remains  to  be  reconsidered  why  we  cannot  act  with  Dost  Mahomed.  He  is  a 
man  of  undoubted  ability,  and  has  at  heart  high  opinions  of  the  British  nation; 
and  if  half  you  must  do  for  others  were  done  for  him,  and  offers  made  which  he 
could  see  conduced  to  his  interests,  he  would  abandon  Persia  and  Russia  tomorrow. 
It  may  be  said  that  that  opportunity  has  been  given  to  him ;  but  I  would  rather  discuss 
this  in  person  with  you,  for  I  think  there  is  much  to  be  said  for  him.  Government 
have  admitted  that  at  best  he  had  but  a  choice  of  difficulties ;  and  it  should  not  be 
forgotten  that  we  promised  nothing,  and  Persia  and  Russia  held  out  a  great  deal.1 

And  on  22  July  he  wrote  to  his  brother,  "I  am  not  sorry  to  see  Dost 
Mahomed  ousted  by  another  hand  than  mine".  He  was  not  like 

1  Parliamentary  Papers,  1859  (2),  xxv,  251. 


THE  ARMY  OF  THE  INDUS  497 

Wade  in  favour  of  a  turbulent  Afghanistan  where  tribe  constantly 
fought  with  tribe: 

"Divide  et  impera",  he  wrote,  "is  a  temporising  creed  at  any  time;  and  if  the 
Afghans  are  united,  we  and  they  bid  defiance  to  Persia,  and  instead  of  distant 
relations  we  have  everything  under  our  eye,  and  a  steadily  progressing  influence 
all  along  the  Indus." 

Sir  Henry  Fane,  the  commander-in-chief,  had  given  very  sensible 
advice  in  1837: 

Every  advance  you  might  make  beyond  the  Sutlej  to  the  Westward  in  my  opinion 

adds  to  your  military  weakness If  you  want  your  Empire  to  expand,  expand 

it  over  Oudh  or  over  Gwalior,  and  the  remains  of  the  Mahratta  Empire.  Make 
yourselves  completely  sovereigns  of  all  within  your  bounds.  But  let  alone  the  far 
West. 

The  selection  of  Shah  Shuja  overlooked  the  claims  of  Kamran 
Shah  and  made  it  certain  that  if  Afghanistan  was  to  be  a  buffer  state 
of  any  value  we  should  have  to  help  in  reducing  Herat  also.  And 
there  were  not  wanting  far-seeing  critics  who  realised  that  active 
interference  in  Afghanistan  must  necessarily  involve  the  taking  of  the 
Panjab,  at  all  events  on  the  death  of  Ranjit  Singh  if  not  earlier. 
However,  the  decision  was  taken;  it  was  justified  to  the  directors  in 
the  dispatch  of  13  August;  and  orders  were  issued  for  the  assembling 
of  a  great  army  to  march  upon  Kandahar  in  the  ensuing  cold  weather. 
Aucldand's  frame  of  mind  may  be  judged  from  his  letter  to  Hobhouse 
of  23  August,  1838: 

I  am  sensible  that  my  trans-Indus  arrangements  are  in  many  points  open  to 
objection  but  I  had  no  time  to  pause,  there  was  no  choice  but  between  them  and 
the  more  objectionable  danger  of  remaining  passive — and  a  friendly  power  and 
intimate  connection  in  Afghanistan,  a  peaceful  alliance  with  Lahore  and  an 
established  influence  in  Sinde  are  objects  for  which  some  hazard  may  well  be  run.1 

In  the  important  letter  of  13  August,  1838,  Auckland  gives  a  long 
and  clear  account  of  the  negotiations  with  Ranjit  Singh.2 

The  army  of  the  Indus,  which  was  to  rendezvous  at  Karnal,  was 
to  consist  of  a  brigade  of  artillery,  a  brigade  of  cavalry,  and  five 
brigades  of  infantry.  It  was  to  assemble  under  Sir  Henry  Fane  with 
whom  were  to  serve  many  officers  of  great  distinction.  Another  army 
under  Sir  John  Keane  was  to  proceed  via  Bombay  and  Sind.  The 
shah's  army  was  being  raised  at  Ludhiana,  and  it  was  rapidly  losing 
its  importance.  The  Sikh  force  was  to  move  by  Peshawar.  Mac- 
naghten,  an  unfortunate  choice,  was  the  political  officer,  and  under 
him,  not  wholly  to  his  own  satisfaction,  was  Burnes,  who  now  went 
away  to  arrange  for  the  passage  of  troops  through  Sind,  for  the  main 
army  as  well  as  that  from  Bombay  was  to  go  that  way.  It  ought  to 
be  remembered  that  Macnaghten  wished  Pottinger  to  be  appointed 
and  only  accepted  the  post  himself  under  pressure. 

1  Brit.  Mus.  Add.  MS3,  37694,  f. 

1  Parliamentary  Papers,  1859  (2),  xxv,  294. 

CHIV  3* 


498  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

On  i  October,  1838,  the  governor-general  issued  from  Simla  a 
long  manifesto  dealing  with  the  origin  and  causes  of  the  war  and  the 
policy  of  the  British  Government  in  regard  to  the  whole  business. 
It  was  a  clever  attempt  to  justify  the  action  of  the  government,  but 
it  was  open  to  serious  criticism.  Its  greatest  fault  was  that  it  made 
out  no  sort  of  case  for  attacking  Dost  Muhammad  and  did  not  do 
justice  to  the  difficult  position  in  which  that  ruler  was  placed.  Perfect 
frankness  would  have  been  better,  and  Auckland  seems  to  have  felt 
this  as  he  says  to  Hobhouse  (13  October,  1838)  in  writing  about  the 
manifesto : 

It  will  be  for  others  to  judge  of  my  case  and  I  will  say  nothing  of  it  except  that 
I  could  have  made  it  stronger  if  I  had  not  had  the  fear  of  Downing  Street  before 
my  eyes,  and  thought  it  right  to  avoid  any  direct  allusion  to  Russia.  But  I  have 
no  want  of  sufficient  grounds  of  quarrel  with  Persia,  etc.. .  .* 

But  however  ill-advised  Auckland  may  have  been,  he  was  carrying 
out,  in  part  at  least,  the  wishes  of  the  home  authorities.  His  letters  to 
them  (e.g.  that  to  the  Secret  Committee  in  August,  1838)  were 
perfectly  clear,  and  they  evidently  approved  of  what  he  was  doing; 
not,  however,  without  reflections  and  comments  which  have  hardly 
perhaps  received  sufficient  attention.  Their  letter  of  10  May,  1838, 
was  not  quite  decisive;2  the  dispatch  quoted  by  Sir  Auckland  Colvin3 
of  24  October,  1838,  sanctions  indeed  armed  intervention  but  seems 
to  see  possibilities  of  avoiding  it.  Their  memorandum  of  27  October, 
1838,  where  they  lay  down  general  conditions,  ought  to  be  carefully 
studied.  There  were  many  outspoken  critics.  Elphinstone  and  Sir 
Henry  Willock  pointed  out  the  difficulties  of  distance  and  climate, 
and  the  unwisdom  of  employing  Sikhs  whom  the  Afghans  hated  and 
feared,  and  then  asked  how,  even  if  Shah  Shuja  got  the  throne,  he 
could  keep  it.  Hobhouse  minuted  on  Willock's  letter  that  its  details 
were  founded  on  presumption  and  that  he  did  not  think  much  of  it. 
The  Duke  of  Wellington,  however,  said  that  the  consequences  of  the 
advance  into  Afghanistan  would  be  a  "perennial  march  into  that 
country".  The  directors  of  the  East  India  Company  would  no  doubt 
have  been  glad  to  have  been  out  of  the  business,4  but  they,  and  most 
Englishmen  who  thought  about  the  matter,  looked  at  it  as  a  question 
of  Central  Asian  policy,  and  they  were  under  an  entirely  false  im- 
pression as  to  the  power  of  Russia  and  Persia  to  injure  British  interests 
in  the  East.  It  has  been  said  that  Auckland's  council  formally 
disclaimed  responsibility  for  the  manifesto,  but  the  evidence  against 
such  a  protest  is  strongly  martialled  by  Sir  Auckland  Colvin,5  and 
the  probability  seems  to  be  that  most  of  them  agreed  with  him. 
A  more  serious  point  is  that  the  siege  of  Herat  was  abandoned  nearly 
a  month  before  the  manifesto  appeared.  Auckland  did  not  know  this 

1  Brit.  Mus.  Add.  MSS,  37694,  f.  69,  verso.       4  Parliamentary ^Papers ,1859  (a),xxv,a67 

*  Parliamentary  Papers,  1859  (2),  xxv,  292.          *  Colvin,  op.  at.  p.  122. 

*  Colvin,  op.  cit.  p.  124. 


HOME  POLICY  499 

at  the  time,  but  when  the  knowledge  came,  and  one  of  the  chief 
reasons  for  the  expedition  had  vanished,  there  was  time  to  have 
abandoned  it.  This  course  strangely  enough,  considering  what  we 
know  of  his  character,  Auckland  decided  not  to  adopt,  and  by  a  pro- 
clamation (8  November,  1838),  in  which  the  raising  of  the  siege  was 
announced,  he  declared  that  he  would  continue  to  prosecute  with  vigour 

the  measures  which  have  been  announced,  with  a  view  to  the  substitution  of 
a  friendly  for  a  hostile  power  in  the  Eastern  provinces  of  Afghanistan,  and  of  the 
establishment  of  a  permanent  barrier  against  schemes  of  aggression  against  the 
North  West  Frontier. 

In  the  same  sense  on  9  February,  1839,  ^e  writes  to  Hobhouse. 

Those  at  the  India  House  were  not  without  misgivings,  but  public 
opinion  at  home,  and  to  some  extent  in  India,  was  misled  by  the 
issue  of  the  dishonest  blue  book  in  1839,  known  as  "the  garbled 
dispatches".  This  gave  an  entirely  false  impression  of  the  views  of 
both  Dost  Muhammad  and  of  Burnes.  No  defence  worth  considering 
has  ever  been  offered  of  such  an  extraordinary  performance.1  The 
nawetiwith  which  Broughton  condemns  the  "rascality"  of  the  Burnes 
family  in  trying  to  correct  the  impression  made  by  the  government's 
own  action  is  almost  as  incredible  as  his  and  Palmerston's  denials  of 
garbling  in  the  House  of  Commons.  A  revised  edition  of  the  letters 
was  published  in  1859,  long  after  the  exposure. 

By  this  time  the  great  expedition  was  well  under  weigh.  At  the 
end  of  November,  1838,  the  army  of  the  Indus  was  assembling  at 
Firozpur  where  a  meeting  took  place  between  the  governor-general 
and  Ranjit  Singh.  Owing  to  the  retreat  of  the  Persians  the  force 
was  somewhat  reduced,  and  Sir  Henry  Fane,  who  was  old  and  ill, 
decided  to  retire  from  the  command,  his  place  being  taken  by  Sir 
John  Keane  from  Bombay.  The  Bengal  column  now  consisted  of  some 
9500  men  of  all  arms;  Shah  Shuja's  contingent  numbered  about 
6000;  the  Bombay  column  would  add  another  5600.  It  had  been 
decided  for  political  reasons  (Ranjit  Singh  did  not  wish  it  to 
traverse  the  Panjab)  that  the  march  of  the  force  from  Firozpur 
should  be  by  way  of  Bahawalpur  and  Sind,  the  amirs  not  having 
been  behaving  too  well  from  Auckland's  point  of  view.  Burnes, 
as  has  been  seen,  had  gone  ahead,  and  it  appears  from  his  corre- 
spondence that  it  had  been  already  decided  to  annex  Bukkur  where 
the  Indus  was  to  be  crossed.  The  route  then  to  be  followed  was  by 
Shikarpur  and  Dadur  to  the  Bolan  Pass  and  so  via  Quetta  to  Kanda- 
har. A  large  money  claim  was  also  to  be  made  upon  the  amirs,  though 
this  claim  had  been  long  abandoned;  and  it  must  be  remembered  that 
a  promise  had  been  given  that  no  military  stores  should  be  conveyed 
along  the  Indus.  But  Auckland  treated  the  situation  as  a  new  one, 

1  Cf.  C[abell]'s  minute,  14  February,  1839  (Hobhouse  MSS) ;  Vernon  Smith  to  Melvill, 
13  April,  1839  (India  Office);  and  Lord  Broughton  to  Fox  Maule  (Hobhouse  MSS).  Cf. 
Hansard,  GLXI,  38  sqq. 

32-2  » 


500  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

and  threatened  the  amirs  that  serious  consequences  would  follow  if 
they  did  not  co-operate.  This  course  of  proceeding  can  hardly  be 
defended,  and  Colonel  Pottinger,  the  resident  at  Hyderabad,  said 
that  we  were  in  the  wrong,  and  that  the  communications  with  Persia 
alleged  on  the  part  of  one  of  the  amirs  hardly  justified  our  action. 
Burnes  secured  unwilling  co-operation  in  Upper  Sind,  but  the  Talpur 
amirs  were  very  reasonably  alarmed  at  the  restoration  of  Shah  Shuja, 
and  at  the  passage  of  troops  through  their  territory,  largely  at  their 
expense. 

However,  the  great  force  managed  to  enter  Sind  on  14  January, 
1839.  Burnes  had  obtained  Bukkur,  and  thus  the  passage  of  the  Indus, 
for  as  long  as  was  necessary.  And  meanwhile  Keane  had  landed  at 
Vikkur  at  the  end  of  November,  and  after  long  delays  was  marching 
up  the  bank  of  the  Indus ;  his  men  grumbling  that  they  were  treated 
as  though  they  were  in  an  enemy's  country.  Further  delay  occurred 
while  the  question  of  the  attitude  of  the  amirs  was  settled  at  Hyderabad, 
and  the  Bengal  column  could  not  advance  because  Sir  Willoughby 
Cotton  came  down  the  Indus  with  unnecessary  reinforcements  for 
Sir  John  Keane.  Macnaghten,  who  was  with  Shah  Shuja,  was  much 
annoyed  and  naturally  asked  as  February  advanced  what  was  to 
become  of  the  expedition  when  it  got  to  Afghanistan.  However,  the 
amirs  gave  way.  Cotton  returned  on  20  February,  and  four  days  later 
the  march  to  Kandahar  began;  without,  however,  the  shah's  con- 
tingent, which  remained  behind  for  lack  of  transport. 

In  spite  of  great  difficulties  as  to  provisions  and  much  loss  of 
transport,  Sir  Willoughby  Cotton  pushed  on  at  a  fair  pace.  On 
1 6  March  he  entered  the  Bolan  Pass  and  on  the  26th  after  consider- 
able suffering  his  force  reached  Quetta.  Rations  had  to  be  reduced, 
and  Burnes  was  sent  off  to  the  khan  of  Kalat  who  signed  a  treaty  in 
return  for  a  subsidy,  promised  help  in  the  way  of  supplies  and  trans- 
port, recognised  Shah  Shuja,  and  gave  Burnes  plenty  of  good  advice 
which  came  too  late  to  be  of  any  practical  use. 

Keane,  the  shah,  and  the  Bombay  army  were  moving  through  Sind 
under  great  difficulties.  The  advance  of  the  columns  had  caused  great 
dissatisfaction  and  the  Balochis  complained  bitterly  of  the  damage  to 
their  crops.  By  4  April  the  force  was  near  Quetta.  From  Cottbn  they 
heard  nothing  but  the  most  dismal  forebodings,  as  well  they  might, 
for  his  men  were  on  quarter  rations,  and  he  saw,  what  Macnaghten 
refused  to  see,  that  Shah  Shuja  was  not  likely  to  be  popular  amongst 
his  own  people.  On  6  April,  1839,  Sir  John  Keane  took  over  the 
command  of  the  expedition  at  Quetta  and  wisely  decided  to  push  on 
the  next  day.  Macnaghten  thought  that  we  ought  to  punish  the  khan 
of  Kalat  by  annexing  Shal,  Mastung  and  Kachhi  to  Shah  Shuja's 
dominions;  his  letter  is  almost  comic  in  its  fury: 

The  Khan  of  Khelat  is  our  implacable  enemy,  and  Sir  John  Keane  is  burning 
with  revenge.  There  never  was  such  treatment  inflicted  on  human  beings  as  we 
have  been  subjected  to  on  our  progress  through  the  Khan's  country. 


STORM  OF  GHAZNI  501 

Meanwhile  the  Barakzai  sardars  in  Kandahar  were  giving  up  the 
game.  When  the  expedition  with  the  shah  at  its  head  entered 
Afghan  territory  they  fled  from  the  city,  and  the  money  Macnaghten 
expended  did  the  rest.  On  25  April,  1839,  Shah  Shuja  entered 
Kandahar.  In  a  letter,  written  a  month  later  (25  May,  1839)  to 
Hobhouse,  Auckland  describes  the  scene  and  reviews  the  situation 
from  a  defensive  point  of  view.1 

Once  in  Kandahar  the  task  of  the  British  was  but  commenced. 
Shah  Shuja  was  not  popular,  and  his  character  was  not  such  as  to 
win  men  to  his  side.  The  Afghans  displayed  curiosity  but  little  more, 
and  the  fact  that  their  new  ruler  came  in  with  English  aid,  and 
obviously  under  English  control,  prevented  them  from  regarding  his 
arrival  even  as  a  party,  much  less  as  a  national,  triumph.  The 
Barakzai  sardars  were  far  away  across  the  Helmund,  but,  as  Dost 
Muhammad  had  yet  to  be  conquered,  Shah  Shuja  did  his  best  to 
conciliate  the  Durani  leaders  who  might  be  expected  to  give  him 
their  support.  Dost  Muhammad,  seeing  that  the  army  paused  in 
Kandahar,  thought  it  was  going  against  Herat,  and  therefore  sent 
his  son  Akbar  Khan  against  Shah  Shuja's  son  Taimur,  who  was 
advancing  with  Captain  Wade  by  way  of  Jallalabad.  Things  were  in 
a  bad  way  certainly  at  Herat,  where  Eldred  Pottinger  was  continually 
obstructed  and  even  insulted  by  the  adherents  of  Yar  Muhammad 
Wazir.  But  for  the  moment  Macnaghten  had  no  idea  of  doing  more 
than  send  a  mission  to  Shah  Kamran,  and  Major  Todd  left  Kandahar 
on  that  errand  on  2 1  June,  1 839,  reaching  Herat  about  a  month  later. 

On  27  June,  1839,  the  army,  considerably  thinned  by  sickness  and 
other  misadventures,  set  out  for  Ghazni  which  was  reached  on  2 1  July. 
The  heavy  guns  had  strangely  enough  been  left  behind  but,  seemingly 
by  treachery,  a  weak  point  was  discovered,  the  Kabul  gate  was  blown 
up,  and  the  fortress  hitherto  regarded  as  invulnerable  was  taken  by 
storm.  It  was  a  notable  feat  and  the  names  of  Dennie,  Thomson, 
Durand,  Macleod,  and  Peat  will  live  in  connection  with  it.2  Sale  was 
cut  down  in  the  great  struggle  at  the  gate  but  managed  to  escape  with 
his  life.  Haidar  Khan,  the  son  of  Dost  Muhammad,  who  was  in 
command  of  the  fortress,  was  captured,  and  the  amir's  brother,  the 
Nawab  Jabbar  Khan,  then  came  to  try  and  make  terms.  A  remark 
he  made  might  well  serve  as  a  commentary  on  the  tragedy  that  was 
to  follow: 

"  If",  he  said,  "  Shah  Shuja  is  really  a  king,  and  come  to  the  kingdom  of  his 
ancestors,  what  is  the  use  of  your  army  and  name?  You  have  brought  him  by 
your  money  and  arms  into  Afghanistan,  leave  him  now  with  us  Afghans,  and  let 
him  rule  us  if  he  can." 

Negotiation  was  fruitless  and  Dost  Muhammad  marched  out  to  meet 
the  invaders.  Finding,  however,  that  he  could  not  rely  upon  his 
troops,  after  a  last  despairing  and  not  ignoble  appeal,  he  rode  away 

1  Brit.  Mus.  Add.  MSS,  37696,  f.  31. 

1  H.  M.  Durand,  Life  of  Sir  Henry  Durand,  i,  52. 


502  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

from  Arghandab  to  the  country  near  the  Hindu  Kush.  This  was  on 

2  August,  1839;  on  the  yth  Shah  Shuja  entered  the  capital,  and  the 
Barakzai  monarchy  for  the  time  had  perished.   The   arrival  on 

3  September  of  Prince  Taimur  and  the  Sikh  contingent  who  had  come 
through  the  Khaibar  seemed  to  complete  the  triumph.  Those  chiefly 
concerned  were  duly  rewarded,  Auckland   being  made  an  earl, 
Sir  John  Keane  a  baron,  and  Macnaghten  a  baronet;  these  amongst 
others.    Burnes  who  had  already  been  knighted  was  annoyed  that 
no  further  honour  came  to  him,  and  it  took  all  Auckland's  tact  to 
comfort  him. 

Auckland's  minute  of  20  August,  1839,  made  it  certain  that  a 
considerable  force  was  to  be  left  in  Afghanistan,  and  what  was  finally 
decided  upon  was  larger  than  what  had  at  first  been  thought  suffi- 
cient. It  had  become  abundantly  clear  that  though  the  Afghanistan 
to  which  Shah  Shuja  returned  was  much  smaller  than  that  over  which 
his  father  had  ruled,  it  was  larger  than  he  could  manage  unaided. 
So  though  the  Bombay  column  left  on  18  September,  nearly  all  the 
Bengal  troops  under  Sir  Willoughby  Cotton  remained.  Keane 
returned  with  those  of  the  Bengal  force  who  were  not  required.  The 
main  garrisons  were  at  Kabul,  Jallalabad,  Ghazni  and  Kandahar, 
but  the  forces  were  too  widely  scattered.  A  detachment  followed 
Dost  Muhammad,  and  occupied  Bamiyan  in  the  hope  of  his  appearing 
there. 

The  country  was  distracted,  the  ministers  were  worthless,  and  the 
native  army  which  was  to  support  the  throne  and  to  which  Auckland 
looked  with  almost  pathetic  hope  and  eagerness  proved  equally 
unsatisfactory.  So  that  a  double  system  of  government,  Afghan  and 
English,  was  inevitable.  The  natural  result,  the  only  possible  result, 
was  constant  sporadic  insurrection,  or  looting  that  might  become  such, 
at  any  turn  of  events.  The  road  to  India  through  the  Khaibar  was 
never  safe,  and  communication  that  way  was  only  kept  up  by  force 
and  bribery.  Kalat  was  taken  by  General  Wiltshire  on  13  November, 
1839,  as  he  was  marching  home,  because  the  English  terms  were  not 
accepted.  The  khan  himself,  Mihrab,  was  killed  and  the  new  khan,  Shah 
Nawaz,  who  was  set  up  in  his  place  was  anything  but  popular,  the  less 
so  as  the  provinces  of  Shal,  Mastung  and  Kachhi  were  now  handed 
over  to  Afghanistan.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  these  proceedings 
were  wise,  and  it  seems  certain  that  they  were  unjust. 

The  news  now  began  to  filter  through  of  a  Russian  expedition  under 
General  Peroflfsky  from  Orenburg  into  Central  Asia  and  particularly 
against  Khiva.  The  provocation  was  the  slave  trade  in  Russian 
subjects  which,  there,  as  at  Herat,  was  actively  carried  on  and  had 
been  so  for  over  a  hundred  years;  this  and  the  constant  plundering  of 
caravans.  If  proof  were  needed  of  the  general  nervousness  as  to 
Russia,  it  could  be  found  in  a  letter  from  Burnes  written  in  November, 
1839.  He  writes:  "Ere  1840  ends,  I  predict  that  our  frontiers  and 


THE  RUSSIAN  EXPEDITION  503 

those  of  Russia  will  touch — that  is,  the  states  dependent  upon  either 
of  us  will — and  that  is  the  same  thing".  Kaye  has  shown  the  diffi- 
culties of  this  winter — the  Russian  scare;  trouble  at  Herat;  trouble 
with  the  Uzbegs;  trouble  in  Bokhara  where  Colonel  Stoddart,  the 
Resident,  had  been  imprisoned  under  the  most  humiliating  conditions, 
and  where  Dost  Muhammad  had  now  found  at  once  a  refuge  and 
a  prison;  troubles  in  Kandahar,  in  Kohistan,  and  at  Kalat;  trouble 
with  the  Sikhs  who  were  ceaselessly  intriguing  with  the  disturbing 
elements  in  Afghanistan.  The  tendency  in  all  such  cases  is  to  try  and 
crush  the  symptoms  rather  than  eradicate  the  causes  of  the  mischief. 
The  English  officials  thought  only  of  expeditions,  and  Macnaghten 
planned  one  to  the  Hindu  Kush.  It  is  only  fair  to  Auckland  to  say 
that  he  consistently  resisted  all  such  proposals,  and  a  letter  written 
by  him  to  Macnaghten  on  22  March,  1840,  shows  what  his  views 
were;1  there  are  others  of  the  same  nature. 

The  wisdom  of  his  attitude  was  shown  when,  about  the  middle  of 
March,  1840,  the  failure  of  the  Russian  expedition  was  announced. 
Auckland  had  made  proper  preparations,  and  he  was  far  from  being 
blind  to  the  seriousness  of  the  situation,  had  Russia  obtained  a  hold  on 
Khiva  and  still  more  on  Bokhara.  But  it  must  be  recalled  that  the 
difficulties  of  the  Afghan  position  had  been  increased  rather  than 
diminished  by  the  death  of  Ranjit  Singh  (27  June,  1839)  and  the 
confusion  in  the  Lahore  state  which  followed  it.  The  matter  is  alluded 
to  by  Lord  Auckland  in  a  letter  of  1 1  May,  1840,  to  Hobhouse.2  It 
was  even  suggested  that  various  Sikh  magnates  were  engaged  in 
treasonable  intrigues  with  various  rebels  in  Afghanistan,  and  there 
is  no  doubt  that  the  Khalsa  and  the  heir  to  the  throne,  Nao  Nihal 
Singh,  were  strongly  opposed  to  the  passage  of  British  troops  through 
the  Panjab,  at  which,  considering  the  language  of  Macnaghten,  one 
can  hardly  be  surprised.  Colvin  had  written  to  William  Butterworth 
Bayley  on  23  January,  1840: 

There  never  was  a  time  when  the  Sikh  Durbar  was  more  dependent  upon  us 
than  at  present.  They  are  conscious  of  their  many  dissensions  and  real  weakness 
and  are,  I  imagine,  surprised  and  in  some  measure  distrustful  at  our  self-denial 
in  taking  no  advantage  of  them.  A  serious  quarrel  with  us  at  the  present  time  on 
the  part  of  the  Sikhs  I  look  upon  as  an  impossible  thing.8 

With  this  may  be  compared  his  letter  to  Macnaghten  on  the  following 
13  June,  which  is  impressive  in  its  seriousness.  There  was  soon  to  be 
plenty  of  proof  of  the  correctness  of  Colvin's  suspicions. 

The  position  at  Herat  was  what  might  have  been  expected.  Major 
Todd  and  his  associates  did  their  best  to  put  down  the  slave  trade 
there,  and  Captain  Abbot  was  sent  to  Khiva  with  the  same  end  in 
view.  The  latter  arranged  a  treaty  which  was  disavowed,  but  his 
successor,  Captain  Shakespeare,  managed  to  get  400  Russian  slaves 

1  Brit.  Mus.  Add.  MSS,  37698,  f.  89,  verso. 

*  Idem,  37699,  f.  76,  verso.  8  Idem,  37698,  f.  6. 


504  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

set  free.  Much  money  was  advanced  to  the  ruler  of  Herat,  but  he 
was  far  from  loyal,  and  Macnaghten  would  have  annexed  the  little 
state  to  Afghanistan  had  Auckland,  who  was  supported  by  the  com- 
mander-in-chief,  Sir  Jasper  Nicolls,  agreed.  Major  Todd  we  learn 
afterwards  came  round  to  the  same  view. 

The  Ghilzais  gave  constant  trouble;  their  chiefs  had  taken  refuge 
during  the  winter  of  1839  *n  Peshawar,  but,  when  the  warm  weather 
came,  they  were  in  arms  again  between  Kandahar  and  Kabul,  and 
took  a  good  deal  of  repressing.  There  was  failure  in  Kalat,  which, 
the  same  summer,  was  recaptured  by  Nasir  Khan,  the  son  of  the  chief 
who  fell  when  the  British  took  the  place.  And  when  later  he  was  driven 
out  he  was  not  conquered.  Quetta  was  besieged;  and  everywhere 
there  were  indications  that  Shah  Shuja  inspired  no  sort  of  fear  or 
respect.  Yet  strangely  enough  Macnaghten  wrote  to  Colvin:  "  I  have 
nothing  more  to  say  about  His  Majesty's  character  than  I  have  already 
said.  I  believe  him  to  be  the  best  and  ablest  man  in  his  Kingdom". 
Auckland  in  one  of  his  letters  to  Hobhouse,  when  speaking  of  the  sup- 
pression of  the  Ghilzais,  throws  a  little  light  on  the  causes  of  the  trouble : 

But  the  business  was  ill  and  discreditably  done.  Blunders  were  made  and  harsh- 
nesses committed.  Our  officers  quarrelled  with,  and  as  is  too  often  the  case 
counteracted,  each  other,  and  what  as  it  appeared  to  me  might  have  been  a 
business  of  ease  and  graciousness,  has  been  very  much  the  reverse. 

Macnaghten  could  not  prevail  upon  the  Indian  Government  to  go 
to  war  with  the  Sikhs  or  to  annex  Herat,  but  he  continued  to  dream 
of  the  further  extension  of  British  influence  in  Central  Asia.  In 
September,  1840,  he  sent  Captain  Arthur  Conolly — something  of  a 
visionary  but  a  very  gallant  one — on  a  mission  to  Khiva  and  Kokand. 
He  subsequently  proceeded  to  Bokhara  where  he  and  Colonel  Stoddart 
were  cruelly  murdered. 

The  brightest  circumstance  of  this  uncomfortable  summer  was  the 
assurance  given  by  Russia  that  there  would  be  no  further  attack  on 
Khiva.  And  equally  important  perhaps  was  the  surrender  of  Dost 
Muhammad.  In  July,  1840,  the  Nawab  Jabbar  Khan  gave  himself 
up  to  the  small  force  stationed  at  Bamiyan.  Dost  Muhammad,  having 
escaped  with  some  difficulty,  had  taken  refuge  with  his  old  ally  the 
wali  of  Khulum.  He  soon  had  a  considerable  force  under  him  and 
drove  back  the  British  outposts,  a  most  distressing  feature  of  the 
business  being  the  desertion  to  the  enemy  of  some  of  the  new  national 
levies  raised  to  support  Shah  Shuja.  There  was  evidence,  as  Torrens 
wrote  to  the  Resident  at  Lahore  on  i  October,  that  the  Sikhs  were  not 
altogether  neutral  in  the  matter,  and  the  government  of  India  pro- 
mised considerable  reinforcements  as  soon  as  possible.  Macnaghten 
still  thought  the  remedy  to  be  a  forward  policy,  and  characterised 
as  "drivelling"  Auckland's  sensible  suggestion  that  we  could  hardly 
expect  co-operation  from  potentates  whose  territory  we  were  always 
talking  of  annexing. 


SURRENDER  OF  DOST  MUHAMMAD  505 

On  1 8  September,  1840,  however,  Brigadier  Dennie  defeated  the 
forces  under  Dost  Muhammad  and  the  wall  of  Khulum  near  Bamiyan, 
and  though  Dost  Muhammad  and  his  son,  Afzal  Khan,  escaped,  the 
wali  came  to  terms  on  the  28th  and  promised  not  to  give  refuge  or 
help  to  the  ex-amir  or  any  member  of  his  family.  Dost  Muhammad, 
therefore,  fled  to  Kohistan,  where  he  was  followed  by  Sale  and  Burnes. 
There  was  some  hard  fighting  in  which  Edward  Conolly,  Lord  and 
others  were  killed,  but  Dost  Muhammad,  after  winning  an  important 
if  small  success  at  Parwandurrah  on  2  November,  1840,  galloped  to 
Kabul  and  gave  himself  up  to  Macnaghten.  He  was  treated  honour- 
ably and  taken  to  India. 

The  few  months  that  followed  were  restless.  Macnaghten  was  still 
anxious  for  movement  and  for  the  break-up  of  the  Tripartite  Treaty, 
to  which  Auckland,  though  he  had  Hobhouse  against  him,  would 
not  consent.  As  he  once  said  to  the  chairman  of  the  East  India  Com- 
pany, the  country  was  one  of  clans  and  tribes,  and  there  was  war 
and  lawlessness  in  one  district  whilst  there  was  peace  and  content- 
ment in  another.  The  Ghilzais  were  seldom  quiet,  and  the  Duranis 
about  Kandahar  strongly  resented  taxation.  Shah  Shuja  showed  no 
signs  of  becoming  either  a  capable  or  a  popular  ruler,  and  the  cost 
of  Afghanistan  to  the  Indian  Government  was  becoming  unbearably 
great.  Todd  could  no  longer  put  up  with  the  demands  of  Yar 
Muhammad  at  Herat  and  broke  up  the  mission  there  in  February, 
1841;  but  this  could  not  draw  Auckland  into  an  attack  upon  the 
little  state,  though  it  produced  a  very  bad  impression  both  in  India 
and  in  England.  Expeditions  quelled  the  Duranis  and  the  Ghilzais, 
but  only  for  a  time. 

Thus  the  situation  as  1841  wore  on  was  critical.  No  proper  system 
of  government  had  been  established.  The  native  army  was  unreliable 
and  the  only  form  of  executive  action,  that  of  the  tax-gatherer, 
increased  the  tension.  The  English  were  the  only  real  authority  and 
they  practically  retained  their  hold  by  force  and  by  the  distribution 
of  money  amongst  the  chiefs.  Macnaghten  was  now  appointed 
governor  of  Bombay  and  Burnes  was  designated  his  successor.  The 
forces  were  under  the  command  of  General  Elphinstone,  who  in 
April,  1841,  succeeded  Cotton,  and  his  appointment,  made  against 
his  own  wishes,  constitutes  one  of  the  most  serious  mistakes  that 
Auckland  committed.  In  a  position  requiring  above  all  things 
activity  and  physical  energy,  was  placed  an  elderly  invalid,  personally 
brave,  but,  as  he  himself  stated,  hardly  able  to  walk.  Nott,  a  man  of 
will  and  resource,  if  of  strong  temper,  would  have  been  a  better 
choice.  But  those  who  spoke  of  the  dangers  of  the  situation,  like 
Brigadier  Roberts,  had  no  chance  of  promotion.  There  were  no  doubt 
many  men  in  the  various  garrisons  of  talent  as  well  as  courage.  All 
they  required  was  capable  leading,  and  that  they  never  got.  There 
was  another  mistake.  The  troops  at  Kabul  had  now  been  moved  to 


5o6  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

the  ill-constructed  and  ill-fortified  cantonments  outside  the  city 
next  to  the  mission  compound  but  very  badly  placed;  whilst  the 
commissariat  stores  were  placed  separately  and  some  distance  away. 
It  has  always  been  maintained  that  the  placing  of  the  troops  in  this 
wretched  position  instead  of  in  the  Bala  Hissar  was  the  chief  cause  of 
the  subsequent  disaster,  and  for  that  Cotton,  and  to  some  extent 
Macnaghten,  must  bear  the  blame. 

As  has  been  indicated  one  great  difficulty  was  obviously  finance. 
Afghanistan  was  going  to  cost  at  the  lowest  estimate  a  million 
and  a  quarter  a  year,  and  the  views  of  the  home  authorities  on  the 
subject  reached  India  early  in  1841.  They  were  beginning  to  feel 
that  Shah  Shuja  was  not  worth  the  money  he  cost.  It  was  decided 
in  consequence  that  economies  must  be  effected,  and  it  was  unwisely 
thought  best  to  retrench  the  stipends  paid  to  the  various  Afghan 
chiefs  by  which  alone  their  adherence  was  secured.  This  misplaced 
economy  produced  its  natural  results.  The  Ghilzai  chiefs  left  Kabul 
and  took  up  their  stand  in  the  country  near  Jallalabad,  plundering 
those  who  came  by  and  entirely  preventing  regular  communi- 
cation with  India  proper.  Auckland  seems  to  have  understood  what 
was  happening  better  than  Macnaghten,  but  he  hoped  for  the  best; 
he  was  misled  and  made  the  most  of  any  trifling  success.  Sale,  who 
was  soon  afterwards  wounded,  was  directed  to  clear  the  passes; 
troops  were  hurried  out,  and  Macnaghten  hoped  that  Macgregor, 
who  had  been  serving  in  the  district  near  Jallalabad,  would  soon  have 
the  rising  in  hand.  The  disaffection  was,  however,  spreading  and 
Kohistan  was  beginning  to  be  disturbed.  There  was  plenty  of  fighting 
before  Sale  reached  Gandammak  at  the  end  of  October,  1841,  but 
by  that  time  events  of  a  far  more  important  and  tragic  nature  were 
preparing  in  the  capital. 

It  seems  to  have  been  known  at  Kabul  that  some  sort  of  outbreak 
was  coming,  and  warnings  were  given  but  not  heeded ;  we  must  not 
press  responsibility  too  far  on  that  account,  as  wild  rumours  were  sure 
to  be  running  round  the  bazaar.  Still  it  seems  extraordinary  that 
more  should  not  have  been  known  of  a  conspiracy  which  included 
the  heads  of  nearly  all  the  important  tribes  in  the  country.  The  actual 
outbreak  seems  to  have  been  premature  as,  had  the  conspirators 
waited  a  little,  Macnaghten  and  a  considerable  body  of  troops  would 
have  left  Kabul.  On  2  November  a  revolt  broke  out  in  the  native 
quarter;  and,  in  Burnes'  house  in  the  city,  Alexander  Burnes,  his 
brother  Charles,  and  William  Broadfoot  were  murdered.  The  shah's 
treasury  was  looted  and  the  guards  killed.  Shah  Shuja  sent  a 
regiment  of  Hindustani  soldiers  to  suppress  the  tumult,  but  they  did 
nothing,  and  were  with  difficulty  brought  into  the  Bala  Hissar  by 
Brigadier  Shelton  who  had  been  sent  by  Elphinstone.  The  move- 
ment in  force  which  might  have  restored  order  never  came,  and  the 
question,  as  Kaye  truly  says,  is :  "  How  came  it  that  an  insurrectionary 


REVOLT  AT  KABUL  507 

movement,  which  might  have  been  vanquished  at  the  outset  by  a 
handful  of  men,  was  suffered  to  grow  into  a  great  revolution?"  The 
responsibility  clearly  seems  to  rest  with  Macnaghten  and  Elphinstone, 
who  did  not  consider  the  outbreak  as  serious  when  they  first  heard 
of  it,  and  took  no  proper  steps  to  quell  it.  Even  the  next  day  but 
a  trifling  attempt  was  made  and  that  ended  in  failure.  Hurried 
messages  were  sent  to  Sale  and  Nott  for  help,  and  the  position  became 
more  serious  than  ever  when  all  the  commissariat  stores  fell  into  the 
enemy's  hands.  Day  after  day  there  was  the  same  helpless  story. 
Almost  at  once  the  general  took  the  heart  out  of  everyone  by  suggesting 
the  possibility  of  negotiation,  and  Macnaghten  began  to  give  and  to 
promise  money.  By  this  time  Muhammad  Akbar  Khan,  the  son  of 
Dost  Muhammad,  had  reached  Bamiyan  on  his  way  from  Turkestan. 

Elphinstone  was  worse,  far  worse,  than  useless,  and  on  9  November, 
1841,  he  was  persuaded  to  bring  over  Brigadier  Shelton  from  the 
Bala  Hissar  to  give  him  charge  of  the  cantonment.  But  even  then 
the  general  would  not  allow  him  to  be  independent;  the  two  did  not 
agree,  and  no  improvement  resulted.  Trifling  successes  at  a  fearful 
cost  in  valuable  lives — there  were  many  brave  men  in  the  army  of 
occupation — brought  no  relief,  and  even  they  ceased  about  1 3  Novem- 
ber. On  the  1 5th  Pottinger  came  in  from  Kohistan,  bringing  news 
of  the  loss  of  Charikar,  the  destruction  of  a  Gurkha  regiment,  and 
the  march  of  Kohistanis  to  join  the  Kabul  rebels.  To  add  to  this 
Macnaghten  now  learned  that  Sale  had  gone  to  Jallalabad.  Some 
step  had  to  be  taken,  so  he  wrote  a  formal  letter  on  18  November  to 
the  general  recommending  that  they  should  hold  out  in  the  canton- 
ments as  long  as  possible.  He  was  not  in  favour  of  a  removal  to  the 
Bala  Hissar,  agreeing  in  this  with  Shelton.  Both  seem  to  have 
been  wrong;  for  though  the  change  would  have  been  attended  with 
loss  and  danger,  the  same  could  be  said  of  any  course  decided  upon, 
and  the  move  there  would  have  been  a  better  plan  of  action  than  the 
retreat  to  Jallalabad.  On  23  November  the  Afghans  won  a  victory, 
which  Eyre  thought  decisive,1  over  a  force  sent  out  to  hold  the 
Bemaru  hills,  and  it  was  evident  from  the  conduct  of  the  troops  that 
they  were  losing  heart.  Hence  on  the  24th  it  was  decided  to  try 
negotiation.  When,  however,  the  Afghans  demanded  unconditional 
surrender  the  conference  broke  up. 

From  25  November,  1841,  onwards  news  of  these  terrible  events 
began  to  reach  Auckland.  He  saw  at  once  the  real  difficulty  of  the 
situation.  On  i  December  he  wrote  to  the  commander-in-chief : 

It  is  however  I  fear  more  likely  that  the  national  spirit  has  [been]  generally 
roused  and  in  this  case  the  difficulty  will  not  be  one  of  fighting  and  gaining  victories 
but  of  supplies,  of  movement,  and  of  carriage.2 

He  approved  of  the  sending  of  reinforcements,  but  feared  that  they 

would  be  too  late.   Sale,  he  thought,  would  have  to  fight  his  way  to 

1  Eyre,  Kabul  Insurrection,  p.  163.  a  Brit.  Mus.  Add.  MSS,  37706,  f.  197. 


508  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

Peshawar.  In  a  letter  of  the  2nd  he  asked  Anderson  at  Bombay  how 
all  this  could  -have  come  about  when  he  had  received  nothing  but 
favourable  reports;  alluding,  no  doubt,  to  the  letters,  remarkable 
enough,  which  Macnaghten  had  written  just  before  the  outbreak.  On 
4  December,  when  he  knew  of  course  of  the  death  of  Burnes,  he  wrote 
to  Macnaghten: 

And  yet  under  the  most  favourable  events  I  would  have  you  share  in  the  feeling 
which  is  growing  strongly  upon  me — that  the  maintenance  of  the  position  which 
we  attempted  to  establish  in  Afghanistan  is  no  longer  to  be  looked  to,  and  that 
after  our  experience  of  the  last  few  weeks  it  must  appear  to  be  if  not  vain,  yet  upon 
every  consideration  of  prudence  far  too  hazardous  and  too  costly  in  money  and 
in  life  for  us  to  continue  to  wrestle  against  the  universal  opinion,  national  and 
religious,  which  has  been  so  suddenly  and  so  strongly  brought  in  array  against  us. 
And  it  will  be  for  you  and  for  this  government  to  consider  in  what  manner  all  that 
belongs  to  India  may  be  most  immediately  and  most  honourably  withdrawn  from 
the  country.1 

A  bolder,  even  a  wiser  man  would  have  struck  a  fiercer  note,  but 
Auckland  seems  to  have  come  to  a  decision,  perhaps  one  that  he 
afterwards  regretted,  but  to  which  he  adhered  in  principle  for  the 
few  sad  months  which  remained  to  him  in  India.  On  8  December 
Colvin  wrote  to  Clerk  that  the  policy  of  the  government  would  be : 

in  the  event  of  a  reverse  at  Kabul  to  maintain  indeed  a  high  tone,  and  to  speak  of 
plans  of  punishing  the  Afghan,  but  in  reality  to  content  ourselves  with  remaining 
in  collected  strength  along  the  line  of  the  Satlej  and  Indus.2 

Meanwhile  Muhammad  Akbar  Khan  had  arrived  in  Kabul,  and 
provided  a  recognised  leader  for  the  rebellious  Afghans.  He  was  a 
young  man  of  daring  and  energy,  but  with  all  the  wild  characteristics 
of  his  savage  race.  He  saw  that  the  easiest  way  to  deal  with  the  English 
was  to  starve  them  out,  and  that,  as  provisions  became  scarce,  the 
rank  and  file  would  become  demoralised.  This  truth  was  equally 
clear  to  the  besieged,  and  they  realised,  if  there  was  to  be  a  retreat, 
the  sooner  it  began  the  better.  On  8  December,  1841,  it  was  decided 
to  renew  negotiations,  and  on  the  nth  Macnaghten's  articles  were 
drawn  up  and  in  the  main  accepted  by  the  Afghans.  They  provided 
for  the  complete  evacuation  of  Afghanistan  by  the  English.  The  troops 
were  to  leave  as  soon  as  possible  and  to  be  allowed  to  go  in  safely. 
Shah  Shuja  was  either  to  remain  on  an  allowance  or  to  go  to  India 
with  the  British  troops,  and  as  soon  as  the  British  troops  reached 
Peshawar  in  safety  Dost  Muhammad  and  all  the  other  Afghans  were 
to  be  allowed  to  return.  When  this  had  been  effected  the  family  of 
Shah  Shuja  should  be  permitted  to  join  him.  Four  British  officers 
were  to  be  left  as  hostages,  and  Afghan  chiefs  were  to  accompany 
the  British  army.  Friendship  was  to  be  maintained  between  the 
Afghans  and  the  English,  and  the  Afghans  were  not  to  ally  themselves 

1  Brit.  Mus.  Add.  MSS,  37706,  f.  202,  verso. 
»  Idem,  37707,  f.  14. 


MACNAGHTEN'S  MURDER  509 

with  any  other  foreign  power  without  the  consent  of  the  English.  A 
resident  should  be  received  in  Kabul  if  the  two  nations  so  wished. 

It  is  perfectly  obvious  that  the  Afghans  never  dreamed  of  carrying 
out  these  articles,  but  on  behalf  of  Macnaghten  it  has  been  said  that 
he  was  bound  to  make  some  such  agreement  because  he  realised  that 
no  sort  of  reliance  could  be  placed  on  the  military  forces.  And  this 
no  doubt  is  true.  But  the  further  and  more  serious  question  remains 
as  to  how  far  the  whole  position  of  affairs  was  not  due  to  his  own 
previous  folly,  and  to  his  want  of  prompt  action  when  the  revolt 
began.  On  the  whole  he  was  at  least  as  much  to  blame  as  the  soldiers, 
for  whose  leaders  no  excuse  can  be  offered.  Their  plain  duty,  as 
Wellington  told  Greville,  was  to  have  attacked  the  rebels  in  the  city 
the  moment  they  realised  what  was  going  on,  and  those  who  refused 
or  neglected  to  give  orders  to  that  effect  involved  the  many  brave 
men  who  served  under  them,  and  who  asked  for  nothing  better  than 
to  die  sword  in  hand,  in  undeserved  blame. 

The  evacuation  was  to  begin  in  three  days,  and  those  troops  that 
were  in  the  Bala  Hissar  left  on  the  I3th,  not  without  difficulty  and 
humiliation.  The  forts  round  the  cantonment  were  ceded,  and  now, 
amid  every  circumstance  of  discouragement  and  dishonour,  the 
retreat  towards  Jallalabad  must  commence.  While  the  force  delayed 
the  snow  began  to  fall,  and  on  19, December  the  last  chance  of  help 
vanished  when  it  was  known  that  the  force  which  had  set  out  from 
Kandahar  had  returned  there.  The  departure  was  fixed  for  the  22nd. 
But  useless,  complicated,  and  not  too  honourable  negotiations  still 
continued,  for  Macnaghten  never  lost  the  hope,  a  vain  one,  of 
dividing  the  enemy.  The  result  of  this  policy  came  on  the  23rd 
when  he  was  murdered  by  Akbar  Khan  while  at  a  conference. 
Shelton  accidentally  escaped  the  same  fate;  but  Trevor  was  killed 
and  others  present  were  taken  prisoners.  It  does  not  seem  that 
Akbar  Khan  meant  at  first  to  kill  Macnaghten;  but  it  is  one  more 
token  of  the  envoy's  essential  unfitness  for  the  post  he  occupied  that 
with  his  experience  of  the  character  of  the  Afghans  he  should  have 
trusted  them  as  he  did.  As  Burnes  said,  he  was  an  excellent  man,  but 
quite  out  of  place  in  Afghanistan.  When  at  the  end  he  descended  to 
a  policy  of  intrigue,  he  followed  the  course  which  has  usually  led  to 
failure  in  the  East.  As  to  the  murder,  he  must  have  known  what  a 
trifle  a  man's  life  was  in  the  eyes  of  an  Afghan,  and  how  many  of 
those  near  at  the  moment  were  thirsting  for  the  blood  of  every 
Englishman  in  their  country.  The  event  then,  while  a  tribute  to 
Macnaghten' s  courage,  cannot  do  anything  to  clear  his  memory  from 
the  serious  mistakes  of  which  he  had  been  guilty.  On  24  December 
it  was  known  for  certain  in  the  cantonments  that  he  was  dead,  and  yet 
nothing  was  done.  Fresh  conditions  were  sent  in,  more  and  more 
humiliating ;  money,  guns,  ammunition,  and  hostages  were  demanded, 
and  though  Pottinger  in  vain  protested,  there  seemed  to  be  no  depth 


5io  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

of  humiliation  to  which  the  general  would  not  descend.  On  i  January, 
1842,  the  final  treaty  was  ratified.  English  ladies  were  not  to  be  left 
as  hostages;  otherwise  the  Afghans  had  all  they  wished. 

And  now  the  march  through  the  snow,  looked  forward  to  with 
dread,  was  to  become  a  reality.  On  6  January  the  soldiers,  refusing 
to  wait  any  longer  for  the  promised  safeguard  from  the  Afghan  chiefs, 
marched  out  of  the  cantonments.  Their  leaders  would  not  fight,  and 
they  had  to  do  their  best  at  running  away.  Sixteen  thousand  men,  brave 
men  too,  were  to  be  sacrificed  to  the  utter  incapacity  of  their  com- 
manding officers ;  already  they  had  become  a  disorderly  rabble.  The 
sick  and  wounded  were  left  behind  in  the  Bala  Hissar. 

Sale  has  been  criticised  for  not  coming,  as  ordered,  to  help  Elphin- 
stone,  and  it  is  certainly  difficult  to  understand  how  anyone  in  his 
position  could  refuse  to  do  so;  but  there  seems  no  reason  to  doubt 
his  statement  that  his  brigade  could  not  reach  Kabul,  and  certain 
it  is  that  with  things  as  they  were  his  force  would  have  been  of  little 
use.  He  probably  could  not  realise  that  matters  were  in  such  a 
desperate  condition.  Hence  he  took  what  he  thought  was  the  wisest 
course,  and  fell  back  on  Jallalabad  which  he  surprised  on  13  Novem- 
ber, 1841,  and  where  he  prepared  to  hold  out  indefinitely.  Broadfoot 
especially  distinguished  himself  in  the  laying  out  of  the  fortifications. 
On  9  January  a  message  was  received  from  Pottinger,  who  was  now 
in  political  charge  at  Kabul,  and  Elphinstone,  ordering  the  evacua- 
tion of  the  fortress,  but  Macgregor  and  Sale  declined  to  obey.  On 
the  1 3th  as  the  men  were  at  work  on  the  fortifications  they  saw  a 
solitary  horseman  approaching  along  the  Kabul  road.  It  was  Dr 
Brydon,  almost  the  sole  survivor  of  the  army  which  had  left  Kabul. 

The  exact  composition  of  the  force  which  had  disappeared  is  known 
from  Lady  Sale's  journal: 

The  advanced  guard  consisted  of  the  44th  Queens,  4th  Irregular  Horse,  and 
Skinner's  Horse,  two  horse  artillery  six-pounder  guns,  Sappers  and  miners  moun- 
tain train,  and  the  late  Envoy's  escort.  The  main  body  included  the  5th  and  37th 
Native  Infantry,  the  latter  in  charge  of  the  treasure;  Anderson's  Horse,  the  Shah's 
6th  Regiment,  two  horse  artillery  six-pounder  guns.  The  rearguard  was  composed 
of  the  54th  Native  Infantry,  5th  Cavalry,  and  two  six-pounder  horse  artillery  guns. 
The  force  consisted  of  about  4500  fighting  men,  and  12,000  followers.1 

It  left  hurriedly  without,  as  has  been  said,  the  Afghan  escort,  herein 
acting  against  the  advice  of  friendly  Afghans.  The  progress  was  slow, 
the  suffering  was  intense,  and  pillage  on  the  part  of  the  Afghans  began 
from  the  start.  Soon  too  the  semblance  of  order  was  abandoned  and 
discipline  vanished.  The  Afghan  horsemen  continued  to  hang  upon 
the  rear,  taking  what  they  could  get  hold  of.  It  is  significant  that  in 
two  days  only  ten  miles  were  covered.  In  the  terrible  pass  of  Khurd 
Kabul,  which  runs  for  five  miles  between  high  mountains,  the 
attacks  on  the  retreating  force  became  more  serious,  and  three 
thousand  at  least  are  said  to  have  perished  here.  Akbar  Khan  appears 

1  Gf.  Eyre,  Kabul  Insurrection,  pp.  256-7. 


THE  MASSACRE  511 

to  have  been  unable  to  check  the  Ghilzais  who  were  mad  with  fanatical 
rage.  The  wives  and  widows  of  officers  and  the  married  officers  were 
now  given  into  his  charge,  partly  for  protection,  partly  as  hostages. 
But  the  murders  continued  and  increased  as  the  march  was  resumed, 
and  on  10  January  not  more  than  a  quarter  of  the  force  was  left. 
Soon  Elphinstone  and  Shelton  were  in  the  hands  of  Akbar  Khan,  and 
at  Jagdallak,  where  there  was  a  barrier,  the  final  stage  of  the  massacre 
began.  A  small  number  reached  Gandammak  only  to  perish  there,  and 
of  half  a  dozen  who  had  pushed  on  to  Fatehabad  only  Dr  Brydon, 
as  has  been  said,  got  to  Jallalabad.  It  is  computed  that  more  died 
from  cold  than  from  the  knives  of  the  Afghans — but  \yho  can  say? 
The  prisoners  who  had  been  taken  by  the  way  numbered  120:  men, 
women,  and  children. 

It  is  easy  to  gather  from  his  correspondence  that  Auckland's  first 
feelings  were  those  of  utter  astonishment.  He  had  been  entirely 
misled,  and  that  fact  prevented  him  at  first  from  thinking  that  matters 
were  as  serious  as  they  really  were.  But  events  told  their  own  tale 
and  as  the  terrible  details  reached  him  he  realised  to  the  full  the 
responsibility  which  attached  to  him  personally.  He  seems  to  have 
given  way  to  despair  and  at  first  only  wished  that  one  brigade  with 
artillery,  which  was  placed  under  Brigadier  Wild,  should  be  sent  to 
Jallalabad.  All  that  he  desired  now  was  to  get  out  of  Afghanistan 
as  best  he  could.  And  as  Sir  Jasper  Nicolls,  the  commander-in-chief, 
had  always  been  opposed  to  the  Afghan  occupation,  and  thought  it 
dangerous  to  move  more  troops  out  of  British  India,  he  was  not  likely 
to  want  support  in  his  views.  Fortunately,  however,  the  initiative  was 
taken  by  men  of  determined  character  acting  on  their  own  responsi- 
bility. Troops  were  hurried  up  by  Clerk,  the  agent  at  Peshawar,  and 
Robertson,  the  lieutenant-governor  of  the  North- West  Provinces. 
Aiding  them  were  men  like  Henry  Lawrence,  who  knew  what  to  do 
in  a  crisis;  and  on  4  January,  1842,  the  second  brigade,  just  over 
3000  strong,  crossed  the  Satlej  on  its  way  to  Peshawar.  And  when 
later  in  the  same  month  the  command  of  the  whole  relief  force  was 
given  to  General  Pollock,  everyone  felt  that  at  last  a  step  had  been 
taken  in  the  right  direction. 

It  is  needless  to  follow  Auckland's  varying  thoughts  as  disaster 
followed  disaster.  The  letter  of  23  January,  1842,  written  by  Colvin 
to  his  father  before  the  fate  of  the  Kabul  army  was  known,  illustrates 
the  views  of  the  official  world  of  Calcutta.  It  shows  at  once  extra- 
ordinary penetration  and  a  corresponding  lack  of  statesmanship,  but 
its  closing  sentences  in  which  he  speaks  of  his  own  position  and 
prospects  will  ever  be  read  with  pride  by  the  members  of  the  great 
service  of  which  he  was  so  distinguished  an  ornament. 

At  the  end  of  the  month  of  January  came  the  definite  news  of  the 
loss  of  the  Kabul  army  and  a  proclamation  couched  in  spirited 
language  was  at  once  issued.  But  Auckland,  doubtful  as  ever  and 


5i2  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

anxious  not  to  embarrass  his  successor  who  was  opposed  to  the  Afghan 
war,1  had  not  really  made  up  his  mind.  On  3  February  he  wrote  to 
the  commander-in-chief  that  Jallalabad  might  have  to  be  abandoned, 
but  that  a  strong  force  ought  to  be  kept  at  Peshawar.2  On  the  same 
day  on  fresh  information  he  spoke  in  an  undecided  way  of  retiring 
to  Firozpur.  This  confirmed  what  he  said  in  his  letter  home  of 
1 8  February.3  Meanwhile  Brigadier  Wild  had  hurried  from  Firozpur 
with  four  regiments  of  native  infantry;  guns  he  was  supposed  to 
get  from  the  Sikhs  through  the  political  agent.  When  he  got  to 
Peshawar,  however,  at  the  end  of  December,  1841,  he  found  the 
Sikhs  not  at  all  disposed  to  lend  guns,  and  what  they  had  were  hardly 
worth  borrowing.  He  managed  to  procure  four  very  inferior  guns 
on  3  January,  but  he  had  difficulties  about  transport  and  very 
little  ammunition.  The  Sikhs  under  General  Avitabile  would  only 
promise  at  first  to  go  as  far  as  'AH  Masjid.  The  importance  of  holding 
this,  the  key  to  the  Khaibar,  was  obvious,  so,  on  15  January,  1842, 
half  the  brigade  moved  on  there.  When  Wild  followed  on  the  igth 
with  the  rest,  the  Sikhs  who  were  to  have  accompanied  him  refused 
to  go ;  and  though  he  pushed  on  himself  he  was  decisively  beaten 
with  the  loss  of  a  gun  at  the  entrance  to  the  pass.  The  net  result  was 
that  on  24  January  'Ali  Masjid  was  given  up  and  the  four  regiments 
fell  back  on  Jamrud.  All  that  could  be  done  was  to  wait  for  the  arrival 
of  Pollock,  who  reached  Peshawar  on  5  February,  and  by  that  time 
so  many  of  the  troops  were  sick  that  an  immediate  advance  could  not 
be  thought  of.  So  all  through  February  and  March,  1842,  the  brigades 
remained  at  Peshawar,  and  Pollock  resisted  every  temptation  to 
move,  though  Sale  and  Macgregor  wished  him  to  do  so.  We  must 
not  forget  too  that  headquarters  was  strongly  of  opinion  that  any 
movement  should  only  be  designed  to  relieve  the  garrisons. 

At  Jallalabad  there  was  considerable  anxiety.  Sale  knew  that  he 
could  not  help  those  in  Kandahar  and  Ghazni,  and  he  felt  under  no 
obligation  to  help  Shah  Shuja.  And  if  Auckland,  as  seemed  obviously 
the  case,  did  not  wish  him  to  go  to  Kabul,  it  was  not  much  use  staying 
in  Jallalabad,  especially  as  he  was  bound  under  the  treaty,  as  Shah 
Shuja  reminded  him,  to  leave  the  country.  There  was  of  course  the 
question  of  the  prisoners,  but  Sale  knew  that  their  position  was  not 
likely  to  be  improved  by  the  movement  of  a  small  force  to  rescue  them. 
The  heroic  conduct  of  Broadfoot,  backed  by  Havelock,  prevented  a 
surrender  in  February,  1842;  and  though  an  earthquake  on  the  igth 
of  that  month  did  great  damage  to  the  fortifications,  the  garrison  was 
not  disheartened.  Akbar  Khan  was  close  by,  and  on  n  March  a 
successful  sortie  was  made.  It  was  not,  however,  till  31  March,  1842, 
when  dragoons  and  horse  artillery  had  reached  him,  that  Pollock 
began  his  famous  march.  His  difficulties  of  transport  were  great, 

1  Law,  India  under  Lord  Ellenborough,  p.  i . 

*  Brit.  Mua.  Add.  MSS,  37707,  f.  145.  »  Idem,  37707,  f,  187. 


ELLENBOROUGH'S  ARRIVAL  513 

and,  though  he  had  secured  at  last  some  sort  of  co-operation  from  the 
Sikhs,  it  was  not  till  5  April  that  he  advanced  to  attack  the  Khaibar. 
This  was  successfully  managed.  'Ali  Masjid  was  abandoned  by  the 
Afghans.  Pollock,  leaving  the  Sikhs  to  guard  the  pass,  well  or  ill, 
pushed  forward  and  marched  into  Jallalabad  on  the  i6th.  Meanwhile 
Sale  had  on  the  7th  attacked  and  burnt  Akbar  Khan's  camp  and  all 
danger  for  the  moment  was  over. 

On  8  October,  1841,  the  post  of  governor-general  of  India  in 
succession  to  Auckland  was  offered  to  and  accepted  by  Lord  Ellen- 
borough.  He  had  long  been  closely  connected  with  Indian  affairs, 
as  he  had  been  appointed  president  of  the  Board  of  Control  in  1828, 

Lord  Ellenborough  reached  Calcutta  on  28  February,  1842.  His 
general  policy  as  regards  Afghanistan  is  indicated  in  the  well-known 
dispatch  of  15  March  to  the  commander-in-chief.  It  has  been  the 
subject  of  much  criticism,  and  yet  it  is  difficult  to  see  that  he  could 
have  said  anything  better.  Sir  Henry  Hardinge  has  recorded  that 
he  desired  no  stronger  proof  of  Ellenborough's  ability  and  soundness 
of  judgment  than  it  afforded,  and  we  can  certainly  add  that  it  supplies 
extraordinary  evidence  of  his  rapid  grasp  of  the  essential  features  of 
the  situation.  After  a  brief  historical  review  it  continues : 

All  these  circumstances,  followed  as  they  have  been  by  the  universal  hostility  of 
the  whole  people  of  Afghanistan,  united  at  the  present  moment  against  us  in  a  war 
which  has  assumed  a  religious,  as  well  as  national  character,  compel  us  to  adopt 
the  conclusion,  that  the  possession  of  Afghanistan,  could  we  recover  it,  would  be 
a  source  of  weakness,  rather  than  of  strength,  in  resisting  the  invasion  of  any  army 
from  the  west,  and  therefore,  that  the  ground  upon  which  the  policy  of  the  advance 
of  our  troops  to  that  country  mainly  rested,  has  altogether  ceased  to  exist. 

After  saying  that  the  British  can  be  no  longer  bound  to  support  the 
cause  of  Shah  Shuja  it  proceeds: 

Whatever  course  we  may  hereafter  take,  must  rest  solely  upon  military  considera- 
tions, and  have,  in  the  first  instance,  regard  to  the  safety  of  the  detached  bodies  of 
our  troops  at  Jellalabad,  at  Ghuznee,  at  Khelal-i-Ghilzye,  and  Candahar,  to  the 
security  of  our  troops  now  in  the  field  from  all  unnecessary  risk,  and  finally,  to  the 
re-establishment  of  our  military  reputation  by  the  infliction  of  some  signal  and 
decisive  blow  upon  the  Afghans,  which  may  make  it  appear  to  them,  to  our  own 
subjects  and  to  our  allies,  that  we  have  the  power  of  inflicting  punishment  upon 
those  who  commit  atrocities,  and  violate  their  faith,  and  that  we  withdraw  ulti- 
mately from  Afghanistan,  not  from  any  deficiency  of  means  to  maintain  our  position, 
but  because  we  are  satisfied  that  the  King  we  have  set  up,  has  not,  as  we  were 
erroneously  led  to  imagine,  the  support  of  the  nation  over  which  he  has  been  placed. 

Very  significant  are  the  paragraphs  of  Lord  Ellenborough's 
dispatch  to  which  most  attention  has  been  directed.  They  run: 

We  are  of  opinion  that  it  would  be  erroneous  to  suppose  that  a  forward  position 
in  Upper  Afghanistan  would  have  the  effect  of  controlling  the  Sikhs,  or  that  a 
forward  position  above  the  passes  of  Lower  Afghanistan  would  have  the  effect  of 
controllingthe  Beloochees,  and  the  Sindians,  by  the  appearance  of  confidence  and 
strength.  That  which  will  really,  and  will  alone  control  the  Sikhs,  the  Beloochees, 
and  the  Sindians,  and  all  the  other  nations  beyond  and  within  the  Indus,  is  the 
knowledge  that  we  possess  an  army,  perfect  in  its  equipment,  possessed  of  all  the 

GHIV  33 


514  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

means  of  movement,  and  so  secure  in  its  communications  with  the  country  from 
which  its  supplies  and  its  reinforcements  are  drawn,  as  to  be  able  at  any  time  to 
act  with  vigour  and  effect  against  any  enemy. 

In  war,  reputation  is  strength;  but  reputation  is  lost  by  the  rash  exposure  of  the 
most  gallant  troops  under  circumstances  which  render  defeat  more  probable  than 
victory;  and  a  succession  of  reverses  will  dishearten  any  soldiers,  and  most  of  all, 
those  whose  courage  and  devotion  have  been  mainly  the  result  of  their  confidence 
that  they  were  always  led  to  certain  success.  We  would,  therefore,  strongly  impress 
upon  the  commanders  of  the  forces  employed  in  Afghanistan  and  Sind  the  import- 
ance of  incurring  no  unnecessary  risk,  and  of  bringing  their  troops  into  action 
under  circumstances  which  may  afford  full  scope  to  the  superiority  they  derive 
from  their  discipline.  At  the  same  time,  we  are  aware  that  no  great  object  can  be 
accomplished  without  incurring  some  risk;  and  we  should  therefore  consider  that 
the  object  of  striking  a  decisive  blow  at  the  Afghans,  more  especially  if  such  blow 
could  be  struck  in  combination  with  measures  for  the  relief  of  Ghuznee — a  blow 
which  might  re-establish  our  military  character  beyond  the  Indus,  and  leave  a 
deep  impression  of  our  power,  and  of  the  vigour  with  which  it  would  be  applied 
to  punish  an  atrocious  enemy, — would  be  one  for  which  risk  might  be  justifiably 
incurred,  all  due  and  possible  precaution  being  taken  to  diminish  such  unnecessary 
risk,  and  to  secure  decisive  success. 

The  commanders  of  the  forces  in  Upper  and  Lower  Afghanistan  will  in  all  the 
operations  they  may  design,  bear  in  mind  these  general  views  and  opinions  of  the 
Government  of  India.  They  will,  in  the  first  instance,  endeavour  to  relieve  all  the 
garrisons  in  Afghanistan,  which  are  now  surrounded  by  the  enemy.  The  relief  of 
these  garrisons  is  a  point  deeply  affecting  the  military  character  of  the  army,  and 
deeply  interesting  to  the  feelings  of  their  country;  but  to  make  a  rash  attempt  to 
effect  such  relief,  in  any  case,  without  a  reasonable  prospect  of  success,  would  be 
to  afford  no  real  aid  to  the  brave  men  who  are  surrounded,  and  fruitlessly  to  sacrifice 
other  good  soldiers,  whose  preservation  is  equally  dear  to  the  government  they 
serve.  To  effect  the  release  of  the  prisoners  taken  at  Cabool  is  an  object  likewise 
deeply  interesting  in  point  of  feeling  and  of  honour.  That  object  can,  probably, 
only  be  accomplished  by  taking  hostages  from  such  part  of  the  country  as  may  be 
in,  or  may  come  into,  our  possession;  and  with  reference  to  this  object,  and  to  that 
of  the  relief  of  Ghuznee,  it  may  possibly  become  a  question  in  the  event  of  Major- 
General  Pollock's  effecting  a  junction  with  Sir  Robert  Sale,  whether  the  united 
force  shall  return  to  the  country  below  the  Khyber  Pass,  or  take  a  forward  position 
near  Jellalabad,  or  even  advance  to  Cabool.1 

The  conditions  of  such  further  advance  are  then  stated.  This  long 
extract  (with  which  may  be  compared  Lord  Ellenborough's  memo- 
randum to  Queen  Victoria  of  18  March  and  his  letter  home  of 
2 1  March,  1 842) 2  is  sufficiently  complete  to  show  Lord  Ellenborough's 
real  meaning.  What  he  obviously  intended  to  convey  was  that,  as 
soon  as  it  was  possible  safely  to  do  so,  everyone  must  retire  from 
Afghanistan,  that  before  they  did  so  some  decisive  blow  must  be 
struck  if  possible,  and  that  those  on  the  spot,  subject  to  certain  general 
conditions  of  caution,  must  make  the  decision.  How  necessary 
caution  was  is  evident  enough;  even  so  well  informed  an  officer  as 
Major  Rawlinson  had  suggested  that  Kandahar  should  be  handed 
over  to  Shah  Kamran  and  that  we  should  give  him  our  general 
support,  though  the  attitude  of  Persia  was  uncertain. 

On  6  April,  1842,  the  governor-general  left  Calcutta  and  no  one 
can  accuse  him  of  want  of  activity.   We  must  look  at  the  situation 

1  EUenborough  MSS  (P.R.O.),  83. 

8  Colchester,  Indian  Administration  of  Lord  EUenborough,  pp.  17  and  176, 


KANDAHAR  RELIEVED  515 

from  his  point  of  view.  At  Kandahar  was  Nott,  who  had  been  asked 
in  the  early  days  of  the  trouble  at  Kabul  to  send  Maclaren's  brigade 
to  Elphinstone's  assistance.  It  was  sent  but  returned,  because  unable 
to  advance,  on  8  December,  1841.  Its  return  has  been  criticised  on 
several  grounds,  but  Nott  at  all  events  was  glad  enough  to  see  it  back 
again.  The  country  round  Kandahar  was  in  a  state  of  insurrection, 
and  after  much  tortuous  negotiation  an  army  of  insurgents  settled 
down  about  five  miles  from  the  city  on  12  January,  1842.  Nott  went 
out  and  scattered  them,  but  this  victory  only  seemed  to  bring  the 
surrounding  Durani  chiefs  into  more  open  hostility,  and  under  Mirza 
Ahmad  they  gave  active  resistance  to  the  enemy.  On  21  February 
Nott  received  the  belated  message  from  Elphinstone  and  Pottinger 
ordering  the  evacuation  of  Kandahar  and  Khilat-i-Ghilzai,  the  latter 
a  fort  under  Leech  about  half  way  to  Ghazni.  He  felt  under  no 
obligation  to  obey  this  command,  for  the  position  of  the  English  in 
the  country,  as  was  pointed  out  by  the  Durani  chiefs,  was  now  some- 
what anomalous,  and  required  independent  consideration.  Nott 
decided,  therefore,  to  stay  where  he  was.  On  10  March  the  city  was 
wellnigh  captured  by  a  stratagem.  On  the  3ist  news  came  of  the 
fall  of  Ghazni;  Khilat-i-Ghilzai  was  still  holding  out.  But  where  was 
the  rescue  party  from  Sind?  About  the  close  of  February,  1842, 
Brigadier  England  approached  the  Bolan  Pass.  He  left  Dadur  on 
7  March  and  reached  Quetta  on  the  i6th.  But  on  the  28th  he  was 
beaten  at  Hakulzai  and  retreated,  with  some  discredit,  to  Quetta. 
At  last,  on  30  April,  aided  by  Nott's  men  from  Kandahar,  he  got 
through  the  Khojak  Pass  and  the  two  brigades  entered  the  city  on 
10  May. 

The  position  was  now  somewhat  clearer,  and  it  had  been  simplified 
still  further  by  what  had  happened  at  the  capital.  Shah  Shuja, 
who  had  continued  to  reign  as  the  nominal  king  at  the  Bala 
Hissar,  on  5  April  was  shot  down  by  men  posted  by  Shuja-ud-daula, 
son  of  Zaman  Shah,  as  he  set  out  for  Jallalabad.  There  is  much  un- 
certainty as  to  the  cause  of  the  murder,  but  it  was  doubtless  the  in- 
evitable outcome  of  Barakzai  feeling  whatever  the  immediate  occasion. 

We  have  therefore  now  this  position.  A  strong  force  on  the  west 
at  Kandahar,  with  very  uncertain  means  of  communication  with 
its  base,  and  a  strong  force  at  Jallalabad  in  an  even  worse  position 
as  regards  supplies  and  reinforcements.  Both  forces,  as  things  were, 
were  unable  to  move  forward.  When,  therefore,  Lord  Ellenborough 
on  his  march  up-country  heard  of  General  England's  repulse  and  the 
fall  of  Ghazni  he  gave  the  instructions  which  have  been  the  subject 
of  so  much  controversy.  On  18  April  he  wrote  to  the  commander- 
in-chief: 

I  cannot  think  that  Major-General  Pollock  will  under  his  instructions  of  the 
1 5th  ult.  remain  at  or  near  JellalabacL  Your  Excellency  is  so  much  nearer  to  Pesha- 
war than  I  am  that  I  depend  upon  your  giving  any  instructions  upon  that  head  to 

33-a 


5i6  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

Major-General  Pollock  which  you  may  think  necessary.  His  position  is  far  from 
satisfactory,  even  during  his  operation;  with  an  active  enemy  in  his  front  and  a 
large  force  of  Sikhs  in  his  rear  he  is  placed  almost  in  the  fauces  caudinae  if  there 
should  be  treachery.  Then  this  horrible  climate,  so  much  more  destructive  than 
any  battle,  which  in  three  days  may  deprive  him  of  two  thirds  of  his  force. .  ..l 

|jOn  the  igth  he  reviewed  the  whole  position,  allowing  the 
commander-in-chief  to  decide  as  to  General  Pollock,  but  pointing 
out  the  advantages  of  the  force  remaining  at  Jallalabad  during  the  hot 
weather  on  the  ground  of  health  and  on  account  of  the  influence 
which  the  presence  of  this  force  might  have  upon  negotiations  for 
the  exchange  of  prisoners.  On  the  other  hand  he  spoke  of  the  decision 
which  had  been  taken  in  favour  of  ultimate  retirement  to  the  Indus 
and  the  difficulties  in  which  the  force  would  find  itself  "at  one  end 
of  a  long  and  difficult  pass  with  an  enemy  in  front  and  an  ally  not 
to  be  entirely  depended  upon,  in  its  rear".2  The  orders  to  Nott  were 
as  follows.  The  letter  is  dated  Benares,  19  April,  1842: 

1 .  I  am  directed  by  the  Governor-General  to  instruct  you  to  take  immediate 
measures  for  drawing  off  the  garrison  of  Kelat-i-Ghilzie.    You  will  effectually 
destroy  all  such  guns  as  you  cannot  conveniently  bring  away.   You  will  destroy 
the  fort  likewise  unless,  at  the  time  at  which  the  operation  shall  be  effected  which  is 
hereinbefore  enjoined,  Prince  Timur  having  remained  faithful  to  the  British 
interests  shall  possess  sufficient  force  to  be  reasonably  expected  to  be  able  to  main- 
tain that  fort  upon  your  giving  it  into  his  charge. 

2.  You  will  evacuate  the  city  of  Candahar  giving  that  too  into  the  charge  of 
Prince  Timur  under  the  circumstances  above  mentioned.  You  will  otherwise  ruin 
its  defences  before  you  abandon  it. 

3.  You  will  then  proceed  to  take  up  a  position  at  Quetta  until  the  season  may 
enable  you  to  return  upon  Sukkur. 

4.  The  object  of  the  above  directed  measures  is  to  withdraw  all  our  forces  to 
Sukkur  at  the  earliest  period  at  which  the  season,  and  other  circumstances,  may 
permit  you  to  take  up  a  new  position  there.  The  manner  of  effecting  this  now 
necessary  object  is,  however,  left  to  your  discretion. 

5.  You  will  understand  that,  in  the  event  of  Prince  Timur  having  continued 
faithful,  it  is  the  desire  of  the  Governor-General  to  afford  him  the  means  of 
preserving  by  his  own  native  troops  or  any  other  troops  in  his  pay  the  city  of 
Gandahar  and  the  fort  of  Khelat-i-Ghilzye,  but  no  British  guns  must  be  left  which 
you  can  carry  away,  and  no  British  officer  must  remain  in  his  service  retaining  his 
commission  in  the  British  army.3 

It  has  often  been  stated  that  Lord  Ellenborough  at  this  period  was 
in  a  state  of  panic,  but  a  letter  to  Peel  of  21  April,  1842,  does  not  give 
any  such  impression;  it  runs: 

At  last  we  have  got  a  victory,  and  our  military  character  is  re-established.  Sir 
Robert  Sale  has  completely  defeated  the  Afghans  under  the  walls  of  Jellalabad. 
Major-General  Pollock  has  forced  the  Khyber  Pass  and  is  in  march  on  Jellalabad. 
These  events  took  place  on  the  6th  and  *jth  of  this  month.  The  garrison  of  Khilat- 
i-Ghilzye  is  safe,  but  is  not  yet  drawn  off.  Candahar  has  been  nearly  lost  by  the 
error  of  General  Nott.  Brigadier  England  was  repulsed  in  a  movement  he  should 
never  have  made  towards  Candahar  with  an  insufficient  force. 

I  am  satisfied  that  the  momentary  success  of  Sale  and  of  Pollock  must  not  lead 
us  to  change  our  view  of  what  ought  to  be  our  permanent  policy.  We  must  draw 

1  Ellenborough  MSS,  83. 

*  Idem,  83.  *  Idem,  95. 


ELLENBOROUGH'S  ORDERS  517 

back  our  forces  into  positions  in  which  they  may  have  certain  and  easy  communi- 
cation with  India.  You  will  see  all  I  think  in  my  letters  to  the  Commander-in- 
Ghief  and  the  Secret  Committee.  The  victory  of  Jellalabad  does  not  change  my 
opinion.  Send  us  every  man  you  can.  We  want  them  all,  as  you  will  see  when  you 
read  the  letter  to  the  Secret  Committee.  I  am  making  the  most  of  my  victory  with 
the  troops  here  and  everywhere 

The  commander-in-chief  did  not  give  the  suggested  instructions  to 
Pollock  till  29  April,  1842,  and  even  then  he  specified  conditions  under 
which  retirement  might  be  delayed.  But  on  28  April  a  letter  had 
been  sent  by  the  governor-general  informing  Pollock  that: 

The  aspect  of  affairs  in  Upper  Afghanistan  appears  to  be  such  according  to  the 
last  advices  received  by  the  Governor-General,  that  his  Lordship  cannot  but  con- 
template the  possibility  of  your  having  been  led  by  the  absence  ofserious  opposition 
on  the  part  of  any  army  in  the  field,  by  the  divisions  amongst  the  Afghan  chiefs,  and 
by  the  natural  desire  you  must,  in  common  with  every  true  soldier,  have  of  dis- 
playing again  the  British  flag  in  triumph  upon  the  scene  of  our  late  disasters,  to 
advance  upon  and  occupy  the  city  of  Cabool. 

Those  who  have  criticised  this  letter  have  often  forgotten  that  it  was 
sent  just  when  the  news  had  reached  the  governor-general  that  Shah 
Shuja  had  been  assassinated.  Hitherto  Lord  Ellenborough  had  had  to 
resist  those  who  were  pressing  for  a  fresh  occupation  of  Afghanistan. 
A  letter  which  he  wrote  to  the  Duke  of  Wellington  on  17  May,  1842, 
has  often  been  misunderstood  because  only  partially  quoted;  it  runs: 

But  I  must  tell  you  that  in  not  ordering  the  army  to  Ghuznee  and  Cabul  without 
the  means  of  movement  or  supply,  and  in  giving  up  the  irrational  schemes  of 
extending  our  dominions  to  the  westward,  I  stand  alone  and  have  to  withstand 
against  the  whole  monstrous  body  of  political  agents.  I  have  acted  altogether  in 
all  that  I  have  done  upon  my  own  judgment.1 

But  that  he  contemplated  considerable  exercise  of  individual  judg- 
ment even  at  this  early  stage  is  evident  from  the  letter  to  Nott  of 
13  May,  1842: 

Your  position  when  supplied  with  treasure,  ammunition,  and  medicines,  will 
be  more  favourable  than  the  Governor-General  had  reason  to  suppose  it  would 
be  when  the  instructions  of  the  igth  ultimo  were  addressed  to  you,  but  this  im- 
provement of  your  position  is  not  such  as  to  induce  his  Lordship  to  vary  the 
instructions,  in  as  far  as  they  direct  your  retiring  upon  Sukkur. 

That  movement  you  will  make  at  such  period  and  with  such  precautions  as  may 
best  conduce  to  the  preservation  of  the  health  of  your  troops  and  the  efficiency  of 
your  army. 

The  Governor-General  understands  that  consistently  with  the  necessary  regard 
to  these  objects  of  primary  importance  you  cannot  retire  below  the  passes  till 
October. 

Neither  does  the  decease  of  Shah  Shoojah  induce  the  Governor-General  to  vary 
those  instructions  as  far  as  they  relate  to  the  measures  you  were  directed  to  adopt 
on  evacuating  the  fort  of  Khelat-i-Ghilzye  and  the  city  of  Candahar. 

In  the  present  divided  state  of  Afghanistan  the  Governor-General  is  not  prepared 
to  recognise  anyone  as  the  gpvernor  of  that  country;  but  the  fidelity  of  Prince 
Timour  would  justify  his  being  so  put  in  possession  of  those  places  and  of  Giriskh 
on  your  returning  to  the  Indus.2 

1  Colchester,  op.  cit.  p.  196.  2  Ellenborough  MSS,  95. 


5i8  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

•  *• 

In  the  same  general  sense  is  the  letter  from  EUenborough  to  the 
commander-in-chief  of  14  May. 

What  no  doubt  Lord  EUenborough  was  really  afraid  of,  and  with 
some  reason,  was  action  on  the  part  of  the  Sikhs.  On  23  May,  1842, 
he  wrote  to  the  commander-in-chief: 

I  have  removed,  I  trust,  by  the  declaration  I  have  made,  the  apprehension  which 
appears  to  have  been  entertained  that  the  British  Government  desired  to  have 
possession  of  Peshawur.  This  apprehension  in  Mr  Clerk's  opinion  led  to  the  con- 
gregating of  so  large  a  Sikh  force  there.1 

Pollock  had  hitherto  delayed  on  the  question  of  carriage,  and  he  gladly 
welcomed  the  idea  of  a  forward  movement;  on  i  June,  1842,  a  very 
wide  discretion  was  allowed  him.  Nott's  position  was  quite  different, 
and  in  any  case  depended  largely  on  that  of  Pollock.  On  i  June  a 
letter  was  written  to  him  directing  his  retirement  as  soon  as  the  season 
would  permit. 

So  Nott  busied  himself  with  maintaining  his  position  and  with  the 
withdrawal  of  the  Khilat  garrison.  But  by  a  letter  of  4  July  he  too 
received  full  discretionary  powers  which  allowed  him  to  go  back  via 
Ghazni  and  Kabul.  It  was  now  for  the  first  time  that  he  had  sufficient 
transport  and  that  Lord  EUenborough,  with  many  natural  misgivings, 
was  able  to  sanction  his  advance. 

It  was  in  this  letter  that  the  instruction  was  contained  which 
afterwards  excited  so  much  ridicule.  It  ran: 

If  you  should  be  enabled  by  a  coup  de  main  to  get  possession  of  Ghuznee  and 
Gabool,  you  will  act  as  you  see  fit,  and  leave  decisive  proofs  of  the  power  of  the 
British  army,  without  impeaching  its  humanity.  You  will  bring  away  from  the 
tomb  of  Mahmood  of  Ghuznee,  his  club,  which  hangs  over  it ;  and  you  will  bring 
away  the  gates  of  his  tomb,  which  are  the  gates  of  the  Temple  of  Somnaut.  These 
will  be  the  just  trophies  of  your  successful  march. 

But  as  regards  this  direction  those  who  know  the  East  will  hesitate  to 
condemn  Lord  EUenborough;  and  they  will  also  be  pretty  sure  that 
the  idea  was  either  suggested  or  approved  by  those  around  him.  It 
is  a  trifling  affair  in  any  case,  but  Wade  attests  the  fact  that  the 
Gates  had  been  demanded  by  Ranjit  Singh  in  i83i.2  The  Duke  of 
Wellington  approved  Of  Lord  Ellenborough's  conduct  in  this  matter. 
The  discretion  as  to  the  route  was  again  fully  allowed  to  Nott  in  a 
letter  of  10  July.  On  the  6th  of  that  month  Lord  EUenborough 
summed  up  the  matter  in  a  letter  to  the  Duke  of  Wellington: 

The  case  is  one  in  which,  at  this  distance,  I  could  not  direct  an  advance,  but, 
at  the  same  time,  I  should  hardly  be  justified  in  continuing  to  prohibit  it.  It  is 
entirely  a  question  of  commissariat. 

By  the  end  of  June,  Pollock  had  sufficient  transport  but  it  was  not 
tUl  the  middle  of  August,  1842,  that  he  heard  that  Nott  was  going  to 
Kabul.  He  started  from  Jallalabad  on  the  aoth  of  that  month, 

1  EUenborough  MSS,  83.  a  Cunningham,  Sikhs  t  pp.  196-7. 


KABUL  REOCCUPIED  5I9 

* 

reaching  Gandammak  on  the  23rd  and  scattering  a  body  of  the  enemy 
near  by.  On  i  September  Fath  Jung,  the  puppet  king,  gave  himself 
up,  and,  having  heard  that  Nott  had  started,  Pollock  set  off  for  the 
capital  on  the  7th,  defeated  the  Ghilzais  at  Jagdallak  on  the  8th,  and 
on  the  1 3th  won  a  great  final  victory  over  Akbar  Khan  at  Tezin  near 
the  fatal  pass  of  Khurd  Kabul.  The  hope  of  the  Barakzais  fled,  and 
on  the  1 5th  Pollock  was  in  Kabul. 

Nott  had  made  preparations  for  moving  his  force  from  Kandahar 
to  Quetta  when  on  20  July,  having  received  sufficient  transport  and 
the  governor-general's  letter  of  the  4th,  he  decided  to  march  to 
Ghazni  and  Kabul  with  a  portion  of  his  army.  The  rest  of  the  force 
was  4:o  return  under  the  appropriate  care  of  Brigadier  England,  and 
with  him  went  Prince  Taimur  Shah  (Shah  Shuja's  eldest  son),  who 
had  no  sort  of  authority  in  the  country.  They  left  Safdar  Jung,  the 
younger  son,  in  possession,  a  move  which  shows  how  little  the  actual 
significance  of  events  in  Afghanistan  had  been  realised  even  then. 
There  was  no  trouble  till  Nott's  army  reached  Mukur,  160  miles  from 
Kandahar,  on  27  August,  1842,  and  there  irregular  fighting  began. 
Ghazni  was  occupied  on  6  September  and  the  fortifications  destroyed. 
The  army  marched  away,  carrying  with  them  the  gates  of 
Somnath,  and  on  17  September  they  camped  outside  the  city  of 
Kabul. 

Lord  Ellenborough  had  been  very  careful  to  state  that  all  he  wished, 
once  the  garrisons  were  relieved  and  the  prisoners  restored,  was  to 
leave  Afghanistan  as  soon  as  possible,  but  Pollock  thought  it  necessary 
for  the  time  being  to  enthrone  Fath  Jung  in  the  Bala  Hissar,  without 
of  course  any  hope  of  future  help  from  the  English.  There  was  not 
entire  sympathy  between  Nott  and  Pollock,  but  fortunately  this  did 
not  interfere  with  the  release  of  the  prisoners,  who  had  been  carried 
off  in  the  direction  of  the  Hindu  Kush,  and  who,  after  the  most 
extraordinary  adventures,  rescued  themselves  and  on  1 7  September  ^ 
joined  a  relief  party  which  had  been  sent  under  Sir  Richmond  Shake- 
speare. 

All  that  remained  was  to  break  up  the  gathering  forces  of  the 
Barakzais  which  Aminullah  Khan  was  bringing  together  and  which 
might  have  annoyed  the  army  on  its  way  back  to  India.  This  was 
effected  by  General  McCaskill  who  won  a  battle  at  Istalif  in  Kohistan 
on  29  September.  The  Great  Bazaar  of  Kabul  was,  rather  unfor- 
tunately, selected  for  destruction  as  a  reminder  of  the  evil  that  had 
been  done  by  those  accustomed  to  stream  through  its  arcades,  and 
on  12  October  the  army  marched  away  from  the  city.  On  the  same 
day  Fath  Jung  having  abdicated,  Prince£Shapur,  another  son  of  Shah 
Shuja,  was  declared  king. 

Meanwhile  Lord  Ellenborough  issued  a  proclamation  at  Simla, 
dated  i  October,  1842,  which  is  open  to  little  criticism  beyond  this, 
that  he  might  well  have  left  unnoticed  the  faults,  sufficiently  obvious, 


520  AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

of  those  who  were  responsible  for  the  disasters  which  had  occurred. 
It  annoyed  Auckland,  who  made  the  ridiculous  remark,  to  a  party 
of  friends  of  whom  Greville  was  one,  that  he  had  been  convinced 
that  Lord  Ellenborough  was  mad  from  the  moment  of  his  landing. 
Ellenborough's  defence  of  his  proclamation  and  of  his  orders  as  to 
the  Somnath  Gates,  which  is  to  be  found  in  a  letter  to  the  Secret 
Committee  of  28  March,  1843,  has  much  to  recommend  it. 

The  most  important  part  of  the  proclamation  was  that  in  which 
it  was  stated  that  the  governor-general  would  willingly  recognise  any 
government  approved  by  the  Afghans  themselves,  which  should 
appear  desirous  and  capable  of  maintaining  friendly  relations  with 
neighbouring  states.  The  opportunity  was  soon  given.  Those  Afghans 
who  had  been  detained  in  India  were  allowed  to  return  and  the  most 
important  of  them  all  was  Dost  Muhammad,  a  wooden  spoon  which 
could  be  thrown  anywhere,  as  he  described  himself.  Early  in  1843 
he  returned  to  Afghanistan  and  to  its  throne,  for  poor  Prince  Shapur 
had  long  since  fled  for  his  life  to  Peshawar. 

The  armies  of  Pollock  and  Nott  returned  through  the  Khaibar 
without  any  great  difficulty,  though  they  suffered  occasionally  from 
the  depredations  of  freebooters.  They  destroyed  the  defences  of 
Jallalabad  and  'Ali  Masjid  as  they  passed,  thus  perhaps  happily 
rendering  useless  a  scheme  for  handing  over  Jallalabad  to  the  Sikhs. 
Then  they  passed  through  Peshawar  and  across  the  Panjab  and  were 
welcomed  in  December,  1842,  very  magnificently,  by  the  governor- 
general  and  the  army  of  reserve  which  he  had  assembled  at  Firozpur, 
with  the  idea  of  overawing  the  Sikhs.  But  although  there  was  great 
rejoicing,  and  although  rewards  were  deservedly  given  to  those 
chiefly  concerned,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  errors  of  the  first  part  of 
the  war  cast  their  shadow  over  the  triumphs  of  the  second.  It  suited 
the  politicians  who  were  really  responsible  for  the  first  invasion  of 
,  Afghanistan  to  treat  the  whole  war  as  one  connected  incident;  whereas 
in  reality  it  consisted  of  four  distinct  operations.  That  Auckland's  in- 
vasion of  Afghanistan  was  a  terrible  mistake  is  obvious;  the  government 
of  the  country  under  Macnaghten  was  a  failure;  the  conduct  of  the 
authorities  when  the  revolt  of  November  occurred  is  open  to  the 
gravest  criticism,  and  forms  perhaps  the  most  painful  episode  in  our 
military  history;  but  the  work  of  Pollock,  Sale  and  Nott  reflects 
nothing  but  credit  on  the  British  and  Indian  troops  whom  they  led 
and  who  displayed  the  highest  courage  and  endurance. 

Lord  Ellenborough's  conduct  throughout  a  most  difficult  time  still 
awaits  detailed  and  candid  examination,  but  in  spite  of  the  careless 
censures  which  one  text-book  after  another  has  repeated  from  his 
own  day  to  ours,  his  reputation  has  the  powerful  support  of  the  Duke 
of  Wellington  and  Lord  Hardinge.  The  Duke's  letter  of  9  October, 
1842,  in  which  he  gives  a  carefully  considered  and  generously  ex- 
pressed approval  of  Lord  Ellenborough's  conduct  in  regard  to  the 


THE  EVACUATION  521 

relief  operations,  is  perhaps  the  most  important  testimony  in  his 
favour.  It  concludes: 

These  observations  just  tend  to  show  that  it  is  impossible  for  anybody  at  a 
distance,  even  informed  as  you  must  be,  to  dictate  the  exact  course  of  a  military 
operation.  This  must  be  left  to  the  officers  on  the  spot.  And  you  have  acted  most 
handsomely  by  yours.  You  have  stated  clearly  your  objects.  You  have  afforded 
them  ample  means  and  you  have  suggested  the  mode  of  execution  with  all  the 
reasons  in  favour  of  and  against  your  suggesti6ns,  the  latter  formed  upon  the 
knowledge  acquired  by  experience.  You  could  not  do  more.  You  might  have  done 
less.  I  concur  in  all  your  objects.  I  think  your  generals  ought  to  be  successful  in 
carrying  into  execution  your  views.1 

Equally  valuable  and  conclusive  are  the  marginal  comments  by  the 
Duke  on  the  letter  of  Lord  Ellenborough  to  the  Secret  Committee  of 
17  May,  1842. 2 

1  See  the  whole  letter  ap.  Law,  op.  cit.  pp.  42  sqq.  2  Idem,  pp.  33  sqq. 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

THE  CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

• 

I.    SIND 

1.HE  conquest  of  Sind  and  the  subjugation  of  the  Sikhs,  though 
no  doubt  often  contemplated  as  possible  before  the  invasion  of 
Afghanistan,  were  very  closely  connected  with  it;  almost  to  the  extent 
of  cause  and  effect,  as  can  be  seen  from  Lord  Ellenborough's  memo- 
randum of  23  April,  iSsg.1  Sind  has  a  long  interesting  history  which 
has  been  dealt  with  in  previous  volumes  of  this  work,  so  that  it  will 
suffice  to  refer  to  it  very  briefly.  The  province  was  theoretically 
subject  to  Afghanistan  but  the  tribute  due  was  often  withheld.    In 
1783  Mir  Fath  'Ali  Khan  overthrew  the  last  of  the  Kaloras  and 
established  himself  as  Rais  of  Sind,  the  first  of  the  Talpura  mirs.  His 
family  divided  the  country  between  them,  and  so  we  have  the 
Hyderabad  or  Shahdadpur  family  ruling  Central  Sind  from  the 
capital;  the  Mirpur  or  Manikani  family  at  Mirpur;  and  the  Sohrabani 
line  at  Khairpur.   Mir  Fath  'Ali  Khan  died  in  1802,  leaving  a  son, 
Subudar  Khan;  but  his  three  brothers  Ghulam  'Ali,  Karam  'Ali, 
and  Murad  'Ali  shared  the  sovereignty.  Of  these  Ghulam  'Ali  left  a 
son  Mir  Muhammad  Khan;  Karam  'Ali  left  no  issue;  and  Murad  'Ali 
left  two  sons,  Mir  Nur  Muhammad  Khan  and  Mir  Nasir  Khan,  who 
with  their  cousins  just  named,  Subudar  Khan  and  Mir  Muhammad 
Khan,  were  ruling,  if  ruling  it  could  be  called,  in  1838;  and  of  these 
Subudar  Khan  was  a  Sunni  and  the  other  three  were  Shiahs,  which 
affected  their  several  relations  with  Persia.    Mir  Nur  Muhammad 
Khan  held  a  nominal  superiority  in  position.2    In  1841  he  died 
leaving  two  sons,  Shahdad  and  Husain  'Ali,  and  it  was  the  latter  of 
these  that  he  confided  on  his  deathbed,  together  with  Nasir  Khan, 
to  the  care  of  Outram.  The  Khairpur  family  was  very  numerous,8 
but  they  were  all  more  or  less  subject  in  1838  to  Mir  Rustam  Khan, 
an  aged  chief  who  had  taken  part  in  the  original  establishment  of  his 
family  in  the  country.   At  Mirpur,  Shir  Muhammad,  known  as  the 
Lion  of  Mirpur,  was  the  ruler,  though  he  was  supposed  to  be  to  some 
extent  controlled  by  the  mirs  of  Hyderabad. 

The  East  India  Company  had  re-established  its  factory  at  Tatta 
in  1758;  it  was  abandoned  in  1775;  but  the  idea  of  trade  remained, 
though  a  commercial  mission  to  the  Talpura  mirs  in  1799  ended 
abruptly  and  without  result.  Negotiations  at  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century  were  directed  against  the  French,  and  a  treaty 

1  I^aw,  op.  cit.  pp.  i  sqq.       2  Parliamentary  Papers,  1843.  xxxix,  316.        8  Idem,  p.  260. 


NAVIGATION  OF  THE  JNDUS  523 

with  the  amirs  in  1809  provided  that  they  should  not  allow  that 
"tribe"  to  establish  itself  in  Sind.  Similarly,  a  treaty  of  1820  said 
that  no  European  or  American  settlements  should  be  allowed,  and 
that  raids  on  British  or  allied  territory  should  be  restrained;1  with 
regard  to  the  latter  matter  a  raid  of  the  Khosas  upon  Cutch  forced 
the  Company  to  send  a  field  force  there  in  1825,  an^  w^h  *his  little 
expedition  went  James  Burnes,  brother  of  the  more  famous  Alexander, 
who  was  invited,  after  the  military  operations  had  finished,  to  visit 
the  amirs  of  Sind  at  Hyderabad.  His  published  account  of  his  journey 
is  still  valuable  as  an  early  description  of  a  practically  unknown 
country.  It  may  have  been  this  connection  which  led  to  the  sending 
of  Alexander  Burnes  to  visit  Ranjit  Singh  by  way  of  the  Indus.2 

The  course  of  that  river  was  now  for  the  first  time  known  to  the 
English;  and  exaggerated  ideas  seem  to* have  been  entertained,  both 
in  India  and  in  England,  as  to  its  future  as  a  highway  of  commerce. 
Colonel  Pottinger,  therefore,  recently  appointed  Resident  in  Sind, 
arranged  a  treaty  on  20  April,  1832  (supplementary  articles  were 
added  two  days  later),  with  Mir  Murad  'AH  in  Hyderabad,  which 
was  afterwards  confirmed  by  Mir  Rustam  Khan  in  Khairpur,  some 
of  the  articles  of  which  had  importance  in  the  future.  Such  were: 

II.  That  the  two  contracting  Powers  bind  themselves  never  to  look  with  the 
eye  of  covetousness  on  the  possessions  of  each  other. 

III.  That  the  British  Government  has  requested  a  passage  for  the  merchants 
and  traders  of  Hindoostan  by  the  rivers  and  roads  of  Sinde,  by  which  they  may 
transport  their  goods  and  merchandise  from  one  country  to  another;  and  the  said 
Government  of  Hyderabad  hereby  acquiesces  in  the  same  request,  on  the  three 
following  conditions: — 

1 .  That  no  person  shall  bring  any  description  of  military  stores  by  the  above 
river  or  roads. 

2.  That  no  armed  vessels  or  boats  shall  come  by  the  said  river. 

3.  That  no  English  merchants  shall  be  allowed  to  settle  in  Sinde,  but  shall  come 
as  occasion  requires,  and  having  stopped  to  transact  their  business,  shall  return  to 
India. 

It  was  also  provided  that  a  tariff  of  tolls  should  be  drawn  up  and 
mutually  agreed  upon,  and  the  details  of  this  tariff  were  settled  by 
a  treaty  of  i834.8  The  next  year  Colonel  Pottinger  obtained  leave 
to  survey  the  coast  of  the  delta  of  the  Indus.  In  view  of  what  followed 
it  is  important  to  remember  that  there  was  considerable  probability 
(as  can  be  seen  from  Lord  Auckland's  correspondence)  of  the  invasion 
of  Sind  by  Ranjit  Singh  in  1836.  He  had  demanded  a  heavy  tribute 
from  the  amirs,  had  actually  captured  a  fort  near  Shikarpur,  and  was 
making  preparations  for  further  operations.  This  led  the  governor- 
general  to  try  to  come  to  a  closer  arrangement  with  the  amirs  on  the 
one  hand,  and  to  induce  the  Sikhs  to  give  up  their  designs  on  Sind 

1  Ajtchjson,  op.  cit.  vn,  351,  352.  2  Ellenborough,  Political  Diaty,  i,  275. 

*  Aitchison,  op.  cit.  vn,  353  and  357. 


524          CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

on  the  other.  The  dispatch  to  Pottinger  of  26  September,  1836, 
contains  the  following  significant  paragraphs: 

You  will  in  treating  with  the  Amirs  communicate  with  them,  without  reserve, 
in  reference  to  the  dangerous  position  in  which  they  stand,  and  you  will  apprise 
them,  that  this  Government  is  sensible  how  essential  it  is,  not  to  their  interests  only, 
but  to  their  very  existence,  that  the  ties  by  which  they  are  connected  with  the  British 
Empire  should  be  strengthened. 

It  is  difficult  at  this  distance  immediately  to  prescribe  to  you  the  conditions  upon 
which  the  British  Government  should  agree  to  enter  into  a  closer  alliance;  but 
you  will  avow  its  readiness,  under  such  circumstances  as  are  likely  to  arise,  and 
upon  such  conditions  as  may  be  reasonable,  to  enter  more  ostensibly,  than  has 
hitherto  been  the  case,  into  alliance  with  the  Ameers  of  Sinde. 

Whether  the  communication  which  you  may  make  to  the  Ameers,  in  pursuance 
of  these  instructions,  shall  end  in  no  new  result,  or  in  the  mere  reception,  at  the 
Court  of  Hyderabad,  of  a  British  Agent,  or  in  the  advance  of  a  subsidiary  force, 
for  the  protection  of  the  Sinde  tersitories,  will  probably  depend  upon  the  conduct 
of  the  Maharajah,  and  the  course  of  events. 

The  Governor-General  in  Council  sincerely  desires,  that  the  extension  of  British 
influence  in  the  direction  of  the  Indus,  should  be  effected  by  the  pursuit  of  com- 
mercial and  peaceful  objects  alone.  In  interposing  for  the  protection  of  Sinde  from 
imminent  danger,  the  British  Government  may  justly  expect  to  receive,  in  return, 
some  corresponding  advantages.  His  Lordship  in  Council  would  not,  without  your 
deliberate  advice,  and  a  very  careful  consideration  of  all  the  circumstances  of  the 
position  of  Sinde,  enter  into  a  general  engagement  to  defend  that  country  from  all 
external  enemies ;  but  he  does  not  hesitate  to  authorise  you  to  promise  his  mediation 
in  all  disputes  between  the  Ameers  and  the  Government  of  Lahore,  if  a  reasonable 
equivalent  be  assented  to.  As  one  condition  of  this  mediation,  and  with  a  view  to 
enable  this  Government  readily  to  give  effect  to  it,  it  would  be  advantageous  if 
the  Ameers  would  consent  permanently  to  receive  a  body  of  British  troops,  to  be 
stationed  at  their  capital,  the  expense  of  the  detachment  being  paid  from  the  Sinde 
revenues.  His  Lordship  in  Council  would  not  insist  upon  this,  as  an  indispensable 
part  of  any  arrangement,  but  he  empowers  you  (reserving  all  points  of  detail)  to 
agree  to  it  on  his  part,  should  the  Ameers  not  persist  in  opposing  it  under  any 
circumstances.  Short  of  this  the  present  mediation  of  the  British  Government  with 
Maharajah  Runjeet  Singh,  may  be  promised,  on  the  condition  of  the  reception  of 
a  British  agent  at  Hyderabad,  and,  of  course,  of  all  the  relations  between  Sinde 
and  Lahore  being  conducted  solely  through  the  medium  of  British  Officers. .  ..*• 

Although  Lord  Auckland  wrote  on  27  December,  1837,  that  he 
was  disappointed  with  the  progress  of  negotiations,  he  certainly 
helped  Sind  greatly  in  regard  to  Ranjit  Singh,  and  though  it  was  un- 
willingly done,  Pottinger  concluded  on  20  April,  1838,  a  treaty  with 
the  amirs  of  Hyderabad  by  which  the  governor-general  promised  his 
mediation  in  the  matter  and  the  amirs  consented  to  receive  an 
accredited  British  minister.2  No  doubt  the  main  idea  in  the  minds 
of  Lord  Auckland  and  his  advisers  was  the  security  of  the  trading 
privileges  on  the  Indus,  but  this  soon  gave  way  to  larger  schemes 
connected  with  the  Afghan  War.  When  that  struggle  became  probable, 
Lord  Auckland  considered  the  whole  position  as  altered;  and  though 
it  may  be  argued  with  some  justice  that  Sind  was  no  longer  part  of 
Afghanistan,  that  Shah  Shuja  had  already  freed  the  amirs  from  any 
claims  he  might  have  upon  them,  and  that  treaty  obligations  stood 


1  Parliamentary  Papers,  1843, 

2  Aitchison,  op.  cit.  vn,  363. 


xxxix,  15. 


THE  TRIPARTITE  TREATY     *  525 

in  the  way  of  military  movements  through  their  country,  there  is 
something,  though  perhaps  not  very  much,  to  be  said  for  the  governor- 
general's  contention  that  what  had  now  arisen  was  a  larger  question, 
one  of  the  defence  of  India,  an  Asian  not  only  an  Indian  question,  and 
one  in  which  Russia  and  Persia  were  concerned  as  well  as  the  frontier 
of  the  Indian  states. 

The  Tripartite  Treaty  of  26  June,  1838,  between  the  government  of 
India,  Ranjit  Singh  and  Shah  Shuja  contained  important  references 
to  Sind: 

IV.  Regarding  Shikarpoor  and  the  territory  of  Sinde  lying  on  the  right  bank 
of  the  Indus,  the  Shah  will  agree  to  abide  by  whatever  may  be  settled  as  right  and 
proper  in  conformity  with  the  happy  relations  of  friendship  subsisting  between 
the  British  Government  and  the  Maharajah,  through  Captain  Wade. 

XVI.  Shah  Shooja-ool-Moolk  agrees  to  relinquish,  for  himself,  his  heirs  and 
successors,  all  claims  of  supremacy,  and  arrears  of  tribute,  over  the  country  now 
held  by  the  Ameers  of  Sinde  (which  will  continue  to  belong  to  the  Ameers  and  theif 
successors  in  perpetuity)  on  condition  of  the  payment  to  him  by  the  Ameers  of 
such  a  sum  as  may  be  determined  under  the  mediation  of  the  British  Government ; 
15,00,000  of  rupees  of  such  payment  being  made  over  by  him  to  Maharajah 
Runjeet  Singh. 

A  copy  of  the  treaty  was  sent  to  Pottinger  on  26  July,  1838,  and  he 
was  instructed  to  press  its  lesson  home  on  the  amirs : 

"You  will",  he  was  told,  "in  the  first  place  state  to  the  Ameers  that,  in  the 
opinion  of  the  Governor-General,  a  crisis  has  arrived  at  which  it  is  essentially 
requisite  for  the  security  of  British  India,  that  the  real  friends  of  that  Power  should 
unequivocally  manifest  their  attachment  to  its  interests;  and  you  will  further 
apprise  them  that  a  combination  of  the  Powers  to  the  Westward,  apparently 
having  objects  in  view  calculated  to  be  injurious  to  our  Empire  in  the  East,  has 
compelled  the  Governor-General  to  enter  into  a  counter-combination  for  the 
purpose  of  frustrating  those  objects."1 

If  the  amirs  co-operated  and  consented  to  the  abrogation  of  the 
article  in  the  former  treaty  as  to  the  use  of  the  Indus  for  the  con- 
veyance of  military  stores — well  and  good.  They  would  secure 
independence  from  Afghanistan  at  a  comparatively  cheap  rate.  If 
they  did  not  do  so,  Shikarpur  would  be  occupied  and  the  amirs  would 
be  left  to  the  vengeance  of  Shah  Shuja.  If  the  amirs  were  found  to 
have  entered  intg  any  engagements  with  the  shah  of  Persia,  Pottinger 
might  request  the  immediate  advance  of  a  British  force  from  the 
Bombay  army,  sufficient  to  occupy  the  capital,  and  announce  the 
breaking  off  of  friendly  relations  with  such  of  the  amirs  as  had  taken 
part  in  the  Persian  alliance. 

With  reference  to  this  last  point  there  is  some  difficulty.  Pottinger 
wrote  on  13  August  that  the  Amir  Nur  Muhammad  Khan  had  sent 
an  *ari%at  to  the  shah  and  that  possibly  the  Amirs  Nasir  Khan  and 
Muhammad  Khan  had  done  the  same.  Mir  Subudar  Khan  had  not 
taken  part,  possibly  because  he  was  a  Sunni.  Pottinger's  words  show 

1  Parliamentary  Papers^  ut  supra,  p.  65. 


526          CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

his  opinion  and  are  worth  repeating  because  those  who  use  them  in 
controversy  often  quote  one  part  without  the  other: 

5.  I  do  not  myself  ascribe  any  immediate  political  object  to  this  Ureeza.  I  feel 
almost  certain  that  it  proceeds  solely  from  the  bigotry  of  Sheeaism,  of  which 
intolerant  sect  all  the  Ameers,  with  the  exception  of  Sobdar,  are  rigid  followers. 
It  is  not,  however,  to  be  concealed  that  the  allusion  to  the  messages  with  which 
the  Hajee  is  charged  will  authorise  a  much  more  extended  and  important  inter- 
pretation of  the  Ameer's  address;  and,  as  a  matter  which  seems  already  known  to 
so  many  individuals  (for  the  scribe  was  sent  to  copy  the  letter  at  the  house  of  Mirza 
Bakir  Georgian,  where  several  persons  likewise  met  to  discuss  the  proper  style) 
can  hardly  be  considered  a  secret,  I  propose  to  take  an  early  occasion,  after  reaching 
Hyderabad,  to  introduce  the  topic  to  the  Ameers,  and  to  demand  a  categorical 
declaration  of  their  intentions. 

6.  The  important  political  events  and  arrangements  which  are  now  pending 
will  do  even  more  than  my  observations,  to  open  the  eyes  of  any  of  the  Ameers 
who  may  be  wavering  between  our  alliance  and  that  of  Persia,  to  the  precipice  on 
which  they  stand;  but  I  shall  not  fail  to  tell  them  distinctly,  that  the  day  they 
connect  themselves  with  any  other  Power  will  be  the  last  of  their  independent 
authority,  if  not  of  their  rule,  for  that  we  have  the  ready  power  to  crush  and 
annihilate  them,  and  will  not  hesitate  to  call  it  into  action,  should  it  appear 
requisite,  however  remotely,  for  either  the  integrity  or  safety  of  our  Empire,  or  its 
frontiers.1 

Pottinger  was  under  no  illusions  as  to  what  might  be  expected  from 
the  amirs  in  the  way  of  help.  He  knew  that  the  danger  would 
be  greatest  when  the  troops  had  passed  through,  and  hence,  on 
20  December,  1838,  he  urged  the  hurrying  up  of  the  reserve  force 
from  Bombay. 2  He  saw  that  the  amirs  valued  very  slightly  the  promise 
of  freedom  from  Afghanistan,  because  they  were  free  already,  and 
because,  as  has  been  already  said,  they  held  releases  from  tribute 
given  by  Shah  Shuja.  Lord  Auckland  could,  however,  only  push 
on.  Burnes  was  sent  into  Sind  to  try  and  arrange  matters  regarding 
the  passage  of  the  troops  to  Afghanistan,  and  he  wrote  on  1 1  November 
to  Pottinger  that  Mir  Rustam  Khan  had  heard  from  Mir  Nur 
Muhammad  Khan  in  favour  of  resistance  to  the  English  army,  £nd 
that  the  mir  of  Khairpur  had  refused  to  take  part  in  any  such  scheme. 
"I  could  only  tell  him",  adds  Burnes,  "that  if  a  shot  was  fired  in  the 
country  against  the  English,  Sinde  would  become  a  province  of 
British  India."3  Pottinger  showed  courage  and  discretion,  but 
supplies  were  withheld  as  long  as  possible.  On  2  December,  1838, 
he  writes :  * 

I  also  sent  a  moonshee  to  Nur  Mahomed  Khan  to  inform  him  that  part  of  the 
troops  had  arrived;  that  if  grain  was  not  sold  to  them  the  general  officer  com- 
manding would  take  it  by  force,  paying  its  price,  and  would  make  a  signal  example 
of  Gholam  Shah  and  all  others  who  might  oppose  the  people  disposing  of  their 
property  to  us.4 

And  even  when  he  is  more  hopeful  there  is  evidence  of  distrust: 

"My  intelligence  from  Hyderabad",  he  writes  on  15  December,  1838,  "up  to 
the  1 3th  instant,  leads  me  to  believe  that  the  Ameers  there,  excepting  Sobdar,  are 
now  really  exerting  themselves  to  obtain  carriage  for  this  army,  as  the  only  means 

1  Parliamentary  Papers,  ut  supra,  p.  67. 

1  Idem,  p.  160.  a  Idem,  p.  127.  *  Idem,  p.  150. 


TREATIES  WITH  THE  MIRS  527 

that  offer  of  getting  rid  of  it.  At  the  same  time,  they  are  adopting  all  sorts  of 
precautions,  which  evince  a  total  distrust  of  our  designs,  and  have  already  assembled 
a  considerable  body  of  their  rabble  of  troops  at  the  capital.  They  have  also  written 
to  aU  the  chiefs,  whether  Beloochees  or  not,  to  be  in  readiness  with  their  quotas  in 
case  of  necessity,  etc."1 

It  is  clear  that  events  were  altering  men's  minds  as  to  the  future, 
for,  although  Pottinger  characterised  Burnes's  notions  and  proposals  as 
rash  and  embarrassing,  that  officer  hit  the  mark  when  on  17  Decem- 
ber, 1838,  he  stated  that  the  government  had  determined  on  fixing 
a  subsidiary  force  in  Sind  permanently,  this  being  one  of  the  suggested 
results  of  the  Persian  intrigues.  On  24  December,  1838,  Burnes  signed 
a  treaty  with  Mir  Rustam  Khan.2  Its  chief  clauses  provided  for  the 
protection  by  the  British  of  the  principality  of  Khairpur,  the  sub- 
mission of  all  external  relations  to  British  control  and  the  furnishing 
of  such  troops  and  assistance  by  the  state  as  were  necessary  during  the 
war.  A  separate  article  authorised  the  English  to  occupy  for  the 
time  being  the  island  of  Bukkur,  thus  securing  the  passage  of  the 
Indus. 

It  would  be  useless  to  enter  into  the  details  of  the  negotiations  with 
the  amirs  of  Hyderabad.  They  wished  to  prevent  the  passage  of  the 
British  troops,  but  they  could  not  prevent  it,  and  the  advance  of 
Sir  John  Keane's  force  on  their  capital  obliged  them  to  accept  the 
new  treaty,  which  was  finally  signed  on  n  March,  iSsg.3  Lord 
Auckland  on  13  March  summarised  its  effects  as  follows: 

The  main  provisions  of  the  proposed  engagements  are,  that  the  confederacy  of 
the  Amirs  is  virtually^  dissolved,  each  chief  being  upheld  in  his  own  possessions, 
and  bound  to  refer  his  differences  with  the  other  chiefs,  to  our  arbitration;  that 
Sinde  is  placed  formally  under  British  protection  and  brought  within  the  circle 
of  our  Indian  relations ;  that  a  British  force  is  to  be  fixed  in  Lower  Sinde,  at  Tatta, 
or  other  such  point  to  the  Westward  of  the  Indus  as  the  British  Government  may 
determine;  a  sum  of  three  lacs  of  rupees  per  annum,  in  aid  of  the  cost  of  this  force, 
being  paid  in  equal  proportions  by  the  three  Amirs,  Mir  Noor  Mahomed  Khan, 
Mir  Nusseer  Mahomed  Khan,  and  Mir  Mahomed  Khan;  and  that  the  navigation 
of  the  Indus,  from  the  sea  to  the  most  northern  point  of  the  Sinde  territory,  is 
rendered  free  of  all  toll.  These  are  objects  of  high  undoubted  value,  and  especially 
so  when  acquired  without  bloodshed,  as  the  first  advance  towards  that  consolidation 
of  our  influence,  and  extension  of  the  general  benefits  of  commerce,  throughout 
Afghanistan,  which  form  the  great  end  of  our  designs.4 

It  is  clear  thatpne  step  led  to  another.  On  2  January,  1839,  Lord 
Auckland  wrote  to  Hobhouse: 

I  have  rejected  propositions  for  the  forfeiture  of  territory,  for  it  would  give  a 
character  of  grasping  to  our  enterprise  which  would  be  very  injurious  to  us,  and 
the  establishment  of  our  dominion  at  the  north  of  the  Indus  would  excite  alarm  and 
jealousy  up  to  the  very  source  of  the  river. 

And  yet  on  3  February,  1839,  Karachi  passed  into  the  hands  of 
the  English.  On  2  September  the  same  year  Pottinger  was  informed : 

It  is  not  in  contemplation  to  maintain  permanently  a  large  military  force  at  that 
place  [Karachi]  but  a  small  detachment  will  always  remain  there The  question 

1  Parliamentary  Papers,  ut  supra,  p.  157.  2  Aitchison,  op.  cit.  vii,  363. 

8  Idem,  p.  369,  *  Parliamentary  Papers,  ut  supra,  p.  237. 


528          CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

of  the  number  and  the  stations  of  any  force  which  may  after  the  return  of  the  army 
of  the  Indus  be  left  in  Sind,  is  still  under  the  consideration  of  his  Lordship,  and  under 
discussion  with  you,  and  with  other  political  and  military  authorities. .  ..* 

Thus  the  unfortunate  amirs  found  themselves  when  the  Afghan 
War  was  in  progress  saddled  with  a  general  liability  to  help  the 
British  forces;  parts  of  their  territory  had  been  taken  from  them, 
obviously  for  ever;  they  had  to  contribute  in  varying  proportions  a 
large  amount  of  money,  instead  of  the  old  tribute,  in  order  to  main- 
tain troops  in  their  midst  whom  they  did  not  want;  and  their  inde- 
pendent position  was  gone  for  ever,  because  they  had  now  come 
definitely  within  the  sphere  of  British  influence.  There  was  obvious 
injustice  in  these  arrangements,  though  one  can  easily  see  how 
difficult  it  was  for  the  authorities  to  have  acted  otherwise  than  as  they 
did.  In  this  connection  it  must  be  noted  that  Outram  took  the  place 
of  Pottinger  on  24  February,  1840,  and  the  part  that  he  took  in  all 
that  happened  between  that  date  and  the  battle  of  Miani  does  not 
seem  to  have  received  sufficient  attention.  Macnaghten  would  have 
liked  some  scheme  that  would  have  handed  over  Sind,  wholly  or  in 
part,  to  the  Afghans.  But  Lord  Auckland  wrote  to  him  on  15  June, 
1839: 

I  do  not  agree  with  you  in  your  views  with  regard  to  Sind.  I  consider  Afghanistan 
and  Sind  to  be  absolutely  severed  by  the  Tripartite  Treaty,  and  any  further 
reckoning  for  new  offences  must  be  between  us  and  the  Amirs. 

It  is  important  to  remember  that  the  home  authorities  were  with 
the  governor-general,  or,  we  might  say,  were  behind  him,  in  support 
of  this  policy.  In  a  letter  to  Macnaghten  of  8  January,  1840,  Lord 
Auckland  says  that  the  directors 

attach  with  the  Governor-General  the  utmost  importance  to  the  complete  main- 
tenance of  the  British  superiority  in  Sind  and  the  navigation  of  the  Indus  not  only 
during  the  occupation  of  Afghanistan  but  permanently. 

From  this  to  the  acquisition  of  territory  was  but  a  step,  and 
when  a  treaty  was  ratified  in  July,  1841,  with  the  only  remaining 
amir,  the  amir  of  Mirpur,  binding  him  to  certain  payments,  guaran- 
teeing him  in  the  possession  of  his  territory  and  against  foreign 
aggressions,  but  placing  his  foreign  relations  under  British  control,2 
Sind  may  be  said  to  have  passed  under  British  authority  to  a  very 
considerable  extent. 

The  difficulties  with  the  amirs  continued  for  the  rest  of  Lord 
Auckland's  term  of  office,  and  the  Sind  problem  was  one  of  the  many 
he  left  to  the  unfortunate  Lord  Ellenborough.  But  it  does  not  seem 
that  Lord  Ellenborough  was  unduly  anxious  to  take  possession  of  the 
country  in  the  first  instance.  On  27  April,  1842,  in  a  minute  written 
at  Allahabad,  he  speaks  in  the  following  cold  and  sensible  strain: 

It  may  be  expedient  with  a  view  to  the  navigation  of  the  Indus  to  retain  oui 
new  relations  with  Sinde  even  after  the  cessation  of  military  operations  in  that 
1  Parliamentary  Papers,  ut  supra,  p.  278.  *  Aitchison,  op.  cit.  vii,  371. 


POSITION  IN  SIND  539 

quarter  shall  have  rendered  the  continuance  of  those  relations  no  longer  indis- 
pensable; but  the  more  recent  reports  as  to  the  river  Indus  and  our  improved 
acquaintance  with  the  populations  on  its  banks,  and  the  countries  with  which  it 
communicates,  certainly  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  the  hopes  originally  entertained 
of  extending  our  commerce  were  to  a  great  degree  exaggerated. ...  It  is  now 
77  years  since  the  first  acquisition  was  made  of  the  Dewannee.  During  a  large 
portion  of  the  period  which  has  since  elapsed,  we  have  been  extending  our  do- 
minions, but  we  have  not  equally  increased  our  revenue  while  we  increased  our 
charges.  The  acquisitions  which  have  been  made  may,  some  of  them,  have  been 
necessary  in  order  to  secure  what  we  already  possessed,  some  of  them  may  have 
more  than  repaid  in  revenue  the  cost  of  governing  and  protecting  them.  The  con- 
sequence of  extended  dominion  has  necessarily  been  a  more  extensive  employment 
of  British-born  subjects  in  military  and  civil  capacities,  but  the  general  revenue 
of  the  State  has  not  been  improved,  and  the  government  has  diminished  means  of 
improving  the  condition  of  the  people.1 

Still,  as  the  government  made  no  secret  of  its  intention  to  hold 
Karachi,  Bukkur  and  Sukkur  at  least,  it  is  not  surprising  that  Outram 
discovered  ample  evidence  that  the  amirs  were  intriguing  with  the 
enemies  of  Great  Britain,  and  there  was  little  doubt  that  they  were 
ready  to  take  advantage  of  any  opportunity  that  might  arise.  In  a 
letter  of  14  May,  1842,  to  the  commander-in-chief,  Lord  Ellenborough 
said  : 

I  see  everywhere  the  effect  of  the  reverses  sustained  at  Cabul.  The  late  successes 
of  which  I  have  made  the  most  may  have  checked  the  feeling  that  was  growing 
up  that  we  had  no  longer  our  former  power,  but  within  the  last  few  weeks  there 
have  been  strong  indications  that  we  were  no  longer  considered  to  be  what  we 
were.  Major  Outram  has  observed  a  commencing  change  in  the  Ameers  of  Sinde. . . . 
[This  in  connection  with  the  formation  of  an  army  ot  reserve.] 2 

And  in  a  letter  to  General  Nott  of  21  June,  1842,  he  spoke  in  the  same 
sense : 

Whenever  you  retire  upon  the  Indus,  some  portion  of  the  Bengal  Troops  will 
remain  at  Sukkur,  and  there  may  possibly  be  two  brigades  against  the  Ameers  of 
Hyderabad  unless  their  conduct  should  be  more  loyal  than  it  is  represented  to  have 
been  of  late.  Currachie  will  continue  to  be  occupied  by  Bombay  Troops.  An  army 
of  reserve  of  1 5,000  men  will  be  assembled  in  the  Sirhind  Division  in  November, 
etc 8 

When,  however,  on  21  June,  1842,  Outram  sent  a  draft  of  a  new 
treaty  by  which  he  wished  to  bind  the  amirs  down  to  cession  of 
territory,4  Lord  Ellenborough,  though  he  forwarded  letters  of  warning 
to  be  used  in  case  of  need,  told  him  (10  July,  1842)  that  he  did  not  see 
any  occasion  for  precipitate  negotiation;  and  he  added  that  it  would 
be  a  matter  for  consideration  before  the  final  instructions  were  issued 
to  Outram  on  the  subject  whether  any  probable  benefit  to  be  ever 
derived  from  the  treaty  could  compensate  for  the  annual  expenditure 
which  would  be  brought  upon  the  government  of  India  by  the 
maintenance  of  a  large  force  at  Sukkur  and  Karachi.6  It  is  only  fair 

1  Law,  op.  cit.  p.  28. 

a  Ellenborough  Papers,  83.   Gi.  Law,  op.  cit.  p.  63.  '  Ellenborough  Papers,  95. 

*  Parliamentary  Papers,  ut  supra,  p.  397.  *  Idem,  p.  404. 

cmv  34 


53<>          CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

to  add  that  Sir  George  Arthur,  governor  of  Bombay,  in  a  minute 
of  2  September,  1842,  stated  that: 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  most  of  the  Ameers  of  Upper  and  Lower  Sinde, 
have  for  some  time  past,  been  engaged  in  intrigues  against  us;  in  fact  that  they 
only  want  the  power,  not  the  will  to  make  an  attempt,  in  imitation  of  the  tribes  of 
Afghanistan,  to  expel  us  from  their  country.1 

Sir  Charles  Napier  had  arrived  in  Bombay  on  12  December,  1841, 
and  in  the  following  March  we  find  him,  in  answer  to  a  request 
from  Lord  Ellenborough,  giving  his  views  as  to  the  best  way  to  deal 
with  the  situation  in  Afghanistan.2  Lord  Ellenborough  did  not  feel, 
and  seemingly  he  was  right,  that  he  could  adopt  Napier's  suggestions, 
and  on  23  April,  1842,  Napier  writes  in  his  journal:  "My  fear  is  that 
they  will  send  me  to  Sinde,  where  there  is  no  honour  to  be  gained".3 
On  26  August  following  he  was  formally  given  command  of  all  the 
troops  of  Upper  and  Lower  Sind  and  Balochistan,  and  was  empowered 
to  exercise  control  over  all  civil  and  political  as  well  as  military  officers 
within  his  command.  This  of  course  placed  Outram  under  his  orders, 
but  it  was  part  of  a  general  scheme,  not  without  justification  from 
recent  experience,  and  Outram  had  already  been  placed  under  the 
control  of  Nott.  Napier  reached  Karachi  on  9  September,  1842,  and 
prepared  to  meet  the  difficulties  of  the  situation.  The  English  were 
in  possession  of  Karachi,  Sukkur,  Bukkur,  Rohri,  Shikarpur,  and  a 
number  of  posts  leading  to  the  Bolan  Pass.  But  as  the  general  advanced 
through  Sind  to  meet  England,  who  was  returning  from  Kandahar, 
he  found  that  the  amirs,  though  full  of  professions  of  loyalty,  were 
constantly  breaking  the  treaty  in  small  points  and  anxious  to  throw 
off  British  ascendancy  altogether.  There  is  some  excuse  for  Lord 
Ellenborough's  letter  to  him  on  25  September,  1842: 

Your  first  political  duty  will  be  to  hear  all  that  Major  Outram  and  the  other 
political  agents  may  have  to  allege  against  the  Ameers  of  Hyderabad  and  Khyrpore, 
tending  to  prove  the  intention  on  the  part  of  any  of  them  to  act  hostilely  against 
the  British  army.  That  they  may  have  had  hostile  feelings  there  can  be  no  doubt. 
It  would  be  impossible  to  pelieve  that  they  could  entertain  friendly  feelings;  but 
we  should  not  be  justified  in  inflicting  punishment  upon  the  thoughts. 

The  British  army  being  withdrawn  from  Afghanistan  it  will  be  for  the  authorities 
at  home  to  decide  whether  we  shall  retain  the  position  we  now  hold  upon  the  Lower 
Indus.  For  the  present  it  must  be  retained  in  order  to  enable  the  home  government 
to  exercise  a  full  discretion  upon  the  subject. 

With  a  view  to  the  maintenance  of  this  position  hereafter  it  will  be  necessary  to 
have  various  diplomatic  transactions  with  the  Ameers  especially  with  relation  to 
Karachie  and  Bukkur  and  Sukkur.  My  impression  is  that  for  some  period  at  least 
it  would  be  desirable  to  hold  those  places,  and  if  Bukkur  and  Sukkur  be  held  they 
should  be  held  in  force,  and  their  artificial  defences  made  such  as  to  render  them 
not  liable  to  insult. . . . 

The  latter  paragraphs  of  this  letter  have  not  perhaps  been  given 
due  weight  in  considering  Lord  Ellenborough's  attitude  towards  the 

1  Parliamentary  Papers,  ut  supra,  p.  408. 

8  Sir  William  Napier,  Life  of  Sir  Charles  Napier,  n,  162. 

*  Idem,  p.  169. 


NAPIER  IN  SIND  531 

conquest  of  Sind.  With  them  may  be  taken  his  opinion  that  the  ports 
on  the  Indus  would  never  repay  their  cost,  which  is  alluded  to  in  a 
letter  from  Napier  of  20  October  following. 

The  amirs  were  frightened  by  Napier's  plain  speaking  at  Hydera- 
bad. On  25  October  he  sent  off  his  famous  letter  to  the  governor- 
general  containing  his  "Observations  on  the  occupation  of  Sind" 
with  many  illustrative  documents,  in  the  preparation  of  which  he  had 
been  assisted  by  Outram.1  Outram  was  then  on  the  point  of  leaving; 
the  Lower  Sind  agency  closed  on  14  November,  1842 ;  and  it  is  note- 
worthy, in  view  of  the  unsatisfactory  controversy  that  followed,  to 
remark  that  the  two  seem  to  have  been  in  cordial,  if  not  complete, 
agreement  on  general  questions  of  policy  up  to  this  point.  This  is 
confirmed  by  Napier's  subsequent  choice  of  Outram  as  commissioner 
to  help  him  a  few  months  later  (at  a  time  when  Outram,  for  reasons 
in  no  way  connected  with  Napier  or  Sind,  was  not  in  favour  with  the 
governor-general)  and  by  entries  in  Napier's  diary. 

On  14  October,  1842,  the  government  of  India  directed  Napier  to 
threaten  the  amirs  that  he  would  compel  them  to  execute  the  treaty 
by  force.  He  was  at  the  same  time  instructed  to  treat  with  them  for 
a  revision  of  the  treaty.2  And  it  is  significant  that  on  the  I7th  of  the 
same  month  before  he  received  these  instructions  Napier  had  written 
that  the  amirs  were  quite  ready  to  attack  us.  Shadows  of  what  was 
coming  are  to  be  found  in  Lord  Ellenborough's  letter  of  23  October, 
1842: 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  Ameer  Nusseer  Khan  will  be  so  wrong-headed 
or  so  ill-advised  as  to  persist  in  refusing  to  observe  the  conditions  of  the  Treaty ; 
in  which  case  he  must  at  once  be  compelled  to  do  so ;  and,  if  the  Government  is 
obliged  to  incur  any  expense  for  the  purpose  of  so  compelling  him,  the  least  punish- 
ment which  can  be  inflicted  upon  him  is  that  of  defraying  the  expense.  But  I  should 
prefelr  depriving  him  of  territory;  and  you  will  understand  that,  if  you  are  under 
the  necessity  of  making  any  movement  of  troops  towards  Hyderabad,  the  Ameer 
Nusseer  Khan  will  forfeit  all  his  property  and  right  in  Kurachee,  Tatta,  Shikarpore, 
Sukkur,  the  pergunnas  adjoining  the  Bahawulpore  country  and  Subzulkote;  and 
all  the  property  and  rights  in  these  two  last  districts,  whatever  they  may  be,  shall 
be  immediately  transferred  to  the  Khan  of  Bahawulpore.8 

Consequent  on  the  infractions  of  the  old  treaty  by  the  amirs  came 
the  new  treaty,  different  in  several  important  respects,  which  was  sent 
off  on  4  November,  1842.  It  relieved  the  amirs  from  the  payment 
of  all  tribute  due  to  the  British  Government  from  i  January,  1843. 
It  settled  the  currency  of  Sind  from  1845,  the  British  Government 
providing  the  coins  (one  side  of  which  was  to  bear  the  Queen's  head) 
that  alone  were  to  be  legal  tender.  With  regard  to  territory  it  con- 
tained the  following  provisions : 

7.  The  following  places  and  districts  are  ceded  in  perpetuity  to  the  British 
Government:  Kurachee  and  Tatta,  with  such  arrondissement  as  may  be  deemed 
necessary  by  Major-General  Sir  Charles  Napier,  and  moreover,  the  right  of  free 


1  Parliamentary  Papers,  ut  supra,  pp.  418  sqq.  *  Idem,  p.  415. 

*  Idem,  p.  361. 


34-2 


532          CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

passage  over  the  territories  of  the  Amirs  between  Karachee  and  Tatta,  along  such 
tine,  and  within  such  limits  on  either  side  thereof,  as  Major-General  Sir  Charles 
Napier  may  prefer;  and,  within  such  limits,  the  officers  of  the  British  Government 
shall  alone  have  jurisdiction. 

8.  All  the  right  and  interest  of  the  Ameers,  or  any  one  of  them,  in  Subzulkoti 
and  in  all  the  territory  intervening  between  the  present  frontier  of  Bahawalpore  and 
the  town  of  Roree,  are  ceded  in  perpetuity  to  his  highness  the  Nawab  of  Bahawal- 
pore, the  ever  faithful  ally  and  friend  of  the  British  Government. 

9.  To  the  Meer  Sobdarkhan,  who  has  constantly  evinced  fidelity  to  his  engage- 
ments, and  attachment  to  the  British  Government,  is  ceded  territory  producing 
half  a  lakh  of  annual  revenue,  such  cession  being  made  in  consideration  of  the  loss 
he  will  sustain  by  the  transfer  of  Kurachee  to  the  British  Government,  and  as  a 
reward  for  his  good  conduct. 

The  necessary  adjustments  of  the  territory  and  revenue  between 
the  amirs  were  to  be  made  by  a  commissioner  appointed  by 
Sir  Charles  Napier,  and  it  was  for  this  purpose,  as  noted  above, 
that,  with  the  approval  of  the  governor-general,  he  brought  back 
Outram.  A  similar  treaty  of  the  same  date,  designed  to  be  made  with 
the  amirs  of  Khairpur,  provided,  as  regards  territory,  that : 

1 .  The  pergunna  of  Bhoong  Bhara,  and  the  third  part  of  the  district  of  Sub- 
zulkoti, and  the  villages  of  Gotkee,  Malader,  Ghaonga,  Dadoola,  and  Uzeezpore, 
and  all  the  territories  of  the  Ameers  of  Khyrpore,  or  any  of  them,  intervening 
between  the  present  dominions  of  his  highness  the  Nawab  of  Bahawalpore  and  the 
town  and  district  of  Roree,  are  ceded  in  perpetuity  to  his  Highness  the  Nawab. 

2.  The  town  of  Sukkur,  with  such  arrondissement  as  shall  be  deemed  necessary 
by  Major  General  Sir  Charles  Napier,  and  the  Islands  of  Bakkur  and  the  adjoining 
islets,  and  the  town  of  Roree,  with  such  arrondissement  as  may  be  deemed  necessary 
by  Major  General  Sir  Charles  Napier,  are  ceded  in  perpetuity  to  the  British 
Government. 

Here  again  the  currency  was  to  be  managed  by  the  British  Govern- 
ment, and  arrangements  were  made  for  the  necessary  adjustments 
as  between  the  various  amirs.  A  provision  was  inserted  makhjg  it 
clear  that  the  amirs  of  Khairpur,  in  the  same  measure  as  those  of 
Hyderabad  by  the  treaty  of  1839,  were  to  promote  the  freedom  of 
navigation  of  the  Indus.  Subject  to  these  provisos  the  British  Govern- 
ment renounced  all  claim  to  tribute.1  Oddly  enough,  the  amir  of 
Mirpur,  as  Napier  pointed  put  in  a  letter  of  8  December,  1842,  seems 
to  have  escaped  notice,  though  by  no  means  friendly  to  the  British. 
Napier  suggested  that  he  might  go  on  paying  his  old  tribute  of  half 
a  lakh  annually,  and  Lord  Ellenborough  said  that  he  had  designedly 
left  him  under  the  older  treaty. 

Lord  Ellenborough  threw  the  responsibility  for  the  decision  as  to 
the  guilt  of  the  amirs  on  to  the  local  authorities.  This  is  distinctly 
-  stated  in  his  letter  to  Sir  Charles  Napier  of  4  November;2  and  indeed, 
after  the  previous  correspondence,  he  could  hardly  do  otherwise. 
Napier  in  his  diary  takes  another  view  of  the  matter  and  says,  that 
given  the  proof  of  treason  Lord  Ellenborough  ought  to  decide.  On 

1  Aitchison,  op.  cit.  vn,  374. 

1  Parliamentarv  Papers,  ut  supra,  p.  496.  Cf.  idem,  1844,  xxxvi,  61 1 ,  and  Law,  op.  cit.  pp.  72-3. 


THE  KHAIRPUR  SUCCESSION  533 

1 8  November  he  says  that  the  amirs  had  collected  in  various  places 
about  20,000  men,  and  on  the  soth,  in  answer  to  a  definite  enquiry 
from  Lord  Ellenborough,  he  says  that  he  is  convinced  of  the  guilt 
of  the  amirs.  Napier  now  knew,  and  Lord  Ellenborough  knew,  for 
he  offered  more  troops,  that  there  would  be  fighting,  but  the  treaty 
had  to  be  considered  first.  On  2  December,  1842,  it  was  sent  to  the 
amirs  of  Hyderabad  and  on  the  4th  it  was  sent  to  Khairpur.  Just 
before  this,  on  i  December,  Napier  issued  a  proclamation  to  the  amirs 
of  Upper  and  Lower  Sind.  It  ran: 

I  have  received  the  draft  of  a  treaty  between  the  Ameers  of  Khyrpore  (and 
Hyderabad)  and  the  British  Government,  signed  by  His  Excellency  the  Right 
Honourable  Lord  Ellenborough,  Governor-General  of  India,  whose  commands 
I  have  to  present  it  to  your  Highnesses,  for  your  Highnesses*  acceptation  and 
guidance. 

In  obedience  to  the  commands  of  the  Governor-General  of  India  I  shall  proceed 
to  occupy  Roree,  and  the  left  bank  of  the  Indus,  from  the  latter  town  up  to  the 
Bhawulpore  frontier,  including  the  whole  of  the  districts  of  Bhong  Bara  and 
Subzulkote,  as  set  forth  in  the  said  Treaty.1 

It  is  not  necessary  to  go  into  a  minute  description  of  the  various 
intrigues  which  were  in  progress,  but  it  may  be  well  to  touch  on  one 
that  was  the  subject  of  much  comment  at  the  time.  The  amir  of 
Khairpur  was,  as  has  been  seen,  a  very  old  man.  Once  inclined  to 
throw  in  his  lot  with  the  English,  he  had  long  since  joined  the  other 
amirs,  and  the  misfortunes  of  our  troops  in  Afghanistan  had  affected 
him  as  they  had  affected  them.  He  had  given  evidence  of  this  by 
taking  part  in  various  schemes  directed  against  the  English,  and  the 
new  treaty  was  one  of  the  results.  But  the  question  of  the  moment 
was  that  of  his  successor.  The  choice  lay  between  his  brother  'Ali 
Mijrad,  who  professed  attachment  to  the  English  interest,  and  his  son. 
The  claims  of  the  former  to  the  "Turban",  as  it  was  termed,  had 
been  placed  before  the  governor-general  by  Outram  on  21  April, 
1842,  and  again  by  him  to  Napier  on  30  October.  On  23  November 
Napier  had  an  interview  with  'Ali  Murad  and  promised  him,  provided 
he  continued  to  act  loyally  towards  the  British  Government,  that  the 
governor-general  would  prevent  the  nomination  of  old  Mir  Rustam's 
son,  Mir  Muhammad  Husam,  either  during  Mir  Rustam's  life  or  at 
his  death.  His  reasons  for  this  step  are  worth  recording : 

1.  It  is  just.  Ali  Moorad  has  the  right  to  the  "Turban"  for  his  own  life,  after 
the  death  of  Meer  Rustim,  and  it  promises  to  protect  him  in  this  right. 

2.  It  detaches  Ali  Moorad  from  any  league  among  the  Ameers,  and,  con- 
sequently, diminishes  the  chance  of  bloodshed. 

3.  It  lays  a  train  to  arrive  at  a  point  which  I  think  should  be  urged,  viz.,  that 
we  should  treat  with  one  Ameer,  instead  of  a  number.  This  will  simplify  our  political 
dealings  with  these  princes,  and  gradually  reduce  them  to  the  class  of  rich  noble- 
men, and  their  chief  will  be  perfectly  dependent  on  the  Government  of  India, 
living  as  he  will  do  so  close  to  this  large  station  (Sukkur)  and  I  have  no  doubt  that 
it  will  quickly  be  a  large  town.8 

1  Parliamentary  Papers,  1343,  xxxix,  518.  *  Idem,  p.  513. 


534          CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

Napier's  letters  now  breathe  the  calm  confidence  of  the  experienced 
soldier.  He  writes  on  i  December,  1842:  "I  am  perfectly  confident 
in  the  troops  under  my  command  being  equal  to  any  emergency". 
On  the  4th  the  governor-general  wrote: 

As  long  as  you  have  six  regiments  ready  to  support  your  just  demands,  I  am 
inclined  to  think  they  will  be  acceded  to,  as  they  have  been  in  this  instance  [a  case 
of  tolls  on  the  Indus] ;  and  I  am  willing  to  hope  that,  with  these  aids  to  your 
negotiation,  you  may  be  able  to  make  a  settlement  now  without  the  use  of  force; 
but  I  very  much  fear  that,  until  our  force  has  been  actually  felt,  there  will  be  no 
permanent  observance  of  the  existing  treaty,  or  of  any  new  treaty  we  may  make.1 

The  various  amirs  now  agreed  verbally  to  be  bound  by  the  new 
treaty,  but  they  continued  to  collect  troops.  The  British  could  only 
count  upon  the  support  of  'Ali  Murad  at  Khairpur,  and  Mir  Subudar 
Khan  and  Mir  Husain  'Ali  at  Hyderabad.  The  chiefs  of  Khairpur 
decided  at  the  end  of  November  that  Mir  Rustam  Khan  should 
abdicate  in  favour  of  his  son  on  5  December.  Napier  now  began 
pushing  his  troops  across  the  Indus  to  take  possession  of  Rohri,  and 
the  plan  was  that  Brigadier  Wallace  was  to  march  towards  the  ceded 
districts  on  20  December,  1842,  whilst  Napier  moved  on  Khairpur. 
On  1 8  December  he  wrote  to  Mir  Rustam: 

My  own  belief  is  that  personally  you  have  ever  been  the  friend  of  the  English. 
But  you  are  helpless  among  your  ill-judging  family.  I  send  this  by  your  brother 
His  Highness  Ah  Moorad;  listen  to  his  advice;  trust  yourself  to  his  care;  you  are  too 
old  for  war;  and  if  war  begins  how  can  I  protect  you?2 

We  know  that  Mir  Rustam,  who  wished,  or  pretended  to  wish,  t"1* 
come  to  Napier's  camp,  went  to  his  brother  for  a  short  time,  and  thus 
Murad  'Ali  became  the  chief  in  reality  if  not  in  name.  Napier  wrote 
on  23  December: 

The  whole  of  Upper  Sinde  is  now  in  the  hands  of  Meer  Ali  Moorad.  There  are 
no  armed  bands  but  his,  and  his  interest  is  synonymous  with  our  friendship. 
I  consider  therefore  that  Upper  Sinde  is  perfectly  settled.3 

Wallace  now  started  for  Firozpur,  taking  possession  of  and  handing 
over  to  Bahawalpur  the  ceded  districts  en  route,  and  Napier  proceeded 
in  force  to  Mangni.  But  he  now  found  that  many  of  the  family  and 
followers  of  Rustam  had  fled  to  Imam  Garh,  a  desert  fortress  some 
way  to  the  eastward  beyond  the  Nara  river  about  halfway  between 
Khairpur  and  Hyderabad.  Here  Napier  resolved  to  follow  them  and 
so  he  told  'Ali  Murad  on  26  December;  his  decision  was  in  no  way 
altered  by  'Ali  Murad's  wishing  to  go  against  the  fortress  himself, 
and  by  the  fact  that  there  had  been  no  declaration  of  war.  On 
23  December,  1842,  Napier  advised  'Ali  Murad  not  to  assume  the 
turban,  but,  when  he  heard  of  the  flight  of  Mir  Rustam,  which  took 
place  on  the  28th,  he  at  once  (i  January,  1843)  issued  a  proclamation 
mentioning  the  facts,  and  stating  that  he  would  now  support 

1  Parliamentary  Papers,  ut  supta,  p.  519. 

2  Idem,  1844,  xxxvi,  518.  '  8  Idem,  1843,  xxxix,  535. 


IMAM  GARH  535 

'Ali  Murad  as  chief  in  his  various  rights.  Napier,  however,  thought 
that  the  flight  was  either  due  to  fear  or  that  'Ali  Murad  drove  him 
to  it  so  as  to  strengthen  his  own  position.  Lord  Ellenborough,  while 
he  approved  of  what  Napier  was  doing,  saw  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
making  one  of  the  amirs  responsible  for  the  others,  which  would,  he 
felt,  mean  taking  the  rule  into  British  hands.  Napier's  letter,  how- 
ever, to  'Ali  Murad  of  14  January1  shows  that  the  governor-general 
considered  'Ali  Murad  as  the  legitimate  possessor  of  "  the  Turban". 
What  Napier  was  really  anxious  to  effect  was  the  striking  of  a  con- 
vincing blow;  he  saw  that  the  amirs  were  merely  trifling  with  him, 
seeking  to  gain  time.  Imam  Garh  was  said  to  be  the  Sind  Gibraltar, 
and  he  would  show  that  he  could  march  across  the  desert,  and  take 
it.  So,  though  detained  near  Khairpur  by  rain,  he  reached  Daji, 
a  strong  fortress,  on  4  January,  1843;  near  there  on  the  6th  he  heard 
of  Mir  Rustam  whom  Outram,  who  had  now  rejoined  Napier, 
visited  and  found  submissive.  At  Daji  he  left  the  main  body  of  the 
force  and  mounting  350  men  of  the  Queen's  Regiment  on  camels 
and  adding  200  horse  and  a  couple  of  howitzers  he  set  off  on  his 
memorable  expedition.  At  the  end  of  the  first  march  there  was  so 
little  fodder  that  he  had  to  send  back  150  of  the  horse,  but  he  pushed 
on  and  camped  near  Imam  Garh  on  the  I2th.  The  fortress  which 
was  surrounded  by  walls  forty  feet  high  offered  no  resistance,  and 
Outram  witk  the  consent  of 'Ali  Murad  blew  it  up.  This  desert  march 
of  Nader's,  however  irregular  it  might  be,  had  no  greater  admirer 
than*  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  who  spoke  of  it  as  one  of  the  most 
curious  military  operations  he  had  ever  heard  of. 

Napier  now  sent  off  Outram  to  Khairpur  where  he  was  to  meet  the 
amirs  of  Upper  and  Lower  Sind  or  their  representatives,  and  arrange 
with  them  the  details  connected  with  the  new  treaty.  He  carried  a 
letter  dated  15  January  to  Mir  Rustam,  saying  that  the  past  was  all 
forgotten,  and  with  regard  to  the  amirs  he  was  given  considerable 
latitude,  at  all  events  so  far  as  suggestion  was  concerned,  provided 
that  the  spirit  and  the  principle  of  the  treaty  were  preserved.  The 
amirs  were  ordered  to  attend,  and  threatened  with  the  occupation 
of  their  territories  if  they  did  not.  But  though  Outram  fixed  a  date, 
the  2Oth,  for  the  meeting  at  Khairpur,  only  the  amirs  of  Hyderabad 
sent  vakils,  and  the  odd  thing  is  that  Outram,  as  we  see  from  his 
letters  to  Napier  of  22  January,  had  no  idea  of  what  was  going  on. 
He  wrote  to  Napier  objecting  to  the  retention  of  Tatta,  where  Napier 
agreed  with  him,  and  also  wished  to  modify  the  coinage  clause,  which 
Napier  had  no  power  to  alter,  but  he  did  not  see  how  unreal  the  whole 
business  was.2  Napier,  who  now  moved  near  to  the  Indus,  sent  a 
strong  proclamation  to  the  amirs  of  Upper  Sind  on  the  27th  giving 
them  till  i  February  to  come  in.8 

1  Parliamentary  Papers,  1843,  xxxix,  p.  549.  a  Idem,  1844,  xxxvi,  530. 

8  Idem,  1843,  xxxix,  556. 


536          CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

At  Outranks  request  also  he,  on  the  28th,  ordered  that  officer  to 
move  to  Hyderabad  where  Outram  thought  that  all  could ,  be 
satisfactorily  arranged  by  personal  influence.  Napier  read  the  East 
far  more  correctly  than  Outram,  and  knew  how  little  words  counted 
in  a  country  filled  with  armed  men  who  were  stirred  by  the  fear  that 
their  national  independence  was  at  stake.  Napier  also  saw  that,  what- 
ever the  amirs  might  say,  they  had  but  little  control  over  the  bands 
who  were  moving  rapidly  about  the  country  near  the  capital.  Nor 
was  the  fact  that  Wallace  towards  the  end  of  January  handed  over 
Sabzalkot  and  Bhung  Bara  to  the  nawab  of  Bahawalpur  likely  to 
make  for  peace. 

While  Outram  was  dreaming  and  talking,  the  two  sides  were 
acting.  The  amirs  were  collecting  large  masses  of  troops;  of  this 
Napier  knew,  and  he  prepared  accordingly,  although  he  extended 
the  period  of  peace  till  the  6th.  On  that  date  he  wrote  to  Outram, 
ordering  him  to  tell  the  amir  of  Khairpur  that  he  was  directed  to 
disperse  their  troops  and  would  do  so.  Outram  had  also  to  tell  the 
amirs  of  Hyderabad  not  to  allow  troops  from  Khairpur  to  come  into 
Lower  Sind.  Outram  reached  Hyderabad  on  the  8th  and  managed 
before  the  end  to  get  all  the  amirs  but  one  to  sign.  He  thought  more 
of  this  willingness  than  it  deserved.  He  wrote  to  Napier  that  he  did 
not  believe  that  the  amirs  would  begin  hostilities;  on  two  occasions 
he  urged  Napier  not  to  bring  his  troops  any  nearer;  he  s&*d  th^t  there 
was  not  an  armed  man  in  Hyderabad,  and  on  the  12th  3d/ied  the 
crowning  absurdity  of  suggesting  that  Napier  should  come  alone  to 
the  capital.  That  evening  Outram  was  insulted  in  the  streets  and 
wrote,  simply  enough,  that  he  did  not  think  Napier  would  wish  to 
come  now.  The  general  had  no  intention  of  doing  so  and  wrote  on 
the  1 5th  from  Hala  ordering  Outram  not  to  pledge  himself  to  any- 
thing, and  telling  him  that  he  was  marching  on  Hyderabad.  The 
same  day  Outram  was  attacked  in  the  Residency,  and,  after  a  gallant 
defence  against  several  thousand  armed  Balochis,  took  refuge  on  a 
steamer  and  rejoined  his  commanding  officer.  He  ceased  henceforth 
to  count  in  Napier's  calculations,  and  the  great  controversy  between 
them  is  best  left  in  obscurity.  Those  who  wish  to  enter  further  into 
the  question  of  the  negotiations  with  the  amirs  between  the  8th  to 
the  1 3th  will  find  an  interesting  criticism  of  Outram's  notes  by 
Lord  Ellenborough  in  a  letter  to  the  Secret  Committee  of  23  June, 
I843.1 

Napier  knew  that  the  amirs  were  at  Miani  with  over  20,000  men; 
he  had  but  2800  himself  with  twelve  pieces  of  artillery.  But  he  was 
ready,  even  anxious  to  fight,  and  the  thought  of  the  odds  only  stimu- 
lated him.  At  4  a.m.  on  the  morning  of  17  February,  1843,  he 
marched,  and  at  9  o'clock  he  attacked.  The  great  mass  of  the  enemy 
were  in  the  dry  bed  of  the  Fulaili  river,  and  the  scene,  as  described 

1  Parliamentary  Papers*  1844,  xxxvi,  609.  Gf.  Holmes,  Sir  Charles  Nafrier>  pp.  43  sqq. 


MIANI  537 

by  Sir  William  Napier  from  his  brother's  accounts,  has  rarely  been 
equalled  for  picturesque  detail: 

Then  rose  the  British  shout,  the  English  guns  were  run  forward  into  position,  the 
infantry  closed  upon  the  Fullailee  with  a  run,  and  rushed  up  the  sloping  bank. 
The  Beloochs,  having  their  matchlocks  laid  ready  in  rest  along  the  summit,  waited 
until  the  assailants  were  within  fifteen  yards  ere  their  volley  was  delivered;  the 
rapid  pace  of  the  British,  and  the  steepness  of  the  slope  on  the  inside  deceived  their 
aim,  and  the  execution  was  not  great;  the  next  moment  the  2 and  were  on  the  top 
of  the  bank,  thinking  to  bear  down  all  before  them,  but  they  staggered  back  in 
amazement  at  the  forest  of  swords  waving  in  their  front !  Thick  as  standing  corn, 
and  gorgeous  as  a  field  of  flowers,  stood  the  Beloochs  in  their  many  coloured 
garments  and  turbans;  they  filled  the  broad  deep  bed  of  the  Fullailee,  they 
clustered  on  both  banks,  and  covered  the  plain  beyond.  Guarding  their  heads 
with  their  large  dark  shields,  they  shook  their  sharp  swords,  beaming  in  the  sun, 
their  shouts  rolled  like  a  peal  of  thunder,  as  with  frantic  gestures  they  rushed 
forwards,  and  full  against  the  front  of  the  22nd  dashed  with  demoniac  strength 
and  ferocity. . . .  Now  the  Beloochs  closed  their  dense  masses,  and  again  the  shouts 
and  the  rolling  fire  of  musketry  and  the  dreadful  rush  of  the  swordsmen  were  heard 
and  seen  along  the  whole  line,  and  such  a  fight  ensued  as  has  seldom  been  known 
or  told  of  in  the  records  of  war.  For  ever  those  wild  warriors  came  close  up,  sword 
and  shield  in  advance,  striving  in  all  the  fierceness  of  their  valour  to  break  into  the 
opposing  ranks;  no  fire  of  small  arms,  no  push  of  bayonets,  no  sweeping  discharges 
of  grape  from  the  guns,  which  were  planted  in  one  mass  on  the  right,  could  drive 
the  gallant  fellows  back;  they  gave  their  breasts  to  the  shot,  they  leaped  upon  the 
guns  and  were  blown  away  by  twenties  at  a  time,  their  dead  went  down  the  steep 
slope  by  hundreds;  but  the  gaps  in  their  masses  were  continually  filled  up  from  the 
rear,  the  survivors  of  the  front  rank  still  pressed  forward,  with  unabated  fury,  and 
the  bayonet  and  the  sword  clashed  in  full  and  frequent  conflict. 

Such  was  the  fierce  battle  of  Miani  in  which  Napier  gained  a  victory 
— a  victory  important  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  loss  of  life.  5000 
Balochis  fell  as  against  256  of  the  British  force.  Six  of  the  amirs  at 
once  came  into  camp  and  surrendered,  giving  up  Hyderabad  which 
was  immediately  occupied.  But  crushing  though  the  blow  was,  Sind 
was  not  yet  conquered,  for  the  Lion  of  Mirpur,  Shir  Muhammad, 
was  still  in  command  of  considerable  forces,  and  Napier's  little  army, 
wasted  by  sickness,  was  surrounded  by  hostile  tribesmen.  Lord 
Ellenborough  sent  prompt  reinforcements,  but  Napier  wisely  waited, 
entrenching  himself,  and  hoping  that  he  would  be  attacked  in  a 
position  of  his  own  choosing.  In  March,  hearing  that  the  Balochis 
were  concentrating,  he  prepared  to  move,  though  in  great  difficulties, 
owing  to  the  heat  of  the  weather  and  the  intrigues  of  the  captive  amirs. 
So  that  he  was  glad  to  be  able  to  strike  a  final  blow  at  Dabo,  six 
miles  from  Hyderabad,  where  on  24  March,  1843,  he  defeated  Shir 
Muhammad.  The  victory  was  not  achieved  without  difficulty,  and 
Shir  Muhammad  fled  to  the  desert.  Hurrying  onwards  it  was  a  race 
against  summer.  Napier  secured  Mirpur  on  27  March,  and  Umarkot 
on  4  April,  movements  through  a  desert  country  which  prove  capacity 
and  resolution  of  no  common  order.  The  annexation  of  Sind  had 
been  decided  upon  as  early  as  13  March  (dispatch  of  26  June,  I8431) 
and  Napier  was  made  its  first  governor.  Khairpur,  however,  was  as 

1  Law,  op.  cit.  pp.  68  sqq.  Napier,  Conquest  ofScinde,  334. 


538          CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

a  reward  handed  over  to  'Ali  Murad.  The  next  four  and  a  half  years 
were  occupied  in  the  organisation  and  development  of  this  important 
addition  to  the  British  Empire.  There  was  still  fighting  to  be  done, 
but  when  Jacob  on  14  June,  1843,  defeated  Shir  Muhammad  finally 
and  drove  him  out  of  Sind,  the  main  war  was  at  an  end. 

Napier's  own  view  of  the  conquest  of  Sind  has  been  perhaps  best 
expressed  in  a  letter  to  Outram  of  January,  1843,  of  which  a  few 
sentences  may  be  quoted : 

Lord  Auckland  began  by  a  great  act  of  injustice,  political  injustice,  which 
produced  the  treaties.  Lord  Ellenbprough  then  came  and  had  his  line  of  policy, 
viz.,  to  abandon  all  beyond  and  maintain  all  on  the  Indian  side  of  the  Indus.  He 
found  existing  treaties  with  Scinde  to  maintain,  but  the  only  part  of  his  predecessor's 
policy  in  which  he  appears  to  agree  is  the  maintenance  of  free  traffic  on  the  Indus, 
with  possession  of  certain  towns  on  its  banks,  the  seizure  of  which  was  Lord 
Auckland's  act;  to  keep  them  has  been  Lord  EUenborough's  in  compliance  with 
treaties  which  no  man  of  sense  will  say  were  well  drawn  up.. .  .Now  I  do  not 
agree  with  you  in  thinking  the  Amirs  are  fools.  I  think  them  cunning  rascals  to 
a  man  if  measured  by  our  standard  of  honesty;  but  assuredly  Lord  Auckland's 
policy  was  not  calculated  to  make  them  form  a  higher  estimate  of  us.  Well,  they 
saw  our  defeat  and  that  encouraged  them  to  break  existing  treaties,  it  gave  them 
heart,  and  that  they  hoped  to  have  a  second  Cabool  affair  is  as  clear  to  me  as  the  sun 
now  shining. . .  .Now  what  is  to  be  done?  That  which  is  best  for  the  advancement 
of  good  government  and  well-being  of  the  population;  and  we  must  not  sacrifice 
all  this  to  a  minute  endeavour,  utterly  hopeless,  I  may  say  impossible,  to  give  to 
these  tyrannical,  drunken,  debauched,  cheating,  intriguing,  contemptible  Ameers, 
a  due  portion  of  the  plunder  they  have  amassed  from  the  ruined  people  they 
conquered  sixty  years  ago.  They  are  fortunate  robbers  one  and  all,  and  though 
I  most  decidedly  condemn  the  way  we  entered  this  country  (just  as  honest,  how- 
ever, as  that  by  which  the  Talpoors  got  it  from  the  KallorasJ  I  would  equally 
condemn  any  policy  that  allowed  these  rascals  to  go  on  plundering  the  country 
to  supply  their  debaucheries  after  we  had  raised  the  hopes  of  every  respectable  man 
in  the  country.  This  I  consider  to  be  Lord  E.'s  view  and  in  that  sense  I  act.  If 
I  thought  Lord  E.  was  acting  on  an  unjust  plan  I  would  of  course  obey  my  orders, 
but  should  deeply  regret  my  position.  But  I  do  no  such  thing:  the  whole  injustice 
was  committed  by  Lord  Auckland,  and  such  a  course  of  injustice  cannot  be  closed 
without  hardship  on  someone.  It  is  likely  to  fall  on  the  Ameers,  and  on  a  crew 
more  deserving  to  bear  it  hardly  could  it  alight.  It  falls  heaviest  on  Roostum,  an 
old  worn  debauchee,  a  man  drunk  every  day  of  his  life,  breaking  his  own  religious 
ordinances,  and  even  the  habits  and  customs  of  his  country.1 

The  judgment  that  has  held  the  field  hitherto  has  been  hostile; 
from  1844  when  a  writer  in  the  Calcutta  Review  said:  "The  real  cause 
of  this  chastisement  of  the  Ameers  consisted  in  the  chastisement  which 
the  British  had  received  from  the  Afghans",  till  the  recent  verdict 
in  the  Cambridge  Modern  History.  But  the  truer  view  will  be  more  like 
that  of  Outranks  great  apologist:  "In  the  light  of  subsequent  history 
it  may  even  be  argued  that  Outranks  policy  of  trust  in  the  Ameers 
would  have  proved  less  wise  than  Napier's  policy  of  vigilant  coercion  " : 
assuming  for  the  moment  that  such  were  the  respective  policies  of 
the  two  men. 

The  conquest  of  Sind,  however,  cannot  be  said  to  be  the  fault  of 
any  one  man.  Lord  Auckland  looking  on  the  country  as  a  portion 

1  Napier,  Life. .  .of  Sir  C.  J.  Napier,  u,  300. 


THE  SIKHS  539 

of  the  older  Afghanistan  treated  its  liberties — or  rather  the  liberties 
of  its  conquerors — as  subsidiary  to  the  general  Afghan  policy,  for 
which  again  he  can  hardly  be  held  altogether  responsible.  He  left 
the  Sind  problem  in  a  desperate  condition  to  his  successor,  but  neither 
of  them  seems  to  have  wished  to  annex  the  country;  circumstances 
were  too  strong  for  both  of  them.  As  to  Sir  Charles  Napier,  who 
came  fresh  to  the  country,  he  acted  a  soldier's  part  and  acted  it 
extraordinarily  well.  He  illustrated  the  extreme  value  of  common- 
sense  and  directness,  and  there  is  an  element  of  profound,  as  well  as 
kindly,  truth  in  his  remark  that  "Outram  is  a  clever  fellow,  but  he 
seems  to  have  been  so  long  accustomed  to  Indian  tricks  that  he  thinks 
them  of  real  importance  ".  In  any  estimate  of  Napier's  conduct  the  in- 
structions he  received  must  always  be  remembered ;  and  in  particular 
those  of  26  August,  1842: 

It  may  be  convenient  that  you  should  at  once  be  informed  that,  if  the  Ameers 
or  any  one  of  them,  should  act  hostilcly  or  evince  hostile  designs  against  our  army, 
it  is  my  fixed  resolution  never  to  forgive  the  breach  of  faith  and  to  exact  a  penalty 
which  shall  be  a  warning  to  every  chief  in  India.1 

And  yet  the  whole  transaction  has  been  thought  to  bear  a  colour  of 
injustice  which  may  rightly  be  ascribed  to  some  of  its  parts,  and  the 
plea  of  the  happiness  of  the  people,  who  gained  enormously  by  the 
change,  has  not  been  held  sufficient  to  justify  what  happened. 

II.   THE  PANJAB 

At  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  Ranjit  Singh,  the 
greatest  of  the  Sikh  rulers,  had  consolidated  a  powerful  kingdom 
north-west  of  the  Satlej,  and  seemed  likely  to  extend  his  empire  as 
far  as  the  Jumna;  he  was  aided  on  the  one  hand  by  the  weakness  of 
the  Afghans  and  on  the  other  by  the  policy  of  the  English,  who 
seemed  disinclined  at  first  to  interfere  owing  to  the  more  serious 
responsibilities  of  their  great  struggle  with  the  Marathas.  Lake,  it  will 
be  remembered,  and  Wellesley  defeated  Sindhia  and  Holkar  in  a 
series  of  great  battles  the  result  of  which  was  to  increase  the  importance 
of  the  English  in  the  north-west,  and  so  to  make  the  relations  between 
them  and  the  Sikhs  more  vital.  The  Cis-Satlej  chiefs  fought  against 
the  English  in  the  battle  of  Delhi,  and  in  1805  Holkar  fled  to  Amritsar. 
Ranjit  Singh  was  too  clever  to  help  him  against  Lake,  and  the 
resulting  treaty  of  Lahore  of  i  January,  1806,  kept  the  Marathas  out 
of  the  Panjab,  secured  the  friendship  of  the  English,  and  left  the  Sikhs 
free  from  English  interference  for  the  time  being  north  of  the  Satlej. 
This  state  of  affairs,  however,  was  not  to  last. 

The  Cis-Satlej  states  had  risen  to  virtual  independence  owing  to 
the  gradual  decline  of  the  Muhammadan  power,  but  they  were 
engaged  in  constant  strife,  and  the  unsettled  state  of  the  country 
they  inhabited  invited  the  ambition  of  any  freebooting  adventurer. 

1  Parliamentary  Papers,  1843,  xxxix,  408. 


540          CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

A  quarrel  between  the  chiefs  of  Nabha  and  Patiala  gave  Ranjit 
Singh  an  excuse  to  cross  the  Satlej  (26  July,  1806)  and  to  capture 
Ludhiana  which  was  at  once  transferred  to  his  uncle  Bhag  Singh  of 
Jind.  The  English,  under  Lord  Lake,  had  had  considerable  connec- 
tion with  Sirhind  and  it  was  natural  that  the  idea  of  the  establish- 
ment of  Ranjit  Singh's  power  in  this  wild  and  desolate  country,  for 
such  it  was  then,  was  viewed  with  some  concern.  And  when  he  had 
crossed  the  river  a  second  time  in  1807,  the  chiefs  of  Sirhind  became 
sufficiently  alarmed  to  send  and  ask  for  British  protection.  This  was 
in  1808,  at  a  time  when  the  possibility  of  a  French  invasion  of  India 
was  much  discussed,  and  though  there  was  no  definite  answer  at 
once,  the  result  was  the  sending  in  September  of  that  year  of  Metcalfe 
to  Ranjit  Singh  with  the  purpose  of  arranging  a  treaty;  at  the  same 
time  assurances  of  protection  were  given  to  the  frightened  chiefs. 
For  the  moment  it  seemed  likely  that  the  negotiation  would  fall 
through;  Ranjit  Singh  crossed  the  Satlej  for  the  third  time,  seized 
Faridkot  and  Ambala,  and  would  have  taken  Patiala  had  he  not 
feared  English  intervention.  But  the  advance  of  Ochterlony  with  a 
detachment,  the  adroitness  of  the  young  diplomatist  who  is  said  to 
have  assured  the  Sikh  chieftain  that  he  could  make  conquests  in  other 
directions  without  British  interference,  and  it  has  been  conjectured 
the  weakening  of  the  danger  from  the  West  owing  to  the  improved 
relations  between  England  and  Mahmud  II,  the  new  sultan  of  Turkey, 
caused  Ranjit  Singh  to  pause.  On  9  February,  1809,  Ochterlony 
issued  a  warning  proclamation  to  the  effect  that  any  further  aggressions 
south  of  the  Satlej  would  be  forcibly  resisted;  and  this  coupled,  as 
Cunningham  suggests,  with  the  fear  that  some  of  the  Panjab  chiefs 
might  also  seek  British  protection,  brought  the  great  Sikh  to  terms. 
He  therefore  signed  the  treaty  of  25  April,  1809.  This  guaranteed  him 
against  interference  on  the  part  of  the  English  north  of  the  Satlej, 
and  as  to  the  left  bank,  it  was  stated  (in  the  second  article)  that  the 
raja  would  never  maintain,  in  the  territory  which  he  occupied  there, 
more  troops  than  were  necessary  for  the  internal  duties  of  that  terri- 
tory, nor  commit  or  suffer  any  encroachments  on  the  possessions  or 
rights  of  the  chiefs  in  its  vicinity.1  The  transaction  was  completed 
by  a  proclamation  of  3  May,  1809,  of  which  the  important  articles 
ran  as  follows: 

1.  The  country  of  the  chiefs  of  Malwa  and  Sirhind  having  entered  under  the 
British  protection,  they  shall  in  future  be  secured  from  the  authority  and  influence 
of  Maharaja  Ranjit  Singh,  conformably  to  the  terms  of  the  treaty. 

2.  All  the  country  of  the  chiefs  thus  taken  under  protection  shall  be  exempted 
from  all  pecuniary  tribute  to  the  British  Government. 

3.  The  chiefs  snail  remain  in  the  full  exercise  of  the  same  rights  and  authority 
in  their  own  possessions  which  they  enjoyed  before  they  were  received  under  the 
British  protection. 

4.  Should  a  British  army  on  purposes  of  general  welfare,  be  required  to  march 

1  Aitchison,  op.  cit.  vm,  144.  > 


RANJIT  SINGH'S  CONQUESTS  541 

through  the  country  of  the  said  chiefs,  it  is  necessary  and  incumbent  that  every 
chief  shall,  within  his  own  possessions,  assist  and  furnish,  to  the  full  of  his  power, 
such  force  with  supplies  of  grain  and  other  necessaries  which  may  be  demanded. 
5.  Should  an  enemy  approach  from  any  quarter,  for  the  purpose  of  conquering 
this  country,  friendship  and  mutual  interest  require  that  the  chiefs  join  the  British 
army  with  all  their  force,  and,  exerting  themselves  in  expelling  the  enemy,  act 
under  discipline  and  proper  obedience.1 

The  idea  was  that  Ranjit  Singh's  Cis-Satlej  conquests  made  before 
the  last  campaign  were  to  remain  his,  but  that  he  was  to  have  no 
claim  to  allegiance  from  Cis-Satlej  chiefs.  Still,  this  was  a  very 
important  negotiation.  On  the  one  hand  it  directed  Ranjit  Singh's 
energies  elsewhere  than  southwards ;  he  gave  up  Faridkot  and  Ambala. 
On  the  other  it  has  been  said  to  have  moved  the  British  frontier  from 
the  Jumna  to  the  Satlej.  The  relations  of  the  protected  chiefs  among 
themselves  took  a  good  deal  of  arranging.  It  was  necessary  to  protect 
the  weak  against  the  strong,  when  the  fear  of  Ranjit  Singh  was 
removed,  and  a  proclamation  had  to  be  issued  on  22  August,  1811, 
to  the  effect  that  while  the  independence  of  the  chiefs  would  be 
respected  and  their  states  duly  protected,  they  would  not  be  allowed 
to  usurp  the  rights  of  others.2  But  it  was  long  before  all  the  various 
claims  were  settled  and  rights  established. 

Ranjit  Singh  was  thus  free  to  devote  his  attention  elsewhere.  He 
got  the  better  of  the  Gurkhas  from  1809  to  1811,  taking  the  Kangra 
district,  and  when  the  English  war  in  1814-15  with  the  same  people 
brought  the  English  and  Sikhs  together  in  the  mountains,  there  was 
excellent  reason  for  their  remaining  friends.  Another  similar  reason 
was  supplied  by  the  Afghan  question.  Shah  Shuja  had  been  driven 
from  Afghanistan  in  1809-10.  Ranjit  Singh  sought  to  prevent  him 
from  getting  aid  from  the  English,  in  view  of  his  own  project  against 
Multan  which  he  unsuccessfully  endeavoured  to  seize  in  February, 
1810.  However,  Shuja  was  soon  carried  off  to  Kashmir,  and  after 
various  adventures  in  the  course  of  which  Ranjit  Singh  secured  the 
Koh-i-nur  from  him,  he  returned  to  Ludhiana  in  1816.  Meanwhile 
the  Sikhs,  though  they  secured  Attock,  defeating  the  Afghans  at 
Haidaru  in  1813,  did  not  manage  to  secure  Kashmir.  More  im- 
portant during  this  period  was  their  reduction  of  the  northern  plains 
and  lower  hills  by  which  they  gradually  strengthened  themselves  for 
further  efforts.  The  first  of  such  was  the  capture  of  Multan,  which 
had  been  attempted  more  than  once  before,  and  which  was  effected 
in  1818.  In  the  same  year,  by  taking  advantage  of  the  troubles  which 
followed  Fath  Khan's  death,  Ranjit  Singh  entered  Peshawar,  though 
he  relinquished  it  to  the  Barakzai  governor  Yar  Muhammad  Khan. 
1819  saw  him  master  of  Kashmir.  In  1823  he  again  took  Peshawar, 
and  this  time  he  left  Yar  Muhammacl  Khan  to  rule  in  his  name. 
Thus  by  1824  he  had  added  to  his  dominions  the  three  Muhammadan 

1  Cunningham,  History  of  the  Sikhs  (ed.  1918),  p.  382. 
*  Idem,  p.  383. 


542          CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

states  of  Kashmir,  Multan  and  Peshawar.  A  small  Sikh  minority 
ruled  a  vast  kingdom  almost  equally  divided  as  regards  inhabitants 
between  Hindus  and  Muhammadans,  the  latter  more  numerous 
towards  the  north-west.  The  older  organisation  of  the  misls  or 
confederacies,  each  following  a  chief  or  group  of  chiefs,  had  given 
place  to  an  organised  military  despotism,  although  the  phrases  used 
by  Ranjit  Singh  disguised  the  fact.  The  whole  strength  of  the  state 
was  devoted  to  war.  The  system  suited  the  Sikh  people  who  were 
excellent  soldiers,  and  it  was  not  disliked  by  the  military  Muham- 
madans  of  the  Panjab,  whom  Ranjit  Singh  slowly  reduced  to 
obedience.  The  material  at  his  disposal,  recruits  obtained  by  the 
feudal  system  of  land  tenure,  was  rendered  more  formidable  by  the 
European  methods  of  discipline  which  he  adopted;  he  used  men  who 
had  deserted  from  the  British  service  to  train  his  troops,  and  soon 
Frenchmen  and  other  European  officers  like  Allard,  Court,  Ventura 
and  Avitabile  joined  his  service. 

Sir  Lepel  Griffin  has  truly  said  that  the  conquest  of  the  frontier 
was  a  matter  beyond  the  Sikh  strength;  it  was  inevitable  that  the 
subjection  of  so  much  territory  in  the  Himalayan  region  should 
involve  constant  struggles  and  constant  loss.  The  events  of  Ranjit 
Singh's  later  years  often  made  him  wish  that  he  had  not  had  the 
trouble  of  maintaining  such  expensive  conquests.  With  the  English 
he  became  more  friendly,  especially  as  his  relations  with  them  were 
in  the  hands  of  Captain  Wade  at  Ludhiana.  In  the  discussions  as  to 
the  districts  south  of  the  Satlej,  the  English  gave  way  on  some  points 
but  secured  Firozpur.  But  it  required  all  Wade's  skill  until  the  end 
of  the  Burmese  War  and  the  capture  of  Bharatpur  to  keep  the  Sikhs 
quiet.  After  a  troublesome  religious  revolt  under  Saiyid  Ahmad 
Shah  Ghazi,  who  for  a  time  (1830)  held  Peshawar,  had  been  sup- 
pressed, Ranjit  Singh's  position  in  India  was  very  strong.  It  was  now, 
therefore,  when  the  idea  of  counteracting  Russian  influence  by  the 
formation  of  buffer  states  was  in  favour,  that  Lord  William  Bentinck 
arranged  the  famous  meeting  with  the  Sikh  ruler  at  Rupar  on  the 
Satlej  in  October,  1831,  when  an  assurance  of  friendship  with  the 
English  was  given  which  satisfied  both  parties  for  different  reasons. 
Much  discussion  took  place  about  Sind  and  about  the  navigation  of 
the  Indus,  Ranjit  Singh  agreeing  that  that  river  and  the  Satlej  should 
be  open  to  commerce.  He  also  gave  up  for  the  time  being  his  designs 
on  Shikarpur  (1832)  on  which  he  had  fixed  his  mind. 

Hence  the  attitude  of  the  English  in  regard  to  Shah  Shuja  in  these 
years  is  easily  understood.  They  looked  upon  his  efforts  to  regain  the 
Afghan  throne  with  benevolent  neutrality,  and  left  him  to  make  his 
own  bargain  with  the  Sikhs  and  the  amirs  of  Sind.  But  the  Sikhs  got 
the  advantage.  The  negotiations  fluctuated  from  time  to  time.  The 
amirs  feared  the  approach  of  the  English,  and  in  1832  they  offered 
help  if  Shah  Shuja  would  give  up  his  claims  on  their  country.  He 


CAPTURE  OF  PESHAWAR  543 

agreed  in  case  he  succeeded.  But  he  reopened  the  question  with  the 
maharaja,  and,  finding  that  he  was  the  only  potentate  whom  he  had 
to  conciliate,  he  entered  into  an  alliance  with  him  in  August,  1833. 
This  treaty  was  the  basis  of  the  Tripartite  Treaty  of  1838,  and  provided 
that  the  districts  beyond  the  Indus  in  possession  of  the  Sikhs  should  be 
formally  ceded  to  them.  The  Sindians  were  abandoned  and  Shah 
Shuja  was  allowed  to  proceed  towards  his  native  land  by  way  of 
Shikarpur  where  he  defeated  the  Sindians,  who  had  finally  decided 
to  oppose  him,  on  9  January,  1834.  He  then  passed  on  towards 
Kandahar,  near  which  city  he  was  routed  by  Dost  Muhammad  and 
his  brothers  on  i  July,  1834,  and  later  after  much  wandering  and 
various  attempts  to  secure  aid  he  reached  Ludhiana  again.  Ranjit 
Singh  resolved  to  make  what  he  could  out  of  the  affair,  and  ac- 
cordingly he  sent  Hari  Singh,  his  general,  and  Nao  Nihal  Singh, 
his  grandson,  who  secured  the  town  and  citadel  of  Peshawar  on 
6  May,  1834,  thus  finally  establishing  Sikh  power  there.  Dost 
Muhammad,  who  had  been  so  perplexed  when  Shah  Shuja  entered 
Afghanistan  that  he  had  offered  his  submission  to  the  government 
officials  as  a  dependent  on  Great  Britain,  now  plucked  up  courage, 
calling  himself  ghazi  as  well  as  amir,  and  advanced  as  he  thought 
to  retake  Peshawar.  He  still  wished  to  secure  English  help,  and 
tried  to  do  so  through  his  nephew  Abdul  Ghiyas  Khan,  who  was 
at  Ludhiana.  The  English,  however,  who  had  their  attention  still 
directed  to  the  question  of  the  navigation  of  the  Indus,  declined  to 
interfere.  The  result  was  that  Dost  Muhammad  came  to  the  eastern 
end  of  the  Khaibar  and  having,  on  n  May,  1835,  been  almost  sur- 
rounded by  the  Sikhs,  was  glad  to  retreat  hurriedly  enough  with 
considerable  loss  of  prestige.  About  September  in  the  same  year 
he  commenced  negotiations  with  Persia  though  still  hoping  for  English 
aid.  Hearing,  however,  that  the  Sikhs  had  sent  home  some  of  their 
forces,  he  sent  Muhammad  Akbar  Khan,  his  son,  who,  though  he 
failed  to  secure  the  Sikh  position,  won  a  doubtful  battle  near  Jamrud 
on  30  April,  1837,  Hari  Singh  the  great  Sikh  leader  being  killed. 
Reinforcements,  however,  arriving,  Muhammad  Akbar  Khan  had 
to  retire  without  having  taken  either  Peshawar  or  Jamrud. 

The  defeat  of  the  amirs  of  Sind  by  Shah  Shuja  frightened  them  and 
they  would  probably  have  gladly  allowed  Ranjit  Singh  to  have  taken 
Shikarpur  if  he  would  have  protected  them  against  further  attempts 
of  the  same  kind.  This  did  not  please  the  English  who,  as  Cunning- 
ham points  out,  were  beginning  to  have  political  as  well  as  commercial 
schemes  in  those  directions.  Ranjit  Singh  did  not  really  wish  to  be 
friendly  with  the  amirs,  and  kept  a  representative  of  the  exiled 
Kaloras  in  his  state;  he  even  began  negotiating  with  Shah  Shuja 
once  more.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  local  friction  and  the  fortress 
of  Rojhan,  the  stronghold  of  a  robber  tribe  called  Mazaris,  who  indeed 
gave  trouble  to  the  Sikhs  but  could  hardly  be  termed  subjects  of  the 


544          CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

amirs,  was  taken  by  the  governor  of  Multan  in  August,  1836.  Soon 
afterwards  the  Sikhs  went  south  to  Ken.  As  there  seemed  every 
likelihood  of  further  aggression,  Lord  Auckland  decided  to  mediate, 
especially  as  both  parties  were  ready  to  declare  open  war.  In 
December,  1836,  Ranjit  Singh  yielded,  though  unwillingly,  and 
agreed  to  let  things  be  on  their  own  footing,  retaining  however  Rojhan 
and  Mazari  territory  while  he  destroyed  the  fortress  of  Ken.  It  was 
on  this  occasion  that  he  asked  the  famous  question  of  those  who  were 
trying  to  dissuade  him  from  peace  what  had  become  of  the  200,000 
spears  of  the  Marathas. 

There  was  then  a  feeling  of  intense  hostility  at  this  time  between 
the  Afghans  and  the  Sikhs.  Both  had  considerable  dread  of  the 
English  and  the-  last  thing  they  wished  for  was  British  interference. 
Unfortunately  this  state  of  feeling,  which  might  otherwise  have 
passed  naturally  away,  occurred  at  a  time  when  the  fear  of  the 
Russians  was  the  mainspring  of  Indian  foreign  politics.  There  were 
also  numerous  French  designs,  and  the  story  of  Allard's  diplomatic 
character  at  the  court  of  Lahore  aroused  suspicion;  Wellington 
afterwards  (4  February,  1843)  warned  Lord  Ellenborough  of  the 
French  connection.  In  such  circumstances  the  English  could  please 
no  one,  Ranjit  Singh  did  not  like  to  be  restrained  from  action  in 
Sind  and  elsewhere;  and  Dost  Muhammad  would  have  gladly 
welcomed  English  aid  against  the  Sikhs.  The  English  chose  perhaps 
the  worst  possible  way  out  of  their  difficulties. 

The  weakness  of  the  scheme  of  the  Tripartite  Treaty  of  1838  was 
obvious.  The  English  could  not  trust  Shah  Shuja  to  the  Sikhs  for  fear 
that  the  war  of  restoration  should  become  a  war  of  aggression  on  their 
part.  Ranjit  Singh  disliked  the  final  passing  of  all  hopes  of  gaining 
Shikarpur,  and  although  the  march  of  a  Sikh  force  through  the 
Khaibar  with  Shah  Shuja's  son  was  decided  upon,  the  Sikhs  not 
altogether  unnaturally  decided  to  do  as  little  as  they  could  and  to 
gain  the  utmost  advantage.  At  the  end  of  1838  Ranjit  Singh  met 
Lord  Auckland  at  Firozpur,  where  the  British  force  was  assembled, 
but  his  health  had  failed.  He  heard  of  the  fall  of  Kandahar,  and  died 
on  27  June,  1839. 

Ranjit  Singh's  power  was  personal  and  as  he  founded  no  permanent 
institutions  which  could  live  apart  from  himself  his  death  was  the 
signal  for  the  beginning  of  anarchy.  Cunningham,  the  sympathetic 
historian  of  the  Sikhs,  has  thus  estimated  his  claims  to  greatness : 

Ranjit  Singh  found  the  Punjab  a  waning  confederacy,  a  prey  to  the  factions  of 
its  chiefs,  pressed  by  the  Afghans  and  the  Marathas  and  ready  to  submit  to  English 
supremacy.  He  consolidated  the  numerous  petty  states  into  a  kingdom,  he  wrested 
from  Kabul  the  fairest  of  its  provinces,  and  he  gave  the  potent  English  no  cause 
for  interference.  He  found  the  military  array  of  his  country  a  mass  of  horsemen, 
brave  indeed  but  ignorant  of  war  as  an  Art,  and  he  left  it  mustering  fifty  thousand 
disciplined  soldiers,  fifty  thousand  well  armed  yeomanry  and  militia,  and  more 
than  three  hundred  pieces  of  cannon  for  the  field.  His  rule  was  founded  on  the 


RANJIT  SINGH'S  CHARACTER  545 

feelings  of  a  people,  but  it  involved  the  joint  action  of  the  necessary  principles  of 
military  order  and  territorial  extension;  and  when  a  limit  had  been  set  to  Sikh 
dominion,  and  his  own  commanding  genius  was  no  more,  the  vital  spirit  of  his 
race  began  to  consume  itself  in  domestic  contentions.1 

Sir  Lepel  Griffin  admits  his  private  vices : 

"He  was  selfish,  false  and  avaricious;  grossly  superstitious,  shamelessly  and  openly 
drunken  and  debauched",  and  continues:  "We  only  succeed  in  establishing  him 
as  a  hero,  as  a  ruler  of  men,  and  as  worthy  of  a  pedestal  in  that  innermost  shrine 
where  history  honours  the  few  human  beings  to  whom  may  be  indisputably  assigned 
the  palm  of  greatness,  if  we  free  our  minds  of  prejudice  and,  discounting  conven- 
tional virtue,  only  regard  the  rare  qualities  of  force  which  raise  a  man  supreme 
above  his  fellows.  Then  we  shall  at  once  allow  that,  although  sharing  in  full  measure 
the  commonplace  and  coarse  vices  of  his  time  and  education,  he  yet  ruled  the 
country  which  his  military  genius  had  conquered  with  a  vigour  of  will  and  an 
ability  which  placed  him  in  the  front  rank  of  the  statesmen  of  the  century."2 

Ranjit  Singh  when  dying  was  said  to  have  declared  his  imbecile 
son,  Kharak  Singh,  his  successor;  but,  though  acknowledged  in  the 
main,  his  claims  were  disputed  by  Shir  Singh,  a  reputed  child  of 
Ranjit  Singh;  while  his  own  son,  Nao  Nihal  Singh,  a  bold  but  vicious 
youth  of  eighteen,  wished  to  obtain  the  ascendancy.  The  wazir, 
Dhian  Singh,  hated  the  able  Resident,  Wade,  who  supported 
Kharak  Singh,  and  Dhian  Singh  and  Nao  Nihal  Singh  both  hated 
the  imbecile  monarch's  favourite,  Chet  Singh.  Chet  Singh  was 
murdered  on  8  October,  1839.  Wade  was  replaced  by  Clerk  as 
British  agent  at  the  beginning  of  April,  1840,  Wade's  Sikh  enemies 
persuading  Auckland  that  this  step  would  secure  easier  communi- 
cation between  British  India  and  the  forces  in  Afghanistan;  Lord 
Auckland  further  imagined  that  the  long-cherished  schemes  for  the 
opening  of  a  valuable  commerce  with  Afghanistan  by  way  of  the 
Indus  were  now  about  to  take  shape.  The  only  real  and  tangible 
result  of  these  intrigues  was  the  increase  of  the  power  of  Nao  Nihal 
Singh  who  hoped  by  the  reduction  in  the  strength  of  the  rajas  of 
Jammu,  and  then  probably  by  the  destruction  of  Raja  Dhian  Singh, 
to  make  himself  supreme.  He  was,  however,  interrupted  in  his 
ambitious  schemes  by  disputes  with  the  English  as  to  the  favouring  by 
the  Sikhs  of  Afghan  rebels  against  Shah  Shuja  and  even  treacherous 
communication  with  Dost  Muhammad  himself;  and  there  was  a 
very  strong  feeling  on  the  part  of  men  like  Macnaghten  in  favour 
of  taking  away  much  of  the  Sikh  territory,  that  part  of  it  at  all  events 
which  had  once  been  held  by  Afghanistan.  Kharak  Singh  died  on 
5  November,  1840,  and  on  the  same  day  his  more  brilliant  son, 
passing  homewards  from  the  funeral  rites,  was  crushed  by  the  fall 
of  the  gateway  in  the  Lahore  fort,  and  so  seriously  injured  that  he 
died  the  same  night.  How  far  his  death  was  accidental  was  disputed; 
the  rajas  of  Jammu  had  every  reason  to  wish  for  it. 


1  Cunningham,  op.  cit.  p.  222. 
*  Griffin,  Ranjit  Singh,  p.  95. 


CHI  V 


35 


546          CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

The  question  now  was  as  to  the  succession.  Shir  Singh  was  pre- 
ferred by  the  British  agent,  but  he  was  not  certainly  legitimate.  After 
much  intrigue  the  widow  of  Kharak  Singh,  Mai  Chand  Kaur,  who 
was  supported  by  various  Sikh  chiefs,  notably  the  Sindhianwala 
family,  which  included  men  of  note  such  as  Atar  and  Ajit  Singh 
Sindhianwala,  and  like  many  other  Sikh  families  of  importance  was 
opposed  to  the  rajas  of  Jammu,  came  forward  and  secured  the  regency. 
She  was  to  hold  it  till  it  was  seen  whether  Nao  Nihal's  widow  bore 
a  son.  Shir  Singh  was  to  be  a  kind  of  viceroy,  and  Dhian  Singh  the 
wazir.  This  temporary  arrangement  was  nominally  in  force  when 
Dost  Muhammad  surrendered,  but  the  factions  soon  came  to  blows. 
Shir  Singh  attacked  Lahore  in  January,  1841,  and  was  proclaimed 
maharaja  on  the*  1 8th  of  that  month,  the  Sindhianwala  family  taking 
refuge  in  flight.  Shir  Singh,  however,  though  he  might  like  to  be  king, 
could  not  rule,  and  the  obvious  result  followed  that  the  army  became 
all  powerful.  The  discussion  of  projects  for  armed  intervention  on 
the  part  of  the  British  Government,  while  it  did  not  make  things 
easier  for  what  authority  there  was  in  the  country,  enabled  the  Sikh 
army  to  regard  itself  more  and  more  as  the  representative  body  of 
the  Sikh  people;  its  position  resembled  that  of  the  Ironsides  of  the 
seventeenth  century  without  there  being  any  Cromwell  in  control. 
Another  source  of  difficulty  lay  in  the  activity  of  Zorawar  Singh  who, 
as  deputy  of  the  rajas  of  Jammu,  after  taking  Skardu,  seized  Garo,  and 
seemed  likely  to  conquer  much  of  Chinese  Tibet.  When,  however, 
the  English  found  him  established  near  Almora  they  decided  to 
interfere,  and  ordered  Garo  to  be  restored  by  10  December,  1841. 
By  this  time  the  Chinese  arrived  and  defeated  the  Sikhs  in  a  wonderful 
campaign  in  the  mountains,  one  of  the  most  awful  perhaps  in  the 
history  of  warfare,  and  peace  was  made  in  the  autumn  of  1842, 
matters  between  China  and  the  Sikhs  being  placed  on  their  old  footing. 
About  the  same  time  the  English  managed  to  prevent  Gulab  Singh, 
the  brother  of  Dhian  Singh,  from  being  made  governor  of  the  Afghan 
province,  which  would  have  placed  an  enemy  of  the  British  at  Pesha- 
war instead  of  the  Italian  Avitabile. 

During  the  troubles  connected  with  and  following  the  insurrection 
at  Kabul  in  November,  1841,  the  English  were  in  the  unpleasant 
position  of  distrusting  the  Sikhs,  and  yet  not  being  able  to  do  without 
their  aid ;  this  was  added  to  the  fact  that  the  English  had  no  decided 
policy.  They  could  claim  help  under  the  Tripartite  Treaty,  but  the 
Sikhs,  as  has  been  seen,  helped  but  grudgingly,  rather  because  the 
authorities  had  little  control  over  the  army  than  for  other  reasons, 
though  such  reasons  were  doubtless  present.  Some  part,  however,  they 
took,  and  it  was  suggested  to  give  Jallalabad  to  them.  But  its  destruction 
by  Pollock  relieved  them  from  taking  what  they  really  did  not  want. 
That  Ellenborough  at  this  time  viewed  the  prospect  of  a  Sikh  war 
with  disfavour  can  be  seen  from  his  dispatch  of  15  May,  I842.1 

1  Ellenborough  Papers,  102. 


INTRIGUE  AND  MURDER  547 

In  June,  1842,  the  murder  of  Mai  Chand  Kaur  altered  the  state  of 
things  at  the  court,  but  it  did  not  relieve  the  difficulties  of  Shir  Singh, 
and,  when  the  Sindhianwala  chiefs  came  to  an  agreement  with  the 
rajas  of  Jammu,  his  fate  was  sealed.  On  15  September,  1843,  he  was 
assassinated  by  Ajit  Singh,  who  proceeded  to  kill  his  son  Pertab 
Singh  also.  But  Dhian  Singh  also  reaped  the  reward  of  his  treachery, 
and  was  murdered  by  his  Sindhianwala  allies.  He  left,  however,  a 
son,  Hira  Singh,  who,  in  spite  of  the  hatred  of  the  people  for  his  family 
and  the  Jammu  rajas,  managed  to  raise  enough  troops  to  kill  Ajit 
and  Lahna  Singh,  the  two  Sindhianwalas,  and  to  proclaim  Dalip 
Singh,  a  supposed  son  of  Ranjit  Singh  by  a  woman  afterwards 
notorious  enough,  Rani  Jindan.  Hira  himself  took  the  post  of  wazir 
much  to  the  vexation  of  Suchet  Singh,  youngest  of  the  Jammu  rajas, 
who  now  becomes  prominent. 

These  struggles  were  intricate  and  not  very  important,  the  one 
fact  that  mattered  being  that  as  they  became  more  and  more  intense 
they  brought  the  army  into  ever  greater  prominence  and  importance. 
Clerk  had  given  way  as  Resident  to  Colonel  Richmond,  whose  letters 
have  furnished  the  world  with  an  account  of  what  happened.  The 
maternal  .uncle  of  Dalip  Singh,  Jawahir  Singh,  having  tried  con- 
clusions with  the  Jammu  rajas  in  1843,  was  cast  into  prison.  Then 
Kashmira  Singh  and  Peshawara  Singh,  adopted  sons  of  Ranjit  Singh, 
seized  Sialkot,  possibly  with  the  connivance  of  Raja  Suchet  Singh,  who 
may  also  have  procured  the  release  of  Jawahir  Singh  about  the  same 
time,  and  who  was  killed  while  attempting  an  insurrection  against  his 
nephew  in  March,  1844.  The  same  fate  overtook  Atar  Singh  Sindhian- 
wala in  the  following  May;  he  had  fled  to  British  territory  the  year 
before  and  now  returned,  joined  a  religious  fanatic,  Bhai  Bir  Singh,  of 
some  popularity,  and  managed  to  gain  Kashmira  Singh  to  his  cause. 
It  is  noteworthy  that  Hira  Singh  managed  to  secure  the  adherence 
of  the  army  by  telling  them  that  the  Sindhianwalas  were  relying 
upon  English  help.  Kashmira  Singh  and  Bhai  Bir  Singh  both  shared 
Atar  Singh's  fate.  This  same  feelirig  of  resentment  against  the  English 
Hira  Singh  made  use  of  about  the  same  time  when  he  pretended  that 
the  English  reliefs  for  Sind  were  directed  against  the  Sikhs. 

Serious  grounds  of  dispute  between  the  two  peoples  were  bound 
to  arise.  The  central  government  of  the  Sikhs  was  no  doubt  a  scene  of 
confusion  and  crime,  but  the  nation  was  strong  enough.  Gilgit  had 
been  annexed  to  Kashmir  towards  the  end  of  1843,  and  the  Sikh  army 
was  at  once  anxious  for  active  service  and  also  intensely  superstitious. 
"Our  position",  wrote  Lord  Ellenborough  on  n  February,  1844, 
"with  respect  to  the  Punjab  can  now  be  viewed  only  in  the  light  of 
an  armed  truce."1  The  comparatively  recent  events  in  Afghanistan 
and  the  news  of  a  mutinous  disposition  in  some  of  the  Sepoy  regiments 
had  lessened  their  respect  for  their  powerful  neighbour,  whom  also 
they  believed  to  be  preparing  to  annex  their  territory.  There  was  a 
1  Law,  India  under  Ellenborough,  p.  113. 


548          CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

dispute  as  to  a  village  in  the  Nabha  state  where  both  had  interests, 
and  the  action  of  the  English  in  retaining  the  treasure  of  Suchet 
Singh,  which  had  been  brought  by  him  to  Firozpur  before  his  death, 
was  neither  liked  nor  understood.  Colonel  Richmond  too  was 
succeeded  by  Major  Broadfoot  as  Resident  on  i  November,  1844,  and, 
as  he  was  suspected  by  the  Sikhs,  his  appointment  did  not  ease  matters. 

When  things  were  in  rather  a  critical  state,  another  revolution  took 
place  by  which  Hira  Singh  was  overthrown  and  slain  on  2 1  Decem- 
ber, 1844.  With  him  fell  his  tutor,  Pandit  Jalla,  who  had  acquired 
much  influence  over  him.  For  some  time  there  was  confusion,  but 
the  power  was  secured  by  Jawahir  Singh,  the  brother,  and  Lai  Singh 
the  lover  of  Rani  Jindan;  Lai  Singh,  a  Brahmin,  had  once  been  an 
adherent  of  the  Jammu  rajas.  They  had,  however,  to  reckon  with 
Gulab  Singh,  and  sent  the  army  against  Jammu  early  in  1845.  Gulab 
saw  that  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  submission,  so  he  parted  with 
vast  sums  of  money  and  much  territory  and  came  to  Lahore  with 
the  army,  with  whom  he  became  more  or  less  a  favourite.  Jawahir 
Singh  became  wazir  on  14  May,  1845,  an<^  Gulab  Singh  retired  to  the 
mountains  again.  In  the  same  way  Mulraj,  who  had  succeeded  to 
the  governorship  of  Multan  when  his  father  was  assassinated  in  1844, 
and  who  had  shown  some  vigour,  was  forced  to  pay  a  fine  and  to 
promise  to  surrender  territory,  when  he  heard  that  the  army  had 
agreed  to  march  against  him.  Peshawara  Singh,  who  had  taken  refuge 
in  British  territory  the  year  before,  also  rebelled  and  was  put  to  death 
at  Attock  in  September  of  this  same  eventful  year.  But  Jawahir5  s 
time  was  at  hand.  The  all-powerful  army  distrusted  him  as  a  friend 
of  the  English,  even  when  he  talked  of  making  war  against  them. 
The  regimental  panchayats,  therefore,  decided  that  he  must  die,  and 
he  was  shot  on  21  September,  1845.  Lai  Singh  now  became  wazir, 
an  unworthy  ruler,  but  the  power  was  not  with  him  but  with  Sardar 
Tej  Singh,  the  commander-in-chief,  and  the  panchqyats  of  the  army. 

The  direct  causes  of  the  Sikh  war  with  the  English  are  obscure. 
The  English  seeing  the  confusion  which  followed  the  death  of  Ranjit 
Singh  no  doubt  made  preparations  of  a  defensive  kind ;  as  the  event 
showed  they  would  have  been  very  foolish  if  they  had  not  done  so, 
though  there  was  some  point  in  the  words  of  a  hostile  critic:  "To 
be  prepared  is  one  thing;  to  be  always  making  preparations  another". 
The  Sikhs,  seeing  more  men  placed  in  the  neighbourhood  of  their 
frontier,  at  a  time  when  they  knew  that  their  own  power  was  weaker 
than  before,  drew  the  natural  but  erroneous  inference  that  the  English 
wanted  their  country.  And  this  impression  was  strengthened  by  the 
fact  that  they  knew  that  some  of  the  Sikh  chiefs  would  gladly  have 
seen  the  English  come.  There  was  the  object  lesson  of  Sind  before 
their  eyes;  they  had  always  been  an  aggressive  people  themselves, 
and  they  could  not  understand  that  a  powerful  nation  could  be 
otherwise.  They  remembered,  long  after  the  English  had  ceased  to 


OUTBREAK  OF  WAR  549 

think  about  such  matters,  projects  for  sending  troops  to  Lahore  and 
for  handing  Peshawar  over  to  the  Afghans;  men  had  talked,  too,  in 
the  days  of  the  Afghan  occupation  of  "macadamising"  the  Panjab. 
The  actual  changes  in  recent  years,  so  far  as  troops  are  concerned, 
have  been  summarised  thus : 

Up  to  1838  the  troops  on  the  frontier  amounted  to  one  regiment  at  Sabatha, 
and  two  at  Ludhiana,  with  six  pieces  of  artillery,  equalling  in  all  little  more  than 
2500  men.  Lord  Auckland  made  the  total  about  8000,  by  increasing  Ludhiana 
and  creating  Ferozepore.  Lord  Ellenborough  formed  further  new  stations  at 
Ambala,  Kasauli  and  Simla,  and  placed  in  all  about  14,000  men  and  48  field  guns 
on  the  frontier.  Lord  Hardinge  increased  the  aggregate  force  to  about  32,000 
men,  with  68  field  guns,  besides  having  10,000  men  with  artillery  at  Meerut.  After 
1843,  however,  the  station  of  Karnal,  on  the  Jumna,  was  abandoned,  which  in 
1838  and  preceding  years  may  have  mustered  about  4000  men. 

But  Lord  Hardinge  has  shown  that  his  father  deserved  even  greater 
credit  than  this  account,  believed  to  be  from  the  pen  of  Lawrence, 
would  allow.  The  strength  on  the  frontier,  exclusive  of  hill  stations 
which  remained  the  same,  at  the  departure  of  Lord  Ellenborough 
was  17,612  men  and  sixty-six  guns:  at  the  outbreak  of  war  it  was 
40,523  men  and  ninety-four  guns.  This  comprises  the  garrisons  of 
Firozpur,  Ludhiana,  Ambala  and  Meerut.1 

Cunningham  thinks  that  the  Sikhs  distrusted  Major  Broadfoot 
because  of  angry  proceedings  on  his  part  when  passing  through  their 
territory  with  Shah  Shuja's  family  in  1841,  and  because  of  the 
strong  line  he  took  when  British  agent  with  regard  to  the  relations 
between  the  Cis-Satlej  states  and  the  British  Government.  In  the 
latter  connection  various  small  incidents  occurred,  trifling  in  them- 
selves but  magnified  by  bazaar  gossip  in  a  land  where  there  are  but 
few  topics  of  conversation.  More  important  was  undoubtedly  the 
fact  that  many  of  the  chiefs  of  the  Panjab  had,  or  thought  they  had, 
everything  to  gain  if  the  army  with  its  system  of  panchayats  dashed 
itself  to  pieces  against  the  English,  and  among  these  were  such  men 
as  Lai  Singh,  the  wazir,  and  Tej  Singh,  the  commander-in-chief; 
their  interests  or  their  wishes  coinciding  with  those  of  the  soldiers  on 
widely  different  grounds.  Cunningham  has  mentioned,  too,  the  story 
of  two  Sikh  villages  having  been  sequestrated  because  they  harboured 
criminals,  but,  whether  this  is  true  or  not,  it  probably  had  little  to  do 
with  the  matter.  The  soldiers  were  determined,  although  their  com- 
mander knew  that  they  were  mistaken,  and  although  Gulab  Singh 
and  many  others  were  entirely  opposed  to  the  war.  The  Sikh  army 
then,  hoping  to  surprise  the  English  and  march  to  Delhi,  crossed 
the  Satlej  on  n  December,  1845,  between  Huriki  and  Kasur. 

The  governor-general,  Sir  Henry  Hardinge,  and  the  commander- 
in-chief,  Sir  Hugh  Gough,  were  both  old  and  tried  soldiers.  They 
had  available  forces  of  between  20,000  and  30,000  men  and  they  had 
to  meet  (the  exact  number  is  uncertain)  over  50,000  well-armed 

1  Lord  Hardinge,  Viscount  Hardinge,  pp.  74  sqq.,  and  Burton,  Sikh  Wars,  pp.  10  sqq.  Cf. 
Rait,  Lord  Gough,  I,  371  sqq. 


550          CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

opponents.  The  governor-general  on  13  December  issued  a  formal 
declaration  of  war.  He  stated  that  the  British  Government  had  ever 
been  on  friendly  terms  with  that  of  the  Panjab  and  had  continued 
to  be  so  during  the  disorganised  state  of  the  government  which  had 
followed  the  death  of  Shir  Singh  in  spite  of  many  unfriendly  proceed- 
ings on  the  part  of  the  Sikh  durbar.  The  Sikh  army  had  now  invaded 
British  territory  without  a  shadow  of  provocation  and  the  governor- 
general  must,  therefore,  take  steps  necessary  to  protect  the  British 
provinces,  to  vindicate  the  authority  of  the  British  Government,  and 
to  punish  the  violators  of  treaties  and  disturbers  of  the  public  peace. 
He  therefore  declared  the  possessions  of  the  maharaja  on  the  left 
bank  of  the  Satlej  confiscated  and  annexed  to  the  British  terri- 
tories. 

As  there  was  a  strong  striking  force  of  the  Sikhs  to  contend  with, 
it  was  wisely  decided  to  bring  as  many  troops  together  as  possible; 
the  garrison  of  Ludhiana  was  therefore  transferred  to  Basian  where 
it  served  the  admirable  purpose  of  protecting  a  great  grain  depot  of 
the  forces.  The  Sikhs  took  up  a  position  within  a  few  miles  of  Firozpur. 
It  is  unnecessary  to  discuss  the  alleged  treachery  of  Lai  Singh  and 
Tej  Singh,  it  suffices  to  follow  what  happened.  The  English  under 
Gough  pushed  forward  by  way  of  Wadni  and  Charak  to  Mudki  which 
they  had  no  sooner  reached  than  they  were  attacked  by  the  Sikhs 
(18  December,  1845).  The  enemy  were,  however,  defeated  with  a 
loss  of  seventeen  guns.  How  men  who  had  marched  so  far  under  such 
difficult  conditions,  and  who  had  but  the  short  remnant  of  a  winter's 
day  to  fight  in,  could  have  done  better  is  hard  to  see,  but  more  than 
one  critic  has  expected  it.  Sale,  amongst  other  brave  men,  fell 
here. 

The  English  army  was  now  only  twenty  miles  from  Firozpur,  where 
was  General  Littler,  and  if  his  force  could  join  that  of  Gough  and 
Hardinge,  who  had  now  placed  himself  as  a  volunteer  under  the 
orders  of  the  commander-in-chief,  they  would  have  about  18,000 
men  with  which  to  attack  the  large  body  of  Sikhs  who  were  encamped 
round  Firozshah.  Gough  was  anxious  not  to  wait,  but  the  governor- 
general  obliged  him  to  do  so;  they  were  joined  by  Littler  a  few  hours 
later  on  the  2ist,  and  they  attacked  at  four  in  the  afternoon,  both 
sections  of  the  army  having  been  many  hours  under  arms.  This  was 
a  very  different  affair  from  Mudki,  and  on  the  night  of  21  December 
"the  fate  of  India  trembled  in  the  balance".  The  enemy's  camp  was 
indeed  taken,  but  much  remained  to  be  done,  and  the  two  leaders 
were  equally  resolved  to  fight  things  out  to  a  finish  in  the  morning. 
So  the  next  day  the  wearied  troops  renewed  the  battle;  again  the 
governor-general  and  the  commander-in-chief  led  the  attack;  and 
finally  with  a  magnificent  bayonet  charge  the  fight  was  won.  But 
this  two  days*  battle  had  been  a  terrible  risk;  there  had  bejn  some 
confusion  and  the  loss  of  life  (Broadfoot  fell  amongst  many  less  known 


SOBRAON  551 

men)  had  been  great;  he  hesitated  and  on  30  December  requested 
Cough's  recall.1 

Fortunately  Gough  was  a  man  of  iron  who  never  hesitated  for  a 
moment  as  to  what  he  had  to  do.  It  was  far  otherwise  with  the  British 
public  and  the  cabinet  which  represented  them.  It  was  at  once 
resolved  that  the  governor-general  should  take  the  command  and  to 
get  over  the  technical  difficulty  a  "Letter  of  Service"  was  sent  out 
to  him  from  the  queen  which  would  enable  him  as  a  lieutenant- 
general  on  the  staff  to  command  in  person  the  troops  in  India. 
Happily  conditions  had  altered  so  much  that  the  letter  owing  to 
the  generous  spirit  of  Sir  Henry  Hardinge  was  never  published;  nor 
indeed  was  its  existence  generally  known  till  fifty  years  later.2 

Seventy-three  guns  had  been  taken  and  several  thousand  Sikhs 
killed  at  Firozshah,  but  there  was  still  a  formidable  army  to  reckon 
with,  and  the  British  force  was  sadly  reduced.  Fresh  Sikh  troops 
kept  pouring  across  the  Satlej,  more  guns  were  brought,  and  every  day 
became  of  importance  especially  as  an  attack  on  Ludhiana  was 
threatened.  Under  these  circumstances,  reinforcements  having  arrived 
from  Meerut,  Sir  Harry  Smith  was  sent  to  Ludhiana,  and,  after  being 
joined  by  the  troops  under  General  Wheeler,  he  attacked  on  2  8  January, 
1846,  a  strong  enemy  force.  The  Sikhs  in  this  neighbourhood,  afraid 
of  being  taken  on  both  sides  by  the  two  bodies  of  English  troops, 
had  fallen  back  to  an  entrenched  position  at  Aliwal.  The  result  was 
a  brilliant  victory.  The  Sikh  position  was  entirely  destroyed  and 
over  fifty  guns  were  captured.  It  was  valuable  on  its  own  account, 
but  it  also  vastly  encouraged  the  main  body  of  the  British  troops  who 
were  preparing  for  the  far  more  serious  ordeal  of  an  attack  on  the 
great  Sikh  army  posted  near  Sobraon  Ghat  on  the  Satlej,  a  few  miles 
from  Firozpur. 

In  sanctioning  the  attack  on  the  Sikh  entrenchments  on  the 
memorable  10  February,  1846,  Hardinge  made  the  attempt  con- 
ditional on  the  artillery  being  able  to  be  brought  into  play.  But  it 
was  soon  evident  that  the  Sikh  guns  could  not  be  silenced  by  artillery, 
and  Gough,  so  the  story  goes,  rejoiced  when  the  ammunition  gave 
out  and  he  could  "be  at  them  with  the  bayonet ".  This,  the  glory 
of  Sobraon,  was  what  happened,  for  the  infantry  carried  all  before 
them  in  their  onrush  and  proved  once  more  what  Napier  has  said, 
"with  what  a  strength  and  majesty  the  British  soldier  fights".  With 
such  a  leader,  ever  anxious  to  lead  the  charge  himself,  everything 
was  possible,  and  at  his  side  there  were  men  of  great  distinction  and 
promise :  the  two  Lawrences,  Havelock,  Robert  Napier;  these  amongst 
others.  Never  was  a  victory  more  decisive.  The  Sikhs  fled  across  the 
river  losing  at  least  10,000  men  and  all  their  guns.  The  fighting  was 
over  at  i  o'clock  on  the  loth  and  by  the  I3th  almost  the  whole 

1  Rait,  op.  cit.  11,  88  sgq. 

*  Lord  Hardinge,  op.  tit.  pp.  104-5. 


552          CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

British  army  was  across  the  Satlej  and  well  on  its  way  to  Lahore. 
By  the  i8th  they  were  close  to  the  city.  On  the  2Oth  it  was  occupied 
and  the  only  question  was  that  of  terms. 

There  were,  it  has  often  been  pointed  out,  at  least  three  possible 
courses  open  to  Lord  Hardinge.  He  might  have  annexed  the  Panjab. 
But  this  was  contrary  to  his  own  ideas,  contrary  to  the  policy  of  the 
Company,  and  would  have  required  the  services  of  a  much  larger 
force  than  he  had  at  his  disposal,  even  had  Sir  Charles  Napier  joined 
him  with  12,000  men  from  Sind.  He  might  again  have  established 
a  "subsidiary  alliance",  that  is  to  say  he  might  have  kept  the  existing 
government  on  foot,  with  troops  under  the  Company's  command  but 
paid  for  by  the  state,  and  a  Resident  representing  the  wishes  of  the 
outside  authority.  This  was  the  system  which  commended  itself  to 
the  Lahore  durbar.  It  had,  however,  other  disadvantages  than  that 
of  keeping  on  foot  the  rule  of  a  selfish  body  of  time-serving  intriguers. 
It  would  have  introduced  a  divided  authority  in  the  state,  and  was 
certain  to  lead  to  disturbance  and  possibly  to  further  interference  in 
the  future.  The  third  plan  was  that  which  he  followed.  It  had  much 
to  be  said  for  it,  as  all  compromises  have,  but  it  did  not  really  settle 
the  problem,  and  was  open  to  many  of  the  same  objections  as  that  to 
which  reference  has  just  been  made.  Perhaps,  however,  as  things 
were  it  was  unfortunately  the  only  possible  course  open  to  him.  It 
was  in  the  main  that  which  was  represented  by  the  treaty  concluded 
at  Lahore  on  9  March,  I846.1 

All  the  territories  lying  to  the  south  of  the  Satlej  were  handed  over 
to  the  British  Government.  The  Jalandhar  doab  between  the  Bias 
and  the  Satlej  was  also  ceded,  and,  in  substitution  for  the  war  in- 
demnity of  one  and  a  half  crores  of  rupees,  the  hill  countries  between 
the  Bias  and  the  Indus,  including  Kashmir  and  Hazara.  The  Sikh 
army  was  limited  to  twenty-five  battalions  of  infantry  and  12,000 
cavalry,  and  thirty-six  guns  in  addition  to  those  already  captured 
were  surrendered.  Two  other  important  articles  prevented  the 
maharaja  from  employing  any  British,  European,  or  American 
subject  without  the  consent  of  the  British  Government,  and  provided 
that  the  limits  of  the  Lahore  territory  should  not  be  changed  without 
the  concurrence  of  the  British  Government.  Kashmir  was  transferred 
to  Gulab  Singh,  a  man  of  humble  beginnings  indeed,  for  he  had  been 
a  running  footman  to  Ranjit  Singh,  but  of  talent  and  address.  He 
knew  and  feared  the  Sikhs,  he  was  a  Rajput,  and  was  glad  to  be 
finally,  as  the  reward  of  a  life  of  service  which  included  no  inconsider- 
able amount  of  cruelty  and  self-seeking,  separated  from  the  state  to 
which  he  owed  everything,  but  to  which  it  is  difficult  to  regard  him, 
in  spite  of  Lord  Hardinge's  defence,  as  other  than  a  traitor.  What  was 
clear  was  that  the  Lahore  state  must  be  reduced  in  size,  that  Kashmir 
was  the  easiest  limb  to  lop  off,  and  that  such  being  the  case  Gulab 
Singh  was  the  only  man  to  whom  it  could  be  well  handed  over. 

1  Aitchison,  op.  cit.  vm,  160. 


THE  TREATIES  OF  LAHORE  553 

The  treaty  had  recognised  Dalip  Singh  as  maharaja,  but  the 
governor-general  was  careful  to  state  that  the  British  Government 
would  not  interfere  in  the  internal  administration  of  the  Lahore 
state.  It  was,  however,  agreed  that  a  force  sufficient  to  protect 
the  person  of  the  maharaja  and  to  secure  the  execution  of  the 
treaty  should  be  left  in  the  capital  until  the  close  of  the  year  1846, 
and  Henry  Lawrence  was  appointed  as  British  agent.  It  was, 
however,  soon  clear  that  this  arrangement  would  have  to  be  pro- 
longed. In  October  an  insurrection  under  Shaikh  Imam-ud-Din, 
directed  against  the  transfer  of  Kashmir  to  Gulab  Singh,  took  place 
in  that  country,  and  a  considerable  British  force,  assisted  by  17,000 
of  the  Sikhs  who  had  fought  against  us,  was  necessary  to  put  it  down. 
And  as  it  was  proved  at  a  formal  court  of  enquiry  that  Lai  Singh  the 
wazir  had  been  at  the  bottom  of  this  movement,  his  deposition  was 
demanded  from  the  durbar  and  agreed  to.  The  favourite  of  the  rani 
was  accordingly  deported  to  British  territory  notwithstanding  her 
protests;  and  as  the  remaining  members  of  the  durbar  saw  nothing 
but  anarchy  ahead  of  them  if  the  English  retired,  they  asked  for  and 
obtained  a  revision  of  the  treaty.  It  was  a  distinct  march  in  the 
direction  of  annexation,  a  solution  which  Hardinge  disliked  and 
wished  to  avoid,  but  of  which  he  saw  even  then  the  possibility. 

The  revised  treaty  only  modified  the  previous  one  in  respect  of  the 
extent  and  character  of  British  interference.  It  provided  for  the 
appointment  by  the  governor-general  of  a  British  officer  with  an 
efficient  establishment  of  assistants  to  remain  at  Lahore  and  to  have 
full  authority  to  direct  and  control  all  matters  in  every  department 
of  the  state.  There  was  to  be  a  council  of  regency  composed  of  leading 
chiefs  and  sardars,  acting  under  the  control  and  guidance  of  the 
British  Resident.  The  members  of  this  council  were  named,  and  the 
consent  of  the  governor-general,  expressed  through  the  Resident,  was 
necessary  for  any  change  in  its  composition.  Such  British  force  as 
the  governor-general  thought  to  be  necessary  should  remain  in  Lahore 
and  should  occupy  all  forts  in  the  Lahore  territory  that  the  British 
Government  deemed  needful  for  the  maintenance  of  the  security  of 
the  capital  or  the  peace  of  the  country.  The  Lahore  state  was  to  pay 
twenty-two  lakhs  a  year  in  respect  of  the  expenses  of  the  occupation. 
An  allowance  was  to  be  granted  to  the  maharani  and  the  new 
arrangements  to  last  till  the  maharaja  attained  the  age  of  sixteen  years 
(4  September,  1854),  or  till  such  period  as  the  governor-general  and 
the  durbar  might  agree  on.1 

This  treaty  marked  the  downfall  of  the  rani's  ascendancy  (she  was 
finally  deported  to  Benares),  and  the  beginning  of  the  control  of  the 
famous  Resident,  Henry  Lawrence.  He  chose  men  whom  he  knew 
and  could  trust  and  distributed  them  over  the  province,  allowing 
them  as  much  freedom  of  action  as  he  could.  Their  names  are  an 
undying  testimony  to  Lawrence's  capacity  as  a  ruler:  John  and 

1  Idem,  p.  1 66. 


554          CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

George  Lawrence,  Nicholson,  Herbert  Edwardes,  Lake,  Lumsden, 
Hodson;  these  and  others  like  them.  But  this  is  not  the  place  to  deal 
with  the  details  of  administration.  Unfortunately  Henry  Lawrence 
sailed  for  England  with  Lord  Hardinge  on  1 8  January,  1848,  and  his 
successor,  after  a  brief  interval,  was  Sir  Frederick  Currie,  a  different 
type  of  man  indeed,  but  it  would  be  unjust  to  hold  him  responsible 
for  what  followed. 

For  the  second  Sikh  War  must  be  regarded  as  inevitable.  It  was 
clear  that  the  arrangements  made  were  temporary  in  their  nature,  and 
they  could  only  result  either  in  the  annexation  of  the  country  or  in  a 
resumption  of  its  independence.  That  the  Sikh  people  who  had  fought 
with  determination  in  the  war  just  over,  and  who  had  a  long  record 
of  successful  achievements  behind  them,  were  likely  to  settle  down 
without  a  further  struggle  was  not  to  be  believed.  It  needed  but  an 
event  of  sufficient  general  interest  to  excite  a  national  rising,  and  that 
event  was  supplied  by  the  city  of  Multan,  long  a  storm  centre. 

The  governor  of  Multan,  the  Diwan  Mulraj,  whom  we  have  already 
noted  as  a  man  of  some  force  and  ability,  was  in  trouble  about  money 
matters,  and  probably  for  this  reason  wished  to  resign  his  post. 
A  successor,  one  Sardar  Khan  Singh,  was  appointed  in  his  place  and 
two  officials,  Vans  Agnew  of  the  Civil  Service  and  Lieutenant  Ander- 
son, on  being  sent  to  arrange  the  matter  were  murdered  at  Mulraj  5s 
instigation  on  20  April,  1848.  Mulraj  strengthened  the  defences  of 
the  town  and  proclaimed  a  general  revolt  in  the  surrounding  country; 
the  troops  of  the  considerable  escort  which  had  come  with  the 
officials  joined  him  and  thus  there  was  open  warfare. 

The  question  was,  what  to  do.  Detachments  of  troops  were  moved 
against  Multan  as  soon  as  the  urgent  message  sent  by  Vans  Agnew 
had  been  received.  But  when  it  was  known  that  the  two  British 
officers  were  dead,  Lord  Gough,  to  whom  Sir  Frederick  Currie  had 
written,  decided  against  sending  large  masses  of  troops  just  before  the 
beginning  of  the  hot  weather,  and  Lord  Dalhousie  agreed  with  him. 
This  decision,  though  approved  by  the  home  authorities  including 
the  Duke  of  Wellington,  was  much  criticised  at  the  time;  especially 
by  those  who  did  not  know  what  the  troops  available  were,  and  the 
difficulties  attending  large  military  movements  during  the  hot  weather 
and  the  rains.  But  politically  there  was  much  to  be  said  for  delay. 
Lord  Gough  knew  that  the  whole  country  was  really  at  the  back  of 
Mulraj.  Had  an  expedition  been  hurried  forward,  and  if  it  had  been 
successful,  it  would  have  narrowed  the  issue  down  to  the  punishment 
of  the  governor  of  Multan,  and  the  inevitable  struggle  would  have 
been  postponed.  It  is  certain  too  that  for  such  a  small  object  as  the 
reduction  of  Multan  the  loss  of  life  would  have  been  very  great.  If 
proof  were  wanted  of  the  widespread  nature  of  the  movement  it 
could  be  supplied  by  the  movements  of  Chatter  Singh,  father  of  Shir 
Singh,  who  was  busy  raising  a  revolt  in  Hazara  and  who  succeeded 


THE  SECOND  SIKH  WAR  555 

in  winning  over  Peshawar  to  the  rebel  cause.  By  holding  out  that 
city  as  a  bait  he  was  able  to  draw  in  Dost  Muhammad,  who  afterwards 
sent  troops,  though  to  small  purpose. 

And  Lord  Gough  resolved  that  when  done  the  work  should  be 
finished.  He  estimated  for  and  prepared  a  large  striking  force  with 
all  its  necessary  auxiliaries  and  transport;  it  was  to  assemble  at 
Firozpur  in  November.  It  is  not  necessary  to  describe  the  movements 
which  took  place  in  the  interval,  especially  as  they  have  been  the 
subject  of  controversy.  Edwardes  and  Currie  made  heroic  but  mis- 
taken efforts  to  deal  with  the  rising  on  a  small  scale,  the  results  being 
that  Shir  Singh  came  out  into  open  hostility  on  14  September,  that 
the  siege  of  Multan  had  to  be  abandoned,  and  that  the  second  Sikh 
War,  as  a  national  rather  than  a  local  movement,  began  in  earnest, 
as  it  had  promised  to  do  sooner  or  later  in  any  case.  The  importance 
of  the  siege  of  Multan  has  been  exaggerated.  It  was  begun  again 
with  reinforcements  in  December  and  the  fortress  fell  on  22  January, 
1849.  Lord  Gough  had  held  the  sound  view  of  Multan  from  the  first, 
but  Lord  Dalhousie  took  some  time  to  come  round  to  it. 

On  13  October,  1848,  the  secretary  to  the  government  of  India 
wrote  to  the  Resident  at  Lahore  that  the  Governor-General  in  Council 
considered  the  state  of  Lahore  to  be,  to  all  intents  and  purposes, 
directly  at  war  with  the  British  Government;  and  Lord  Dalhousie 
in  a  letter  to  the  Secret  Committee  of  7  October,  1848,  spoke  of  a 
general  Panjab  war  and  the  occupation  of  the  country.1  The  real 
war  as  a  whole  may  be  said  to  date  from  9  November  when  Lord 
Gough  crossed  the  Satlej,  though  on  the  I5th  he  rather  petulantly 
said  he  did  not  know  whether  he  was  at  peace  or  at  war  or  who  it  was 
he  was  fighting  for.  The  situation  soon  cleared.  On  the  i3th  his  force 
of  over  20,000  men  reached  Lahore.  On  the  i6th  he  crossed  the  Ravi 
and  advanced  to  Ramnagar.  On  the  22nd  he  drove  the  Sikhs  across 
the  Chenab,  and  himself  crossed  that  river,  Shir  Singh,  who  was  in 
command  of  the  Sikhs,  having  been  forced  by  a  flanking  movement 
by  part  of  the  troops  under  General  Thackwell2  higher  up  the  river 
to  retire  on  the  Jhelum.  Gough  was  anxious  to  wait  as  long  as  possible 
so  as  to  be  strengthened  by  the  forces  before  Multan,  but  the  fall  of 
Attock  and  the  consequent  reinforcement  of  the  Sikhs  on  the  Jhelum 
made  it  necessary  for  him  to  risk  an  engagement.  So  he  moved  to 
Dinghi  on  12  January,  and  found  himself  almost  due  east  of  Shir 
Singh  who  was  just  beyond  the  village  of  Chilianwala,  between  it  and 
the  river.  Gough  now  had  with  him  about  14,000  men  and  sixty-six 
guns.,  On  the  I3th,  after  a  march  of  four  hours,  he  fought  and  won 
the  glorious  but  expensive  action  of  Chilianwala.  He  had  been 
anxious  to  wait  until  the  next  day,  and  it  was  only  because  the  Sikhs 
advanced  their  positions  somewhat,  making  it  impossible  for  the 

1  Parliamentary  Papers,  1849,  xu,  374. 

$  Wylly,  Thackwcll,  pp.  243  sqq.t  and  Calcutta  Review^  xn,  275  sqq. 


556          CONQUEST  OF  SIND  AND  THE  PANJAB 

British'army  to  encamp,  that  he  was  forced  into  an  action  under  such 
disadvantageous  conditions.  But  it  was  a  dangerous  and  difficult 
affair,  marked,  too,  by  a  certain  amount  of  confusion  and  mistake1; 
marked  also,  however,  by  an  amazing  number  of  heroic  deeds  on 
the  part  of  individuals.  The  British  losses  were  over  2000,  and  the 
impression  made  both  in  India  and  in  England,  when  it  was  also 
heard  that  four  guns  and  the  colours  of  three  regiments  had  been 
taken  by  the  enemy,  was  very  great.  The  news  of  the  battle  inspired 
the  first  poem  of  George  Meredith,  which  well  represented  the  general 
melancholy  felt.  But  Chilianwala  was  a  very  important  victory.  Large 
numbers  of  Sikhs  had  been  killed;  many  guns  had  been  taken  or 
destroyed;  and  a  very  strong  position  had  been  carried.  But  the 
general  public  knew  even  less  than  the  poet  of  the  real  facts  and  called 
for  a  victim,  and  the  directors  were  forced  to  supersede  Lord  Gough 
as  commander-in-chief  by  Sir  Charles  Napier.  Fortunately  the  former 
had  the  opportunity  of  taking  the  noblest  revenge  before  the  news  of 
his  disgrace  reached  India. 

The  drawing  on  of  night  prevented  Chilianwala  from  being  a 
complete  victory.  The  Sikhs  could  not  at  once  retire  on  their  position 
at  Rasul,  but  they  had  not  been  driven  into  the  river  and  they  stationed 
themselves  at  Tupai  on  its  banks.  The  British  army  was  prevented 
by  rain  from  following  up  their  victory,  and  large  reinforcements 
joined  the  Sikhs.  On  2  February  they  moved  deliberately  towards 
Gujrat  near  the  Chenab;  Lord  Gough  slowly  following  by  way  of 
Sadullapur.  By  the  2Oth  the  Multan  army  had  joined  him,  and  he 
felt  strong  enough,  especially  as  regards  artillery,  to  strike  a  crushing 
blow.  From  his  camp  at  Shadiwal  on  the  2  ist  he  moved  out  to  attack 
the  Sikh  position,  a  strong  one,  to  the  south  of  Gujrat  with  the 
Chenab  on  its  left.  In  a  few  hours  the  battle  of  Gujrat  was  over; 
a  brilliant  victory  was  won;  and  the  enemy  were  in  rapid  flight. 
A  body  of  12,000  men  pursued  them  across  the  Jhelum;  on  12  March 
they  surrendered  at  discretion,  and  the  capitulation  of  Peshawar  and 
the  hurried  escape  of  the  Afghan  auxiliaries  ended  the  war. 

The  Panjab  was  formally  annexed  by  a  proclamation  in  full  durbar 
on  30  March,  1849,  the  maharaja  being  pensioned  and  required  to 
reside  outside  the  state.  Henry  Lawrence  was  the  obvious  man  to 
carry  out  the  difficult  work  of  organisation,  but  Lord  Dalhousie 
did  not  agree  with  his  views.  Hence  as  a  compromise  a  "Board  of 
Government'5  was  appointed  consisting  of  Henry  and  John  Lawrence 
and  Charles  E.  Mansell.  The  three  all  pulled  in  different  directions 
and  yet  the  results  were  satisfactory.  But  the  three  would  never  have 
achieved  the  mighty  task  that  was  set  before  them,  that  of  trans- 
forming one  of  the  ancient  military  autocracies,  where  revenue  was 
the  chief  interest  of  the  government  after  warfare,  into  a  modern 
state,  had  it  not  been  for  the  work  of  those  who  assisted  them,  and 

1  Cf.  Rait,  op.  cit.,  Wylly,  op.  cit.,  and  Calcutta  Review,  xv,  269  sqg. 


ANNEXATION  557 

to  whom  reference  has  been  made.  In  1853  Henry  Lawrence  went 
to  Rajputana,  and  John,  whose  views  were  nearer  to  those  of  Lord 
Dalhousie,  became  chief  commissioner. 

Various  opinions  have  been  held  and  will  be  held  as  to  the  an- 
nexation of  the  Panjab.  But  it  is  quite  clear  that  if  the  British  were 
to  hold  the  controlling  power  in  India  it  was  inevitable.  We  may 
even  go  further  than  that.  After  the  death  of  Ranjit  Singh  the  state 
of  the  Panjab  was  such  that  the  Sikhs,  a  small  minority,  could  not 
have  long  continued  to  hold  the  country;  it  was  bound  either  to  split 
up  into  various  independent  states,  or,  as  was  more  probable,  to 
become  in  whole  or  in  part  the  prey  of  some  external  conqueror.  Dost 
Muhammad  would  no  doubt  have  annexed  most  of  the  old  Afghan 
portions,  and  the  rest  might  have  relapsed  into  the  condition  of  the 
Cis-Satlej  states  at  the  time  when  thay  passed  under  British  protection. 
From  such  a  fate  the  interference  of  the  English  delivered  the  country. 
But  there  was  a  wider  influence  and  a  greater  question.  The  English 
did  not  wish  to  invade  the  Panjab,  they  were  anxious  to  avoid  doing 
so;  but  once  the  challenge  was  given  they  were  bound  to  accept  it, 
and  what  was  really  fought  out  at  Sobraon  and  on  the  other  great 
Sikh  battlefields  was  the  continuance  of  British  power  in  India.1  It 
was  here  that  Lord  Dalhousie  was  right,  and  he  expressed  in  rough 
but  spirited  language  the  only  feeling  that  a  conquering  race  could 
have,  the  only  answer  that  such  a  race  could  make  when  the  question 
was  put:  "Unwarned  by  precedents,  uninfluenced  by  example,  the 
Sikh  nation  has  called  for  war,  and,  on  my  word,  sirs,  they  shall  have 
it  with  a  vengeance". 

1  Cf.  Ellenborough's  language  ap.  Lew,  op.  cit.  p.  113. 


CHAPTER  XXX 

BURMA,   1782-1852 

A  HE  conquests  of  the  Alaungpaya  dynasty  were  completed  under 
King  Bodawpaya,  1782-1819.  On  the  east,  the  Burmese  had  long 
received  tribute  from  the  Shans,  to  the  south  they  had  annexed  the 
Talaing  country  (Irrawaddy  Delta  and  Tenasserim)  in  1757,  on  the 
north  they  had  repelled  the  great  Chinese  invasions  of  1765-9.  They 
now  conquered  Arakan  in  1785,  Manipur  in  1813,  Assam  in  1816. 
Thus  brought  into  contact  with  the  English,  they  felt  no  fear:  Ava 
was  the  centre  of  the  universe,  its^arms  invincible,  its  culture  supreme. 
In  1818,  as  successors  to  the  crown  of  Arakan  which  in  mediaeval 
times  had  received  tribute  from  the  Ganges  Delta,  they  summoned 
the  governor-general  to  surrender  Chittagong,  Dacca  and  Murshi- 
dabad  under  pain  of  war. 

Fifty  thousand  Arakanese  fled  into  Chittagong;  the  more  spirited, 
under  Nga  Chin  Pyan,  used  British  territory  as  a  base;  the  English 
seized  most  of  the  principals,  but  Nga  Chin  Pyan  was  still  at  large 
when  he  died  in  1814.  In  Assam  the  Burmese  diminished  the  popu- 
lation by  half  in  1816-24,  partly  by  massacre,  partly  by  driving 
30,000  in  slave-gangs  to  Ava;  Chandrakant,  an  insurgent  prince, 
procured  muskets  and  men  in  British  territory,  bribing  subordinates 
not  to  tell  their  English  superiors.  Burmese  commanders  started 
violating  the  Chittagong  frontier  in  1794,  the  Goalpara  frontier  in 
1821,  and  were  amazed  at  their  own  moderation,  since,  as  Burmese 
customary  law  made  no  distinction  between  crime  and  rebellion,  the 
English  refusal  to  surrender  political  refugees  was  a  hostile  act. 

European  intercourse  with  Burma  had  centred  at  Syriam  and  its 
successor  Rangoon.  Teak  was  the  principal  product,  shipbuilding  the 
industry;  but  disorder  was  endemic,  export  of  most  commodities  was 
interdicted,  and  the  volume  of  trade  was  not  great.  The  Dutch  came 
in  1627  and  fcft  *n  1680.  The  French  came  in  1689,  built  ships  for 
Dupleix,  and  decayed.  The  English  East  India  Company  founded  a 
factory  at  Syriam  in  1647  which  lasted  a  decade,  and  private  traders, 
chiefly  from  Masulipatam,  continued  to  use  the  factory  buildings 
and  dockyard  for  many  years.  In  1680  the  demand  for  Burmese 
lac  led  Fort  St  George,  Madras,  to  begin  a  series  of  negotiations  for 
reopening  official  trade,  and  several  missions  visited  Ava,  notably 
those  of  Fleetwood  and  Leslie  in  1695  and  Bowyear  in  1697,  but 
these  resulted  only  in  the  regulation  of  private  trade,  which  continued 
till  1743  when  the  Talaings,  alleging  complicity  with  the  Burmese, 
burnt  the  Syriam  factory.  In  1 753  a  factory  was  opened  on  Negrais 
Island  but  in  1 759  the  Burmese,  alleging  complicity  with  the  Talaings, 


FIRST  BURMESE  WAR  559 

massacred  the  staff,  and  the  protest  of  Captain  Alves  in  1 760  resulted 
merely  in  the  Company  being  permitted  to  return  to  Rangoon.  Thus 
commercial  relations  alone  had  so  far  existed  between  the  English  and 
Burma,  and  in  the  eighteenth  century  barely  four  Englishmen  had 
reached  Ava.  Bodawpaya's  conquests  created  a  frontier  situation 
which  necessitated  political  intercourse.  The  governor-general  sent 
envoys — Captain  Symes,  1795,  1802;  Captain  Cox,  1797;  Captain 
Canning,  1803,  1809,  1811.  Though  expensively  equipped,  they 
failed.  English  officers  were  accustomed  to  kneel  unshod  in  the 
presence  of  Indian  kings,  but  at  Ava  they  were  expected  to  unshoe 
before  entering  the  palace,  and  to  prostrate  themselves  at  gateways 
and  spires;  they  were  ignored  for  months  and  segregated  on  a 
scavengers'  island.  Symes  did  indeed  obtain  a  treaty,  but  Burmese 
thought  had  not  evolved  such  a  concept;  the  king  was  above  con- 
tractual obligations  and  anything  he  signed  was  revocable  at  will. 
An  inland  race  who  regarded  Rangoon  as  a  foreign  garrison,  the 
Burmese  had  no  international  relations,  they  never  thought  of 
sending  an  ambassador  to  England  or  knew  its  whereabouts,  yet  they 
rejected  the  envoys,  saying  that  their  king  could  receive  only  an 
ambassador  from  the  king  of  England. 

So  little  was  known  of  Burma  that  it  was  almost  a  "mystery  land", 
responsible  officers  entertained  exaggerated  ideas  of  its  strength,  and 
Burmese  victories  once  caused  a  panic  in  Calcutta;  Symes  in  1795 
estimated  the  population  at  17,000,000,  although  King  Bagyidaw's 
Revenue  Inquest  of  1826  gave  only  1,831,467.  The  governor-general 
had  no  desire  to  be  involved  in  Indo-China,  but  in  the  dry  season 
1823-4  his  outposts  from  Shahpuri  Island  to  Dudpatli  were  driven 
in  by  Burmese  commanders  whose  orders  were  to  take  Calcutta. 
General  Sir  Archibald  Campbell  with  11,000  men,  mostly  Madras 
sepoys,  and  ships  under  Captain  Marryat,  R.N.  (the  novelist), 
occupied  Rangoon,  n  May,  1824.  The  Talaings  were  expected  to 
rise  in  their  favour,  but  the  Burmese  deported  the  population,  leaving 
the  delta  a  waste  whence  the  invader  could  get  no  intelligence, 
supply,  or  transport;  till  the  end  of  the  rains  the  English  could  not 
move  two  miles.  The  Burmese  withdrew  from  the  north,  attacked 
Rangoon  in  December,  1824,  and  retreated  to  Danubyu  where 
Bandula,  their  greatest  leader,  was  killed.  There  were  operations  in 
Tenasserim  and  in  Arakan,  but  it  was  round  Rangoon  that  the 
Burmese  armies  were  broken.  Lack  of  transport  persisted,  and  only 
on  24  February,  1826,  was  Campbell  able  to  dictate  the  Treaty  of 
Yandabo,  whereby  Ava  yielded  Arakan,  Tenasserim,  Assam, 
Cachar,  Jaintia,  and  Manipur,  paid  £1,000,000,  received  a  Resident 
at  Ava  and  maintained  one  at  Calcutta. 

The  Burmese  host  was  the  greatest  in  their  history — 600  guns, 
35,000  muskets,  and  a  cadre  of  70,000.  Except  4000  household 
troops  they  were  a  mass  levy,  and  even  the  household  troops  had  not 


560  *  BURMA,  1782-1852 

sufficient  training  to  fight  in  the  open;  but  their  musketry  and  jingal 
fire  was  good,  their  sapper  work  admirable,  and  their  jungle  fighting 
of  the  highest  order;  they  tortured  prisoners,  and  practised  a  species 
of  head-hunting,  but  Englishmen  respected  their  courage  and 
physique.  As  Henry  Havelock,  who  served  as  deputy  assistant 
adjutant-general,  pointed  out,  the  direction  of  the  English  forces  was 
indifferent— stormers  were  left  to  take  stockades,  among  the  most 
formidable  in  history,  without  scaling  ladders;  sepoys,  sent  into  action 
without  a  stiffening  of  British  infantry,  were  so  often  routed  that  their 
moral  declined  and  they  were  obsessed  with  a  belief  that  Burmese 
warriors  had  magical  powers.  Administration  was  discreditable — 
medical  precautions  were  lacking,  and,  in  expectation  of  Talaing  aid, 
no  arrangements  had  been  made  for  commissariat  supply  from  India. 
Campbell  sometimes  had  only  1500  effectives.  The  original  contin- 
gents of  European  troops  were  3738  at  Rangoon,  1004  in  Arakan; 
at  Rangoon  their  hospital  deaths  (scurvy  and  dysentery)  were  3160, 
their  battle  deaths  166;  in  Arakan  their  hospital  deaths  (malaria) 
were  595,  battle  deaths  nil — 4  per  cent,  battle  deaths,  96  per  cent, 
hospital;  40,000  men  passed  through  the  cadres,  15,000  died,  and 
the  war  cost  £5,000,000. 

The  Residency,  held  successively  by  Major  Burney  (Fanny's 
brother)  and  Colonel  Benson,  lasted  from  1830  to  1840.  Few  have 
served  their  fellow-men  better  than  Burney  during  his  seven  lonely 
years  at  Ava;  trusted  by  both  sides  in  civil  wars,  he  stayed  several 
executions;  he  supported  the  Burmese  against  the  governor-general, 
winning  them  the  Kabaw  Valley  on  the  disputed  Manipur  frontier; 
and  when  he  left,  an  invalid,  the  parting  was  full  of  mutual  regrets ; 
but,  urge  as  he  might  that  Siam  and  Persia  recognised  the  governor- 
general,  that  the  very  greatest  powers  found  permanent  embassies 
the  only  way  of  avoiding  friction,  even  he  could  not  induce  the  Bur- 
mese to  maintain  a  Resident  at  Calcutta.  None  of  the  ministers,  he 
noted,  was  the  equal  of  a  gaunggyok  in  Tenasserim,  the  character  of 
King  Bagyidaw,  1819-37,  being  such  that  he  would  have  no  other 
type  near  him.  Bagyidaw  became  insane  and  was  put  under  restraint. 
His  brother  King  Tharrawaddy,  1837-45,  said: 

The  English  beat  my  brother,  not  me.  The  Treaty  of  Yandabo  is  not  binding 
on  me,  for  I  did  not  make  it.  I  will  meet  the  Resident  as  a  private  individual,  but 
as  Resident,  never.  When  will  they  understand  that  I  can  receive  only  a  royal 
ambassador  from  England? 

In  repudiating  the  treaty,  Tharrawaddy  was  within  the  Burmese 
constitution,  whereby  all  existing  rights  lapsed  at  a  new  king's 
accession  until  he  chose  to  confirm  them.  The  governor-general,  who 
had  disapproved  previous  withdrawals,  now  sanctioned  final  with- 
drawal. Becoming  insane,  Tharrawaddy  was  put  under  restraint  by 
his  son  King  Pagan,  1845-52. 
Rangoon  stagnated,  and  even  its  shipbuilding  industry  was  inter- 


SECOND  BURMESE  WAR  561 

mittent.  Its  British  community  (five  Europeans  and  several  hundred 
Asiatics)  periodically  complained  of  ill-usage  after  the  withdrawal  of 
the  Resident,  but  government  refused  to  intervene,  saying  that  anyone 
who  went  to  live  under  Burmese  rule  did  so  with  his  eyes  open. 
Finally  a  governor,  appointed  in  1850,  used,  when  tipsy,  to  threaten 
to  torture  and  behead  the  whole  population,  and  among  his  acts  of 
extortion  were  three  dozen  committed  on  British  subjects,  culmi- 
nating in  the  cases  of  Sheppard  and  Lewis.  Sheppard's  25O-ton 
barque  from  Moulmein  ran  aground  near  Rangoon;  the  Chittagong 
pilot,  a  British  subject,  fearing  she  would  become  a  total  wreck, 
jumped  overboard  and  swam  to  safety;  Sheppard  brought  his  ship 
into  Rangoon  and  was  promptly  accused  by  the  governor  of  throwing 
the  pilot  overboard;  he  and  his  crew  were  imprisoned,  detained  eight 
days,  and  had  to  pay  1005  rupees.  Lewis  sailed  his  4io-ton  vessel 
from  Mauritius,  and  one  of  his  lascars,  a  British  subject,  died  the 
day  he  anchored  off  Rangoon;  the  governor  accused  him  of  murdering 
the  lascar  and  threatened  to  flog  and  behead  him;  he  was  made  to 
attend  court  daily  for  three  weeks  and  had  to  pay  700  rupees. 

Dalhousie  sent  H.M.  frigate  Fox,  Commodore  Lambert,  R.N.,  to 
ask  that  the  king  remove  the  governor  and  compensate  Sheppard  and 
Lewis.  The  king  replied  courteously  and  sent  a  new  governor  em- 
powered to  setde  the  matter;  but  the  old  governor  was  given  a 
triumphal  farewell,  the  new  governor  brought  an  army,  and  when 
Lambert  sent  a  deputation  of  senior  naval  officers  to  greet  him,  they 
were  refused  admission  on  the  pretext  that  the  governor  was  asleep. 
Lambert  forthwith  declared  a  blockade  and  seized  a  king's  ship ;  the 
governor  retorted  that  the  naval  officers  who  had  been  turned  away 
were  drunk,  and  his  batteries  opened  fire  on  the  Fox. 

The  Burmese  mobilisation  was  only  the  usual  precaution;  in 
removing  the  former  governor,  and  in  writing  to  the  governor-general, 
thereby  recognising  his  existence,  the  court  of  Ava  showed  a  desire 
to  avoid  war.  The  miscarriage  was  at  Rangoon.  Had  Lambert  been 
accustomed  to  orientals,  he  would  have  warned  his  officers  against 
riding  their  horses  into  the  governor's  courtyard,  a  breach  of  Burmese 
manners,  and  he  would  have  accompanied  them  himself,  as  a  Burmese 
governor  could  not  receive  assistants,  however  senior.  The  governor, 
a  backwoods  mandarin,  failed  to  reflect  that  Lambert  had  in  person 
received  even  the  humblest  Burmese  emissaries  on  the  deck  of  his 
frigate;  and  the  reports  he  sent  to  his  chiefs  at  Ava  were  alarmist 
and  false.  Dalhousie  regarded  the  annexation  of  yet  another  pro- 
vince as  a  calamity,  and  had  misgivings  over  Lambert's  precipitancy. 
But  the  court  of  Ava  accepted  their  governor's  every  act.  Dalhousie's 
ultimatum  received  no  reply,  and  on  the  day  it  expired,  i  April, 
1852,  the  forces  of  General  Godwin  (a  veteran  of  the  First  Burmese 
War)  and  Admiral  Austen  (Jane's  brother)  reached  Rangoon. 

The  Shans  refused  to  send  levies,  the  Delta  Burmese  welcomed  the 
cmv  36 


562  BURMA,  1782-1852 

English,  the  Takings  rose  in  their  favour.  Dalhousie  had  studied 
the  records  of  the  First  Burmese  War  as  a  precedent  to  avoid;  thanks 
to  his  insistence — he  now  visited  Rangoon  himself— the  commissariat 
and  medical  arrangements  were  such  that  the  health  of  the  troops  in 
the  field  was  better  than  that  of  many  a  cantonment  in  India. 
Martaban  and  Rangoon  fell  in  a  fortnight,  Bassein  a  few  weeks  later; 
Prome,  to  intercept  the  rice  supplies  of  Ava,  and  Pegu,  to  please  the 
Talaings,  were  captured  in  the  early  rains,  but  were  not  held  till  the 
dry  season.  The  Burmese  numbered  30,000;  the  invaders,  8000,  of 
whom  3000,  including  sailors,  were  English;  the  gross  battle  casualties 
throughout  were  377,  and  the  campaign  cost  under  £1,000,000.  The 
Secret  Committee  gave  Dalhousie  a  free  hand;  but  he  would  not 
advance  into  Upper  Burma,  saying  that  though  welcomed  in  Lower 
Burma,  the  population  of  which  was  only  partly  Burmese,  we  should 
be  opposed  by  the  Burmese  in  their  homeland  and  could  not  ad- 
minister them  without  undue  expense.  He  annexed  Pegu  by  pro- 
clamation 20  December,  1852;  he  left  the  king  to  decide  whether  he 
would  accept  a  treaty  or  not,  and  wrote  to  him  that  if  he  again 
provoked  hostilities  "they  will  end  in  the  entire  subjection  of  the 
Burmese  power,  and  in  the  ruin  and  exile  of  yourself  and  your  race". 

The  government  of  Bengal  administered  Arakan  through  joint 
commissioners,  Hunter  and  Paton,  till  1829;  through  a  superintendent, 
successively  Paton  and  Dickinson,  under  the  commissioner  of  Chitta- 
gong,  till  1834;  thereafter  through  a  commissioner — Captain 
Dickinson,  1834-7;  Captain  (later  Sir  Archibald)  Bogle,  1837-49; 
Captain  (later  Sir  Arthur)  Phayre,  1849-52.  Assistant  commissioners 
(three  on  1000  rupees  monthly,  two  on  500  rupees),  one  for  each 
district — Akyab,  An  (headquarters  at  Kyaukpyu),  Ramree,  Sandoway 
— and  one  for  Akyab,  the  capital,  were  usually  recruited  from 
officers  of  the  Bengal  regiment  at  Kyaukpyu  seconded  to  the  Arakan 
local  battalion. 

Before  them  lay  a  kingdom  devastated  by  forty  years  of  Burmese 
rule,  without  records  showing  the  system  of  administration.  Pencil 
notes  in  Burmese  were  indeed  found,  and  one  of  these,  part  of  a 
revenue  inquest  of  1802,  gave  the  population  of  Akyab  district  as 
248,604:  the  English  found  under  100,000  in  the  whole  province. 
The  rainfall  was  225  inches;  in  1826  it  was  proposed  to  abandon  the 
interior  and  administer  it  indirectly  from  Cheduba  Island,  and,  even 
later,  of  seventy-nine  English  officers  who  served  in  Akyab,  eighteen 
died  and  twenty-two  were  invalided;  on  returning  from  the  bloodless 
pursuit,  in  January,  1829,  of  an  insurgent  in  Sandoway  district,  three 
English  officers  died,  and  all  their  sepoys  died  or  were  invalided; 
a  four  years'  attempt  to  establish  a  district  headquarters  at  An  was 
abandoned  in  1837  because  the  three  assistants  successively  sent  there 
died.  Till  1837  the  commissioner  had  no  ship,  and  officers  were 


ARAKAN  ADMINISTRATION  563 

invalided  on  native  craft  where  they  had  to  lie  either  on  deck, 
exposed  to  the  monsoon,  or  in  the  cargo  hold,  suffocating  amid 
scorpions  and  centipedes. 

And  yet  by  1831  the  administrative  system  was  complete.  It  was 
imposed  ready-made  from  above,  not  built  up  from  below;  the 
Bengal  acts  and  regulations  were  applied  by  rule,  and  lithographed 
forms  followed.  There  was  a  daily  post  from  Calcutta,  and  district 
officers,  compiling  returns  sometimes  a  year  in  arrears,  had  little 
leisure  for  touring;  their  letters  were  of  such  length  that  each  had  to 
be  accompanied  by  a  precis.  The  commissioner  could  not  buy  a 
cupboard,  create  a  sweepership  on  five  rupees  monthly,  or  pay  three 
rupees  reward  for  killing  a  crocodile,  without  previous  sanction  from 
Calcutta,  and  in  1832  the  assistant  at  Ramree  was  censured  because, 
during  an  outburst  of  dacoity,  he  had,  on  his  own  initiative,  hired 
some  villagers  as  temporary  constables.  Assistants  could  imprison  for 
two  years,  the  commissioner  for  fourteen  years,  submitting  records 
to  Calcutta  for  heavier  sentence.  Forty-nine  per  cent,  of  persons 
tried  were  convicted,  and  66  per  cent,  of  sentences  appealed  against 
were  confirmed;  appellate  interference  sometimes  proceeded  from  the 
desire  of  seniors  to  display  their  impartiality.  Till  1845,  when  Persian 
was  abolished,  the  trial  record  was  threefold,  the  vernacular  deposition 
being  accompanied  by  Persian  and  English  translations.  The  only 
native  entrusted  with  judicial  functions  was  a  judge  on  150  rupees 
monthly  appointed  in  1834  for  Akyab  district,  which  contained 
57  per  cent,  of  the  population  and  66  per  cent,  of  the  cultivation;  he 
tried  most  of  the  original  civil  suits,  but  had  no  criminal  powers. 

A  district  assistant's  executive  staff  consisted  of  a  myothugyi  (prin- 
cipal revenue  clerk),  an  Arakanese  on  150  rupees  monthly;  civil 
police  stations,  under  Bengalis  or  Arakanese  on  eighty  rupees; 
and  kyunok  or  thugyi  (circle  headmen).  The  circle  headman,  an 
Arakanese,  paid  by  15  per  cent,  commission  on  his  revenue  collections, 
resided  among  his  villages,  numbering  sometimes  forty,  each  under  its 
yuagaung  (village  headman) ;  the  principal  revenue  and  police  officer 
of  the  interior,  the  thugyi  tried  petty  civil  suits;  he  was,  on  showing 
capacity,  transferred  to  a  larger  circle;  although  family  was  considered 
he  was  not  hereditary,  and  he  was  sometimes  styled  a  tahsildar. 

Arakan's  contribution  to  her  governance  was  an  admirable 
ryotwari  system  evolved  by  officers  of  whom  Bogle  was  the  survivor. 
Hunter  and  Paton  were  superseded  for  imagining  circle  headmen 
to  be  zamindars  and  letting  them  collect,  at  Burmese  rates,  revenue 
of  which  little  reached  the  treasury.  By  1831  rates  fell  three-quarters 
and  extortion  ceased,  for  each  cultivator  had  his  annual  tax  bill,  and 
in  Burma  each  cultivator  can  read;  the  circle  headman  submitted 
the  assessment  roll,  the  myothugyi  checked  it,  and  the  assistant  issued 
a  tax  bill,  initialled  by  himself,  for  each  villager  by  name.  Save  for 
thathameda  (household  tax,  in  the  roll  of  which  each  inmate  of  a  house 

36-2 


564  BURMA,  1782-1852 

was  entered),  the  Indo-Chinese  system  of  a  lump  sum  assessment  on  the 
village  community,  apportioned  by  the  elders,  was  displaced  by  land 
revenue,  at  one  rupee  four  annas  to  two  rupees  four  annas  an  acre  of 
cultivation,  which  after  1835  was  roughly  surveyed  by  circle  headmen. 
Native  rule  had  professed  prohibition  and  it  was  reluctantly,  on 
finding  the  Arakanese  as  addicted  to  intoxicants  as  any  race  could 
be,  that  the  commissioner  in  1826  introduced  liquor  and  opium 
licenses;  held  by  Chinese,  they  produced  little  revenue  but  acted  as 
a  check.  Kyaukpyu  exported  salt,  300,000  maunds  annually,  to 
Chittagong,  but  rice  soon  became  the  main  industry  of  the  province, 
and  its  export,  prohibited  under  native  rule,  now  averaged  70,000 
tons  annually;  its  production  caused  seasonal  migration  from  Chitta- 
gong and  there  was  a  steady  trickle  of  settlers  from  Burma,  but  the 
main  source  of  population  was  remigrant  Arakanese.  The  following 
figures  include  cultivated  acreage  of  all  kinds,  tonnage  cleared  from 
Akyab  port,  and  revenue  from  all  sources: 

Total 
Cultivation  revenue 

(acres)  Tonnage  (rupees)  Population 

1830  7&,519  —  S?1^10  iS^SD0 

1840  204,069  69,038  029,572  226,542 

1852  35i>6&*  80,630  904,501  3335645 

Although  Akyab  was  the  greatest  rice  port  in  the  world,  no  jetty 

existed  till  1844.    It  was  largely  to  build  this  jetty  that  Arakan 

received  an  executive  engineer  in  1837,  but  under  a  system  which 

forbade  him  even  frame  an  estimate  without  sanction  from  Calcutta, 

he  took  seven  years  to  build  it;  usually  a  subaltern  unacquainted 

with  engineering,  he  was  transferred  five  times  a  year,  and  his  energies 

were  confined  to  Akyab  town  where  he  built  thatched  wooden  offices. 

There  were  gaols  at  Akyab,  Ramree,  and  Sandoway,  and  in  the 

intervals  between  mutinies,  each  district  assistant  used  convicts  to  lay 

out  his  headquarters  and  drain  the  marshes  in  which  it  lay.  Outside 

the  towns  roads  and  bridges  were  non-existent. 

The  Arakan  local  battalion,  two-thirds  Arakanese,  one-third 
Manipuris,  were  military  police  who  in  1851  took  over  the  province 
from  the  regulars;  in  1852  they  clamoured  to  be  led  against  their 
hereditary  foes  the  Burmese,  and  captured  the  Natyegan  stockade  in 
the  An  Pass.  Hardy  and  mobile,  they  had  from  their  foundation  in 
1825  played  a  leading  part  in  suppressing  the  insurgency  which  broke 
out  when  the  English,  hailed  as  deliverers  who  would  restore  Arakanese 
rule,  were  found  to  be  introducing  a  direct  administration  of  their 
own;  Arakanese  officers  who  had  served  the  Burmese  were  then 
displaced,  for  they  were  found  to  be  trained  in  little  but  extortion 
and  intrigue;  Imigrls,  returning  from  Bengal  to  their  ancestral  villages, 
found  themselves  no  longer  lords  but  peasants  under  an  alien  ad- 
ministration which  reserved  high  office  to  itself  and  regarded  all  men 
as  equal.  Arakanese  of  birth  and  spirit  found  English  conceptions  of 


ARAKAN  ADMINISTRATION  565 

justice  and  efficiency  intolerable,  and  they  soon  took  the  measure  of 
their  new  masters — under  native  rule,  to  escape  torture,  a  dacoit 
confessed  as  spon  as  caught,  and  was  beheaded  then  and  there;  but 
the  English  ruled  confessions  inadmissible  and  held  prolonged  trials 
during  which  the  witnesses,  fearing  reprisals,  resiled.  They  never 
united,  but  until  1836,  when  they  burned  Akyab  town  and  police 
station,  dacoity,  accompanied  with  murder,  rape,  and  arson,  averaged 
annually  290  per  million  people.  Thereafter  the  incidence  per  million 
was  dacoity  thirty-seven,  murder  twenty-six,  and  these  were  mainly 
on  the  frontier;  the  decrease  was  attributed  to  preoccupation  with 
expanding  cultivation  and  to  the  growth  of  a  propertied  class.  In 
1850  stabbing  appeared,  and  was  attributed  to  excessive  prosperity 
unbalancing  the  passions. 

Government  had  no  vernacular  schools  but  in  1838  founded  Anglo- 
vernacular  schools  at  Akyab  and  Ramree  to  teach  Arakanese  boys 
Roman  and  Greek  history  and  to  produce  clerks  and  surveyors;  in 
1845  Bogle  discovered  why  they  were  apathetic — there  were  not 
sufficient  clerkships,  whereas  circle  headmanships,  the  largest  cadre, 
were  vernacular.  Two-thirds  of  the  population  spoke  Burmese,  but 
the  remainder,  especially  in  the  towns,  spoke  Bengali  and  Hindustani; 
and  when,  in  1 845,  at  the  instance  of  Phayre,  who  alone  knew  Burmese, 
the  government  finally  prescribed  Burmese,  Bogle  protested  that 
Arakan  should  be  assimilated  to  Bengal  and  that  Burmese  was  the 
language  of  an  enemy  country,  it  was  too  difficult  a  language  for 
English  gentlemen,  its  literature  contained  nothing  but  puerile  super- 
stitions, he  had  served  eighteen  years  without  learning  it  and  the 
people  were  entirely  satisfied  with  his  administration. 

Only  the  ignorant  can  doubt  the  disinterestedness  of  the  men  who 
gave  Arakan  the  most  benevolent  and  businesslike  government  she 
had  ever  seen;  yet  though,  being  English  gentlemen,  they  instinctively 
appreciated  the  external  side  of  the  native  character  and  respected 
its  prejudices,  they  were  out  of  touch  with  its  inner  and  probably 
finer  side.  Nor  did  any  of  them  question  the  fact  that  the  great 
administrative  machine  they  built  up  was  so  alien  that  its  higher  offices 
could  not  be  held  by  natives,  and  that,  once  having  gained  initial 
impetus,  it  must  expand  with  increasing  complexity  and  require  an 
ever-increasing  European  staff. 

The  government  of  Bengal  administered  Tenasserim  through  a 
commissioner,  Maingy,  jointly  with  Sir  Archibald  Campbell,  1826-8; 
Maingy,  1828-33;  Blundell,  1833-43;  Major  Broadfoot,  1843-4; 
Captain  (later  Sir  Henry)  Durand,  1844-6;  Colvin,  1846-9;  thereafter 
Major  Archibald  Bogle.  Assistant  commissioners — one  for  each  district 
(Amherst,  Tavoy,  Mergui),  one  for  Moulmein,  the  capital,  and  after 
1844  one  additional  for  Amherst,  which  contained  all  the  timber, 
57  per  cent,  of  the  population,  58  per  cent,  of  the  cultivation — were 


566  BURMA,  1782-1852 

usually  recruited  from  the  Madras  regiments  at  Moulmein.  Mails 
were  infrequent,  and  references  to  Calcutta  sometimes  remained 
unanswered  for  months  because  the  retention  of  Tenasserim  was 
doubtful.  Arakan  was  strategically  part  of  Bengal;  Tenasserim  was 
isolated,  needed  an  expensive  garrison,  cost  at  first  22,00,000  rupees 
against  a  revenue  of  2,40,000  rupees,  and  there  was  little  prospect  of 
increase  as  it  had  no  Chittagong  whence  to  draw  population.  In  1831 
the  Resident  was  instructed  to  discuss  its  retrocession  with  the 
ministers,  but  their  only  reply  was  triumphantly  to  demand  Arakan 
as  well;  considerations  of  humanity  also  prevailed — the  governor- 
general  remembered  the  fate  of  Pegu  at  the  evacuation.  In  1842 
King  Tharrawaddy,  hearing  of  the  Afghan  disasters,  camped  with 
40,000  men  at  Rangoon;  finding  the  Moulmein  garrison  promptly 
strengthened,  he  withdrew,  convinced  that  he  had  brought  Tenasserim, 
through  garrison  charges,  one  stage  nearer  retrocession. 

A  district  assistant's  staff  consisted  of  an  akunwun  (principal  revenue 
clerk)  on  200  rupees  monthly;  a  sitke  (native  judge)  on  300  rupees, 
who  tried  most  of  the  civil  suits  and  criminal  cases  requiring  only 
two  months'  imprisonment;  and  six  gaunggyok  (township  officers)  on 
twenty-five  to  100  rupees.  The  revenue  and  police  officer  of  the 
interior,  the  gaunggyok,  also  tried  petty  civil  suits  and  criminal  cases 
requiring  only  twenty  rupees  fine;  he  supervised  the  thugyi  (circle 
headman)  who  was  paid  by  commission  on  revenue  collections,  such 
commission  seldom  exceeding  five  rupees  monthly  whereas  a  coolie 
earned  twelve  rupees.  There  were  no  police  stations  outside  the  towns, 
and  little  information  existed  as  to  events  in  the  districts. 

Burmans  and  Talaings  were  so  mixed  that  the  population  was 
homogeneous;  all  assistants  knew  Burmese;  and  the  first  translations 
and  vernacular  text-books  were  printed  at  Moulmein,  where  the 
American  Baptist  Mission  possessed  Burmese  and  Siamese  founts. 
But  education  was  mainly  European,  for  the  climate  was  healthy, 
Moulmein  was  styled  a  sanatorium,  there  was  always  a  European 
regiment  in  the  garrison,  and  the  40,000  townspeople  included  one 
of  the  largest  domiciled  communities  in  India.  Juries  were  prescribed 
for  trials  requiring  over  six  months'  imprisonment,  but  in  practice 
were  empanelled  only  at  sessions.  After  1836  there  was  always  at 
least  one  newspaper  at  Moulmein;  its  columns  were  full  of  per- 
sonalities, and  in  1846  the  commissioner  sentenced  Abreu,  editor  of 
The  Maulmain  Chronicle,  to  two  years'  imprisonment  and  3000  rupees 
fine;  the  judgment  was  immediately  reversed  at  Calcutta.  Officials 
quarrelled  among  themselves  in  interminable  letters,  and,  after 
perusing  some  of  these,  the  government  removed  Durand  from  his 
commissionership,  sent  Major  McLeod,  district  assistant,  Amherst, 
out  of  Tenasserim,  and  transferred  others. 

The  main  industry  lay  in  the  magnificent  forests.  In  1847  a  stafFfrom 
Pembroke  Dockyard  arrived  to  buy  Admiralty  teak,  and  109  ships 


THE  FORESTS  567 

(35,270  tons),  including  a  looo-ton  steam  frigate  for  the  Royal  Navy, 
were  built  at  Moulmein  in  1830-50.  Barely  half  the  fellings  were 
extracted,  yet  the  annual  teak  export  was  12,000  tons.  DrWallichin 
1827  was  the  ft18*  to  ^ft  *he  forests  and  urge  the  need  of  con- 
servation, yet  no  teak  was  planted,  no  check  imposed  on  waste.  There 
was  indeed  a  Superintendent  of  Forests,  1 84 1-8,  but  when  he  asked  for 
power  to  prevent  felling  of  unselected  trees,  the  court  of  directors  replied 
that  such  power  was  not  for  local  officers.  Logs  reaching  Moulmein 
were  taxed  15  per  cent,  ad  valorem;  through  fraud  and  neglect,  three- 
quarters  of  them  escaped  payment  in  1834-44,  and  even  subsequently 
timber  provided  only  18  per  cent,  of  the  total  revenue.  The  timber 
traders— discharged  warrant  officers  and  ship's  mates — never  visited 
the  forests  but  sent  out  Burmans  who  made  the  jungle-folk,  timid 
Karens,  extract  timber  for  little  or  nothing;  the  Karens  burned 
several  forests  to  discourage  such  visitations.  In  1842  better  firms 
appeared  but  as  these  had  the  ear  of  government  the  result  was  to 
accelerate  exploitation — Durand's  removal  placated  Calcutta  firms 
whose  leases  he  had  cancelled.  By  1850  the  forests  were  ruined. 

In  1827,  immediately  on  the  evacuation,  the  Burmese,  despite  the 
Treaty  of  Yandabo,  executed  eleven  circle  headmen  between 
Yandabo  and  Rangoon,  searched  out  every  woman  who  had  lived 
with  the  English  and  every  man  who  had  served  them,  and  wreaked 
vengeance.  The  Talaings  rose,  failed,  and  fled,  30,000  of  them,  into 
the  Amherst  district.  Otherwise,  apart  from  seasonal  labour,  there  was 
little  immigration,  as  for  long  taxation  was  not  lighter,  or  property 
more  secure,  than  in  Pegu,  where  criminal  administration  was 
effective  and  governors,  wishing  to  retain  their  subjects,  now 
requisitioned  less  forced  labour.  The  Talaing  Corps,  which  lasted 
from  1838  to  1848,  was  intended  to  raise  the  Talaings  against  the 
Burmese,  but  failed  because  its  commandant  was  not  a  whole-time 
officer,  and,  in  Broadfoot's  words,  Talaings  as  well  as  Burmans  could 
rise  to  the  highest  offices  in  Ava,  whereas  in  Tenasserim  both  were 
on  low  pay  only  augmented  by  bribes. 

Until  1842  the  village  revenue  demand,  distributed  by  elders,  was 
paid  in  kind;  government  had  no  information  regarding  tenures  or 
crop  yields.  By  1845  money  payment  was  substituted,  and  assessment 
was  on  each  villager's  field,  surveyed  by  the  village  headman; 
reductions  by  72  per  cent,  in  1843-8  left  the  rates  at  four  annas  to 
two  and  a  quarter  rupees  per  acre;  thereafter  cultivation  increased 
and  yielded  37  per  cent,  of  the  total  revenue: 

Total 

Cultivation  revenue 

(acres)  (rupees)  Population 

1826                    ?  240,131  ?  66,000 

1835                    ?  339*370  84,917 

1845                97>5i5  517*034  127,455 

1852               I44>405  570,639  191*476 


568  BURMA,  1782-1852 

Attempts  to  attract  European  planters  by  large  grants  of  land 
failed.  The  difficulty  was  lack  of  population,  for  immigration,  some- 
times amounting  to  thousands  annually,  from  the  Coromandel 
Coast,  was  usually  confined  to  the  towns;  it  began  in  1838  with 
imported  commissariat  labour,  and  increased  in  1843  when  debtor 
slavery  ceased  and  convicts  were  withdrawn  from  private  employ- 
ment. Cattle  were  imported  from  the  Shan  states,  but  the  visits  of 
Dr  Richardson  in  1830,  1834,  1835,  1837  to  Chiengmai  and  Mong 
Nai  and  of  Major  McLeod  in  1837  to  Kenghung,  failed  to  open  up 
general  trade  because,  though  the  people  were  friendly,  jealousy 
between  the  overlords,  Ava  and  Bangkok,  stifled  intercourse. 

The  terrible  system  of  frontier  raids  ceased  in  1826-7  when  Major 
Burney  visited  Bangkok  and  obtained  the  return  of  2000  persons 
whom  the  Siamese  had  enslaved.  Internal  slavery,  abolished  by  the 
great  Act  V  of  1843,  was  usually  of  the  same  mild  type,  debtor  and 
domestic,  as  in  Arakan.  But  in  Tavoy,  noted  for  the  comeliness  of 
its  women,  Muhammadans,  exploiting  ignorance  and  poverty,  bought 
girls  for  the  Moulmein  brothels  and  these  debtor-bonds  were  enforced 
in  English  courts;  under  BlundelPs  rules,  abolished  by  Broadfoot  in 
1844,  brothels  were  recognised,  paying  revenue  in  proportion  to  their 
size.  Liquor  and  opium  licenses  which,  in  spite  of  Chinese  rings, 
yielded  16  per  cent,  of  the  revenue,  were  introduced  in  the  towns 
with  Madras  and  European  garrisons;  Maingy,  after  seeing  the 
effect  on  Burmans  and  Talaings,  regretted  their  introduction. 
Gambling,  also  prohibited  under  native  rule,  was  licensed  until  1834 
when  the  protests  of  the  Buddhist  clergy  prevailed. 

Crime  was  rare  save  on  the  Burmese  frontier.  Burmese  governors 
were  unpaid,  they  suppressed  crime  because  brigandage  was  the 
perquisite  of  their  retinue,  and  the  daily  sight  of  prosperous  Moulmein 
was  too  much  for  the  governor  of  Martaban.  Warnings  having  failed, 
the  commissioner  burned  Martaban  in  1829,  and  gained  several 
years  respite.  But  in  1847-50,  of  thirty-three  traced  dacoities  in  the 
Amherst  district,  twenty-five  were  traced  to  Martaban;  dacoits  came 
in  racing  canoes,  posted  pickets  in  Moulmein  high  street,  looted 
houses  within  two  furlongs  of  the  garrison,  and  vanished  into  the 
darkness.  Until  1844  most  assistants  never  left  their  headquarters, 
revenue  accounts  for  the  whole  year  covered  only  a  single  sheet,  and 
statistics  of  cultivation  and  population  were  rare.  Criminal  law  was 
the  Muhammadan  law  of  Bengal,  but  no  copy  of  it  existed;  civil 
law  was  Burmese,  but  until  Dr  Richardson,  assistant,  translated  and 
printed  it  in  1847,  nobody  knew  what  it  was.  Gaols  were  inefficient, 
and  in  1847  Sleeman  protested  against  thugs  being  transported  to 
Moulmein,  where  they  escaped  at  the  rate  of  one  a  month. 

Irregularities  were  of  a  type  unknown  in  Arakan.  In  1843  Gorbin, 
district  assistant,  Mergui,  misappropriated  grain  revenue  received  in 
kind,  and  his  native  mistress  purchased  girl  slaves  to  weave  cloth  for 


TENASSERIM  ADMINISTRATION  569 

sale.  In  1844  De  la  Condamine,  district  assistant,  Amherst,  drew 
the  pay  of  vacant  clerkships,  and  kept  no  account  of  timber  revenue 
received  in  kind,  while  his  clerks  traded  in  timber  and  usury  with 
"capital  attributed  to  himself  and  Maingy.  In  1848  the  adjutant, 
Talaing  Corps,  recovered  from  his  sepoys  money  lent  them  by  his 
native  mistress.  Captain  Impey,  district  assistant,  Amherst,  submitted 
no  treasury  accounts  for  nine  months,  misappropriated  2 1 ,880  rupees, 
refunded  two-thirds  on  detection  in  1850,  and  disappeared  into  the 
Shan  states. 

Control  from  Calcutta  was  so  slight  that  the  commissioner  might 
have  evolved  a  system  of  indirect  government  which  allowed  native 
institutions  proper  scope.  But  even  had  that  functionary  been  creative, 
such  native  institutions  as  survived  Burmese  misrule  and  Siamese 
devastation  showed  little  vitality.  Freedom  from  Calcutta  thus  ended 
simply  in  an  undeveloped  copy  of  the  non-regulation  model. 


CHAPTER   XXXI 

THE  INDIAN  STATES,   1818-57 

A  HE  period  1818  to  1857  is  important  as  that  in  which  our  relations 
with  the  Indian  states  were  finally  placed  upon  practically  that  basis 
on  which  they  still  rest.  This  policy,  initiated  by  Lord  Wellesley,  but 
abandoned  by  his  successors,  Cornwallis,  Barlow  and  Minto,  was 
revived  by  Lord  Hastings  who  carried  it  on  to  its  logical  conclusion. 
When  Lord  Wellesley  left  India  in  1805  our  military  superiority  had 
been  proved  beyond  question;  the  huge  state  armies,  led  in  great 
measure  by  European  officers,  had  melted  away;  while  a  series  of 
treaties  defined  our  relationship  with  all  the  important  rulers  in 
India.  The  foundations  of  the  system  which  obtains  to  this  day  had 
thus  been  laid,  and  Wellesley  himself  wrote  in  1804: 

A  general  bond  of  connexion  is  now  established  between  the  British  Government 
and  the  principal  states  of  India  on  principles  which  render  it  the  interest  of  every 
state  to  maintain  its  alliance  with  the  British  Government . . .  and  which  secure  to 
every  state  the  unmolested  exercise  of  its  separate  authority  within  the  limits  of  its 
established  dominion,  under  the  general  protection  of  the  British  power.1 

The  earlier  system,  of  treating  the  states  as  if  they  stood  on  an  equal 
footing  with  us,  was  finally  abandoned;  and  our  political,  as  well  as 
our  military  supremacy,  was  specifically  recognised.  It  is,  of  course, 
unquestionable  that  this  supremacy  v/culd  ultimately  have  been 
attained,  probably  only  after  conflict,  but  it  is  also  beyond  doubt, 
that  the  policy  followed  by  Lord  Wellesley  during  the  seven  years 
of  his  office  simplified  its  establishment,  and  shortened  the  period 
required  for  its  attainment. 

Lord  Moira,  afterwards  Marquess  of  Hastings,  landed  in  India  in 
1813,  in  avowed  opposition  to  the  policy  pursued  by  Lord  Wellesley, 
but,  as  he  himself  remarks,  he  soon  changed  his  views.  Writing  in 
1815  he  says:  "It  was  by  preponderance  of  power  that  those  mines  of 
wealth  had  been  acquired  for  the  Company's  treasury,  and  by 
preponderance  of  power  alone  would  they  be  retained".  The  policy 
of  non-interference  with  the  Indian  states  was,  he  saw,  a  futile  policy; 
for  no  highly  civilised  state,  placed  in  the  midst  of  less  civilised  or  less 
developed  states,  can  ever  hope  to  pursue  it  without  disastrous  results. 
In  1817,  four  years  after  his  assumption  of  the  governor-generalship, 
the  Maratha  confederacy  was  again  intriguing  actively  against  us, 
and  Central  India  was  overrun  by  hordes  of  plunderers.  By  May, 
1818,  however,  Sindhia  had  been  forced  to  make  terms,  these  hordes 
had  been  dispersed,  and  Holkar  defeated,  while  the  Peshwa's  power 
had  been  extinguished.  Other  important  Indian  states,  though  in 

1  Dispatch  of  13  July,  1804,  Despatches,  iv,  177. 


SETTLEMENT  OF  1818  571 

no  sense  enthusiastic  on  our  behalf,  had  welcomed  our  change  of 
policy  and  signed  treaties  of  friendship  and  subordinate  alliance  with 
the  Company.  The  British'  Government  thus  became  the  acknow- 
ledged suzerain,  though  the  Moghul  emperor  still  sat  upon  the  throne 
of  Delhi.  A  period  of  reconstruction  now  commenced,  directed  by 
Lord  Hastings  and  carried  out  by  a  group  of  men  whose  names  are 
still  household  words  in  the  areas  in  which  they  worked;  Malcolm 
in  Central  India,  Elphinstone  in  the  Deccan,  Munro  in  Madras,  and 
Metcalfe,  Tod  and  Ochterlony  in  Rajputana. 

The  chief  centre  of  disturbance  had  been  in  Malwa,  the  high  level 
tract  comprising  the  group  of  states  which  now  forms  the  "  Central 
India  Agency",  with  the  addition  of  the  Gwalior  state.  To  under- 
stand the  process  of  reconstruction  initiated  by  Sir  John  Malcolm, 
in  Central  India,  it  is  essential  to  grasp  the  conditions  prevailing  in 
this  tract.  The  territories  of  the  Indian  states  and  estates  in  this  area 
were  then,  and  are  indeed  to  this  day,  mixed  in  inextricable  confusion 
as  regards  their  boundaries,  while  they  are  at  the  same  time  linked 
together  by  political  agreements  which  enormously  complicate 
administrative  procedure.  The  settlement  of  the  great  Maratha 
generals  in  Malwa  at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century  led  to  the 
subjection  of  the  Rajput  landholders,  who  were  ousted  from  the 
greater  part  of  their  possessions,  by  the  formation  of  the  Maratha 
states  of  Gwalior,  Indore,  Dhar  and  Dewas,  such  lands  as  they  were 
allowed  to  retain  being  held  on  a  tributary  or  feudatory  basis.  These 
tributaries  included  the  more  important  Rajput  states  such  as 
Ratlam,  as  well  as  a  large  number  of  small  estate-holders  belonging 
to  the  same  class.  This  subjection  to  Maratha  overlords  had  always 
been  strongly  resented  and  in  early  days  tribute  was  never  paid 
except  under  compulsion.  Disputes,  moreover,  were  continuous  and 
boundaries  were  constantly  changing,  as  one  or  other  party  tem- 
porarily predominated.  During  the  Pindari  War  the  Rajputs  tried 
to  make  all  they  could  out  of  the  disturbed  conditions  prevailing. 
Then  came  our  intervention,  the  rapid  sweeping  aside  of  the  maraud- 
ing hordes  and  the  sudden  imposition  of  peace,  which  resulted  in  the 
crystallisation  of  the  territorial  distribution  as  it  chanced  to  be  at 
that  moment.  The  effect  of  this  sudden  termination  of  hostilities  was 
to  leave  the  whole  of  Malwa  parcelled  out,  in  a  very  haphazard  way, 
among  the  various  owners,  and  the  territorial  patchwork  thus  created 
persists,  in  spite  of  some  adjustments,  to  this  day.  The  territories  of 
the  various  landowners  appear,  indeed,  to  have  been  shaken  out  of 
a  pepper-box,  so  that,  when  travelling  in  this  region,  it  is  difficult  to 
say  whose  property  you  are  traversing. 

When  Sir  John  Malcolm  took  up  the  task  of  settling  Malwa  he 
found  that,  besides  the  payment  of  tribute  demanded  by  the  great 
Maratha  overlords,  the  Rajput  thakurs,  as  the  smaller  landholders  are 
termed,  claimed  certain  payments,  called  tankha,  from  these  same 


572  THE  INDIAN  STATES,  1818-57 

overlords,  payments  which  were  in  origin  a  form  of  blackmail,  paid 
in  order  to  induce  them  to  abstain  from  raiding  and  pilfering.  Those 
who  received  such  payments  were  called  grasias,  or  those  receiving 
a  gras  or  "mouthful".  Owing  to  the  distracted  condition  of  their 
own  administrations,  after  the  late  struggle,  the  Maratha  rulers  were 
quite  incapable  of  maintaining  order  or  enforcing  payment  of  their 
'demands  and,  in  consequence,  welcomed  the  assistance  offered  by 
us  in  asserting  their  claims,  and  "unfeignedly  resorted  to  us  for 
aid".* 

Malcolm  at  once  took  up  the  task  of  adjusting  these  claims  and 
while  securing  to  the  Maratha  rulers  the  tribute  due  to  them  also 
secured  to  their  tributaries  the  tankha  they  demanded,  at  the  same 
time  guaranteeing  them  in  the  permanent  possession  of  the  land  they 
then  held,  so  long  as  they  kept  the  peace  and  carried  out  the  con- 
ditions in  their  sanads,  or  deeds  of  possession.  These  agreements  were 
mediated  by  Sir  John  between  the  Maratha  overlord  and  the  Rajput 
ruler  or  thakur.  They  were  drawn  up  in  the  names  of  the  Maratha 
suzerain  and  his  Rajput  feudatory  and  bore  the  overlord's  seal,  but 
carried  in  addition  an  endorsement,  signed  by  Sir  John  or  one  of  his 
assistants,  usually  over  the  words  "Confirmed  and  guaranteed  by 
the  British  Government". 

The  basis  on  which  these  agreements  were  drawn  up  is  thus 
enunciated  by  Lord  Hastings.  It  was,  he  says,  therefore, 

easy,  when  no  acknowledged  usages  stood  in  the  way,  to  establish  principles  between 
the  sovereign  and  the  subject  advantageous  to  both,  giving  these  principles  a 
defined  line  of  practical  application,  a  departure  from  which  would  afford  to 
either  party  a  right  of  claiming  the  intervention  of  our  paramount  power.  While 
the  Sovereign  had  his  legitimate  authority  and  his  due  revenue  insured  to  him, 
the  subject  was  protected  against  exaction  and  tyrannical  outrage.8 

The  effect  of  these  agreements  was  immediate  and  the  most 
distracted  population  in  India  became  in  a  few  months  a  compara- 
tively law-abiding  community.  It  may  be  of  interest,  however,  to 
mention  briefly  the  subsequent  history  of  the  "guarantee"  system. 
As  has  been  pointed  out  above,  the  agreements  thus  "guaranteed" 
were  made  out  as  between  the  Maratha  ruler  and  his  feudatory,  the 
British  Government  merely  undertaking  to  see  that  each  side  carried 
out  its  part,  intervening  only  if  the  conditions  were  disregarded. 
Actually,  however,  the  confusion  which  existed  for  many  years  after 
peace  was  introduced  prevented  the  Maratha  overlords  from  exer- 
cising any  real  supervision  and,  in  consequence,  the  Rajput  feudatories 
fell  directly  under  the  control  of  the  British  residents  and  political 
agents  in  a  way  never  contemplated  by  Lord  Hastings,  or  in  any 
sense  warranted  by  the  terms  of  the  sanads.  They,  in  fact,  were  treated 
by  these  officers  as  if  in  all  respects  under  their  direct  charge,  and 
not  simply  as  regarded  adherence  to  the  conditions  laid  down  in  the 

1  Hastings,  Summary,  p.  48.  *  Idem. 


CENTRAL  INDIA  573 

agreements.  A  form  of  political  practice  thus  grew  up  which  became 
very  galling  to  the  Maratha  overlords,  and  especially  to  the  Gwalior 
durbar,  in  which  state  by  far  the  greater  number  of  "guaranteed 
thakurs"  held  their  estates.  Remonstrances  were  continually  made 
and  a  good  deal  of  irritation  was  displayed  until  finally  in  1921  the 
government  of  India  admitted  the  correctness  of  the  Gwalior  durbar's 
contentions.  The  thakurs  were  then  officially  informed  by  the  viceroy, 
in  a  special  durbar  held  at  Delhi  on  14  March,  1921,  that  they  would 
in  future  be  wholly  under  the  control  of  the  Gwalior  state,  which 
would  exercise  full  suzerainty  over  them,  the  government  of  India, 
however,  reserving  the  right  to  intervene  should  the  conditions  of  the 
"guarantee"  be  in  any  way  disregarded  by  either  side. 

Two  Musulman  states  exist  in  the  same  area,  Bhopal  and  Jaora. 
The  former,  which  had  loyally  supported  us  since  1778,  was  rewarded 
with  a  grant  of  territory,  while  Jaora  was  created  a  separate  entity 
by  the  twelfth  article  of  the  Treaty  of  Mandasor1  made  with  Holkar, 
certain  lands  in  that  state  being  granted  on  service  conditions  to 
Ghafur  Khan,  son-in-law  of  Amir  Khan,  nawab  of  Tonk,  in  return 
for  assistance  rendered  to  Sir  John  Malcolm, 

Of  the  two  important  Maratha  states,  Gwalior  and  Indore,  Sindhia 
had  very  reluctantly  come  to  terms  in  1817,  while  Holkar,  defeated 
in  the  battle  of  Mahidpur  (December,  1817),  had  been  obliged  to 
accept  the  terms  offered  to  him. 

In  Rajputana  the  process  of  settlement  was  far  simpler,  as  the 
Marathas,  though  claiming  tribute  from  the  rajas,  had  never  settled 
in  that  area  which,  being  mainly  arid  and  uninviting  in  comparison 
with  Malwa  and  the  Deccan,  did  not  attract  them  as  a  place  of 
residence.  Moreover,  the  states  were  fewer,  larger  and  more  compact 
in  form  and  more  homogeneous  in  character. 

The  conditions  obtaining  in  each  state  were  carefully  examined, 
and  arrangements  made  in  accordance  with  those  conditions. 
Considerable  objections  were  raised  at  the  time  to  our  assuming  this 
responsibility,  the  freeing  of  the  Rajput  lands  from  marauding  bands 
being  considered  the  utmost  we  should  engage  to  do  for  them,  while 
our  undertaking  to  see  that  the  tribute  claimed  by  the  Marathas  was 
punctually  paid  was  held  to  be  inconsistent  with  our  general  policy 
and  indefensible  in  principle,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  this  tribute  was 
nothing  but  blackmail  levied  by  force,  without  any  real  overlordship 
to  support  the  claim.  The  alternative  would  have  been  to  leave  these 
states  to  settle  their  own  disputes  on  the  Utopian  theory  of  non- 
interference, which  had  invariably  plunged  them  in  disaster.  The 
pages  of  Tod  but  too  clearly  show  how  hereditary  jealousies,  family 
feuds,  not  to  mention  ordinary  motives  of  ambition  and  avarice,  would 
have  made  a  peaceful  settlement  impossible  except  under  the  aegis 

1  Aitchison,  Treaties,  rv,  199. 


574  THE  INDIAN  STATES,  1818-57 

of  our  strong  controlling  authority.  The  result  of  Lord  Hastings's 
policy  fully  justified  its  adoption. 

This  payment  of  tribute  to  the  Marathas  was  continued  on  the 
grounds  that  we  accepted  the  status  quo  at  the  time  when  we  first 
entered  Rajputana  and  Central  India,  as  we  could  have  no  concern 
with  conditions  obtaining  before  the  war.  Adherence  to  this  principle 
had  also  insured  the  co-operation  of  the  Marathas  and  facilitated 
arrangements  at  the  outset  of  the  campaign.  Payment  of  tribute  was 
in  future  made  through  the  British  authorities.  Secondly  the  payment 
of  the  tribute  was  a  recognised  mark  of  fealty,  exacted  by  all  suzerains, 
including  the  Moghul  emperor,  whose  place  we  had  taken,  while  it 
was  also  a  fair  return  for  the  obligations  we  had  assumed  in  protecting 
the  states  from  aggression:  the  amount,  moreover,  was  henceforth 
fixed  in  perpetuity  and  this,  together  with  the  financial  advantages  of 
peace,  rendered  these  payments  in  no  way  burdensome.  At  the  same 
time  each  state  was  recognised  as  a  separate  unit,  independent 
internally  but  prohibited  from  forming  any  relations  with  another 
state  in  India  or  any  outside  power.  The  settlement  was  effected  without 
difficulty  except  in  Jaipur  where  internal  dissensions  were  rife. 

Apart  from  these  two  great  groups  of  states  in  Rajputana  and 
Central  India  there  remained  the  Peshwa,  the  nominal  head  of  the 
Maratha  confederacy,  and  the  more  important  states  of  Nagpur, 
Satara,  Mysore,  Oudh,  Hyderabad,  Baroda,  Travancore  and  Cochin. 

After  very  careful  consideration  Lord  Hastings  decided 

in  favour  of  the  total  expulsion  of  Baji  Rao  from  the  Dekhan,  the  perpetual  ex- 
clusion of  the  family  from  any  share  of  influence  or  dominion  and  the  annihilation 
of  the  Peshwa's  name  and  authority  for  ever. 

This  was  an  important  step,  as  it  removed  even  the  nominal  head  of 
the  Maratha  confederacy.  It  was,  moreover,  thoroughly  justified  by 
Baji  Rao's  conduct.  By  nature  timid,  indolent,  suspicious,  and  fond 
of  low  companions,  Baji  Rao  had  proved  himself  uniformly  untrust- 
worthy. He  had  never  adhered  to  the  Treaty  of  Bassein  (1802), 
sending  out  his  agents  to  intrigue  against  us  in  every  state  that  would 
receive  them.  The  lesson  was  sharp  but  salutary. 

In  Nagpur  the  crimes  and  perfidy  of  Appa  Sahib  met  with  their  just 
reward  in  his  deposition  and  the  confiscation  of  the  Sagar  and  Narbada 
districts  of  his  state.  Later  on,  in  1853,  when  Lord  Dalhousie  was 
governor-general,  Nagpur  was  finally  extinguished,  for  lack  of  direct 
heirs,  and  became  the  nucleus  of  the  present  Central  Provinces. 

The  effete  descendant  of  Sivaji  at  Satara  was,  as  a  concession  to 
Maratha  sentiment,  given  a  small  estate  round  his  hereditary  capital.1 
In  1848,  however,  Lord  Dalhousie  abolished  the  arrangement. 

The  Mysore  state,  restored  to  its  Hindu  rulers  in  1 799,  on  the  defeat 
of  Tipu  Sultan,  supported  us  with  troops  in  the  Pindari  War.  But 
the  raja  was  a  spendthrift  and  destitute  of  ability. 

1  Parliamentary  Papers,  1847-8,  XLVHI,  327-31. 


OUDH  575 

The  state  of  Oudh  calls  for  more  detailed  notice.  Lord  Hastings, 
whose  experience  in  England  with  the  prince  regent  had,  as  it  was 
said,  inclined  him  to  "sympathise  with  royalty  in  distress, "  treated  the 
nawab  wazir  with  unusual  consideration.  Nawab  Sa'adat'Ali,  who,  by 
severe  exactions  and  parsimonious  expenditure,  had  amassed  a  hoard 
of  thirteen  millions  sterling  in  eleven  years,  was  averse  to  all  reforms, 
badly  as  his  administration  needed  them,  but  Lord  Hastings  abstained 
from  pressing  him.  In  July,  1814,  Sa'adat  'Ali  died  and  was  succeeded 
by  his  son  Haidar-ud-din  Ghazi.  The  new  wazir  interviewed  the 
governor-general  at  Cawnpore  in  October,  1814,  and,  in  considera- 
tion of  the  sympathetic  attitude  of  Lord  Hastings,  and  his  own 
anxiety  regarding  a  Gurkha  invasion  across  his  northern  border,  was 
induced  to  lend  the  British  Government  a  crore  (£1,000,000)  of 
rupees,  for  the  prosecution  of  the  war  against  Nepal.  When  this  was 
expended  by  the  governor-general's  council  on  other  objects  a  second 
crore  was  lent,  but  only  under  great  pressure. 

Differences  arose  between  the  Resident  and  the  nawab  on  the 
subject  of  administrative  abuses,  but  Lord  Hastings  recalled  his 
officer  and  left  the  nawab  to  his  own  devices.  The  inevitable  result 
of  non-interference  followed,  the  administration  rapidly  going  from 
bad  to  worse.  In  1818,  however,  Lord  Hastings,  somewhat  incon- 
sistently, urged  the  nawab  to  assume  the  title  of  king,  and  so  formally 
break  his  allegiance  to  the  emperor  of  Delhi,  to  whom  his  family  owed 
its  elevation.  In  the  governor-general's  opinion  this  act  would 
benefit  the  British  Government  by  causing  a  division  between  these 
important  leaders  of  the  Muhammadan  community.  The  change 
was,  however,  regarded  with  the  greatest  contempt  and  aversion  by 
the  Indian  princes  and  unfavourably  contrasted  with  the  conduct  of 
the  Nizam  of  Hyderabad  who  had  refused  to  accede  to  a  similar 
suggestion  made  to  him,  as  being  an  act  of  rebellion  against  the 
emperor.  It  also  met  with  the  disapproval  of  all  experienced  British 
officials,  Sir  John  Malcolm  freely  expressing  the  opinion  that  it  was 
most  impolitic  and  a  deliberate  reversal  of  our  previously  well- 
considered  treatment  of  the  imperial  house  of  Taimur,  and  very  likely 
to  nullify  the  sentiments  of  gratitude  entertained  for  us  by  the  princes 
of  this  family,  owing  to  our  generous  assistance  in  their  distress.  From 
his  subsequent  behaviour  it  is  clear  that  our  support  of  his  assumption 
of  this  new  honour  evoked  no  sense  of  gratitude  in  the  newly-created 
king. 

The  Baroda  state,  which  had  benefited  materially  by  the  Treaty 
of  Poona  (1817)  and  gained  certain  acquisitions  of  territory  in  1818, 
lost  its  minister,  Fateh  Singh,  who  had  long  managed  its  affairs  during 
the  lifetime  of  the  imbecile  Anand  Rao  Gaekwad.  A  new  treaty  was 
made  in  1820,  and  no  difficulty  was  experienced  in  connection  with 
this  state. 

Serious  trouble  soon  arose  in  Hyderabad.  The  Nizam  and  his 


576  THE  INDIAN  STATES,  1818-57 

minister  Munir-ul-mulk  took  no  interest  in  the  administration,  which 
was  left  in  the  hands  of  a  Hindu,  Chandu  Lai.  He  was  capable  but 
extravagant,  his  extravagance  being  left  unchecked  by  the  Resident. 
The  Nizam's  sons,  moreover,  were  entirely  out  of  hand  and  committed 
many  atrocities.   Chandu  Lai  was  at  length  forced  to  borrow  and 
contracted  a  heavy  debt  with  Palmer  and  Co.,  a  British  firm  in 
Hyderabad.    By  the  act  of  I7961  no  European  could  enter  into 
financial  transactions  with  an  Indian  prince  without  the  express 
sanction  of  the  governor-general.  It  was  understood  that  Palmer  and 
Co.  were  prepared  to  lend  money  at  a  lower  rate  of  interest  than 
Indian  bankers  and,  therefore,  in  1816,  Lord  Hastings  sanctioned 
the  transaction  on  the  understanding  that  his  government  would 
not  be  responsible  for  the  repayment  of  any  sums  lent.  In  1820,  when 
sanction  for  a  further  sum  was  asked  for,  the  directors  demurred, 
became  suspicious  of  these  loans  and  cancelled  permission  for  them.2 
Sir  Charles  Metcalfe,  who  had  succeeded  Mr  Russell  as  Resident, 
went  very  carefully  into  the  matter  and  found  that  nearly  a  million 
sterling  had  been  lent  and  then  wasted  in  highly  irregular  expendi- 
ture, including  even  the  grant  of  pensions  to  members  of  the  firm, 
while  as  much  as  24  per  cent,  was  being  charged  as  interest.   Lord 
Hastings,  who  had  relied  on  the  former  Resident's  recommendation 
and  was  entirely  ignorant  of  the  details  of  the  transactions,  no  sooner 
learned  the  truth  than  he  condemned  the  whole  arrangement.3 
Unfortunately  an  entirely  unjustifiable  colour  was  placed  on  the 
affair  because  one  of  the  partners  in  Palmer  and  Co.  was  married  to 
Lord  Hastings's  ward,  for  whom  he  had  a  great  affection.  The  corre- 
spondence on  the  subject  with  the  directors  shows  that,  though  they 
condemned   the  policy  followed,   they  exonerated   the  governor- 
general.4  But  Lord  Hastings,  disgusted  with  the  implied  censure, 
resigned  in  January,  1823. 

Except  in  Cutch,  where  we  had  to  intervene  on  account  of  a  dispute 
over  the  succession,  no  other  state  gave  cause  for  interference. 

To  summarise  Lord  Hastings's  work.  His  greatest  claim  rests  upon 
the  pacification  and  opening  out  of  all  India  (except  the  Panjab)  to 
British  access,  for  Central  India,  Rajputana  and  the  Deccan  had,  to 
all  intents  and  purposes,  remained  hitherto  sealed  areas  to  us,  the 
Marathas  interposing  a  compact  barrier  between  the  three  presi- 
dencies. To  Lord  Hastings  must  be  assigned,  therefore,  credit  for  the 
consolidation  of  our  empire,  which  completed  the  work  of  Lord 
Wellesley.  This  policy  he  had  pursued  indomitably  in  spite  of  great 
opposition  from  the  directors.  Arriving  in  India  to  find  marauding 

1  Act  37,  Geo.  Ill,  Gap.  142,  S.  28. 

8  Letter  to  Bengal,  24  May,  1820,  Hyderabad  Papers,  p.  6. 

8  Letter  of  governor-general  to  Resident,  13  September,  1822,  Hyderabad  Papers,  p.  186* 

4  Letter  from  Palmer  and  Co.,  19  May,  1820,  to  Resident,  and  letters  from  directors, 
24  May  and  16  December,  1820,  Hyderabad  Papers,  pp.  42  and  70.  Mill  and  Wilson,  History, 
vra,  344-57. 


BHARATPUR  577 

bands  sweeping  across  Central  India,  Nepal  arrogant,  the  Marathas 
conspiring  against  us  and  the  Rajput  states  divided  by  internal  feuds 
and  depressed  under  the  Maratha  yoke,  he  left  India,  with  Nepal 
an  ally,  and  one  that  has  never  since  receded  from  that  position,  the 
Maratha  power  broken,  Central  India  pacified  and  self-respect 
restored  to  the  states  of  Rajputana.  Above  all  it  is  to  Lord  Hastings 
that  we  owe  the  founding  of  that  policy  of  partnership  and  friendly 
co-operation  which  now  determines  the  relations  of  the  government 
of  India  with  the  Indian  states. 

Lord  Amherst  (1823-8),  who  succeeded  Hastings,  initiated  no 
new  policy  and  most  of  his  time  was  occupied  by  the  war  with  Burma. 
This  war  did,  however,  react  on  the  states,  the  view  that  our  downfall 
was  near  being  freely  circulated.  As  a  result  of  this  some  disturbances 
took  place  in  Alwar,  in  the  Sondhwada  tract  of  Central  India,  and 
at  Bharatpur. 

The  Bharatpur  disturbance  alone  was  important.  In  1823  Sir 
David  Ochterlony  had  sanctioned  the  succession  to  the  Bharatpur 
gaddi  of  Raja  Baldeo  Singh,  a  minor.  His  cousin,  Durjan  Sal,  opposed 
him  and  Sir  David  ordered  troops  to  move  from  Delhi  to  support  his 
nominee.  But  Lord  Amherst,  who  was  very  nervous  about  the  effect 
of  a  Burmese  War,  countermanded  these  orders,  denouncing  the 
Resident's  action  as  premature  and  enunciating  the  principle  that  the 
mere  fact  of  recognising  Baldeo  Singh  during  his  father's  lifetime 
imposed  no  obligation  on  our  government  to  support  him  against  the 
wishes  of  his  subjects.  Ochterlony,  considering  this  as  a  censure  on 
his  conduct,  resigned,  dying  not  long  after.  He  was  succeeded  by 
Sir  Charles  Metcalfe,  who  soon  proved  that  Durjan  Sal  was,  in  fact, 
plotting  against  us  with  the  neighbouring  Rajput  and  Maratha  states, 
and  he  pointed  out  the  impolicy  of  allowing  a  small  unimportant 
state  to  flout  the  paramount  power.1  On  this,  troops  were  sent  up 
under  the  commander-in-chief,  Lord  Combermere,  and  after  a 
desperate  resistance  the  Bharatpur  fort  was  captured  on  1 8  January, 
1826.  Durjan  Sal  was  deported. 

When,  in  July,  1828,  Lord  William  Cavendish-Bentinck  succeeded 
Lord  Amherst,  the  inevitable  reaction  had  set  in  in  England,  and 
Bentinck  came  out  with  instructions  to  revert  to  the  fatal  non- 
interference policy  of  Cornwallis  and  Barlow,  a  policy  already,  in 
the  last  thirty  years,  conclusively  proved  to  be  disastrous  in  its  results. 
Once  more,  the  fallacy  of  adhering  to  this  policy  was  proved  and  the 
governor-general  was  driven  to  interfere  far  more  drastically  than 
he  would  have  had  to  do  had  steps  been  taken  in  time. 

The  administration  in  Hyderabad  and  Oudh  continued  to  de- 
teriorate. In  Indore  the  death  of  Tantia  Jogh,  the  minister  who  had 
introduced  a  regular  administration  into  that  state,  left  its  control 

1  Kayc,  Ufe  of  Metcalfe >  n,  140. 
cm  v  37 


578  THE  INDIAN  STATES,  1818-57 

in  the  weak  hands  of  Maharaja  Malhar  Rao,  and  disturbances  at 
once  commenced.  In  Gwalior  the  death  of  Daulat  Rao  Sindhia  in 
1827,  and  the  succession  of  the  youthful  Jankoji  Rao,  led  to  the  for- 
mation of  antagonistic  parties  and  the  fomentation  of  endless  intrigues. 
Bentinck  visited  the  states  and  announced  his  support  of  the  young 
maharaja,  but  his  remonstrances  had  no  effect  in  the  face  of  the 
regent  maharani  Baiza  Bai's  ill-advised  policy,  and  troubles  continued 
to  augment  till  they  led  to  the  denouement  of  1843.  The  Supreme 
Government,  however,  contented  itself  with  enunciating  the  policy 
that  it  was  immaterial  to  it  who  held  the  reins  of  power  in  a  state, 
provided  that  hostilities  did  not  break  out. 

The  Gaekwad  of  Baroda  had  become  openly  hostile,  while  the 
Rajputana  states,  left  wholly  to  their  own  devices,  were  in  a  condition 
of  ferment,  the  good  work  done  by  Tod  and  his  colleagues  being 
rapidly  undone.  Finally,  attention  was  forcibly  drawn  to  the  condi- 
tions obtaining  in  this  tract  by  an  attack  at  Jaipur  on  the  Resident 
and  his  assistant,  in  which  the  former  was  wounded  and  the  latter 
killed.  This  actually  took  place  just  after  Bentinck  had  embarked 
for  England  in  1835.  In  Mysore  the  governor-general  was  obliged 
to  take  over  the  administration  owing  to  the  incompetence  and 
extravagance  of  Raja  Krishna  Udaiyar  and  the  consequent  outbreak 
of  disturbances.  The  administration  remained  in  our  hands  until 
1881. 

Some  absorption  of  state  territory  also  took  place.  The  raja  of 
Jaintia  in  Assam  sacrificed  three  British  Indian  subjects  to  the  goddess 
Kali,  for  which  act  his  lands  were  annexed,  while  those  of  the  raja 
of  Cachar,  in  the  same  province,  were  taken  over  for  gross  malad- 
ministration. Coorg,  near  Mysore,  where  the  raja  openly  declared 
his  hostility  towards  us  and  plotted  to  seize  the  station  of  Bangalore, 
while  at  the  same  time  murdering  his  relatives  wholesale,  was  also 
annexed. 

Bentinck  handed  over  temporary  charge  to  Sir  Charles  Metcalfe, 
who  acted  as  governor-general  until  the  arrival  of  Lord  Auckland  in 
March,  1836. 

Most  of  Lord  Auckland's  energies  were  taken  up  by  the  Afghan 
War  and  he  devoted  little  attention  to  the  states. 

However,  when  the  debauchee  king  of  Oudh  died  in  1837,  advan- 
tage of  this  w?is  taken  to  conclude  a  new  treaty,  further  mention  of 
which  is  made  below. 

The  raja  of  Satara,  to  whom  Lord  Hastings  had  given  a  small  area 
in  1816,  was  deposed  for  intriguing,  his  brother  being  elevated  to 
the  gaddi  in  his  place.1  The  territory  of  the  nawab  of  Karaul,  in 
Madras,  was  annexed  for  attempting  to  make  war. 

Lord  Ellenborough  succeeded  as  governor-general  in  1842.  Only 
one  case  of  importance  arose  in  connection  with  an  Indian  state,  but 
1  Parliamentary  Papers,  1844,  xxxvz,  351-453. 


GWALIOR  579 

that  was  of  the  first  importance.  The  troubles  in  the  Gwalior  state, 
referred  to  in  Bentinck's  time,  had  continued  to  increase  and  now 
came  to  a  head.  Jankoji  Rao  Sindhia  died  in  1843,  to  be  succeeded 
by  an  adopted  son,  a  minor,  Jayaji  Rao.  Intrigues  multiplied  and 
the  army,  some  40,000  strong,  became  all  powerful.  The  minority  was 
in  the  hands  of  Krishna  Rao  Kadam,  the  Mama  Sahib,  or  maternal 
uncle  of  the  late  ruler.  He  was  opposed  to  Dada  Khasgi-wala  (the 
administrator  of  the  family  estates  of  the  maharani),  who  succeeded 
in  engineering  his  downfall.  Dada  was,  indeed,  expelled  from  the 
state  on  the  demand  of  the  governor-general,  but  this  step  failed  to 
put  an  end  to  the  intrigues. 

Lord  Ellenborough's  remonstrance  fell  mainly  on  deaf  ears,  while 
the  few  sardars  who  were  prepared  to  assist  us  in  restoring  order  were 
powerless  in  the  face  of  the  army,  which  had  complete  control  of 
affairs.  The  governor-general,  therefore,  decided  to  act  and  accom- 
panied by  the  commander-in-chief,  Sir  Hugh  Gough,  crossed  the 
Chambal  and  advanced  on  Gwalior.  To  their  surprise  (for  no  proper 
reconnaissance  had  been  made)  the  British  troops  suddenly  found 
themselves  face  to  face  with  the  state  forces,  and  after  two  simul- 
taneous battles  at  Maharajpur  and  Panniar,  the  state  army  was 
broken  up.1  A  fresh  treaty  was  made  and  a  council  of  regency 
appointed  to  conduct  affairs  during  the  minority  of  the  maharaja, 
then  nine  years  old.  Lord  Ellenborough's  action  in  the  Gwalior  case 
was  the  object  of  much  criticism,  and  the  main  reason  for  his  recall. 
But  whatever  criticism  may  be  levelled  at  his  methods,  there  can  be 
no  doubt  as  to  the  correctness  of  the  policy  pursued.  When  he  landed 
in  India,  Lord  EUenborough  inherited,  as  a  legacy  from  his  pre- 
decessor, the  Afghan  War.  In  addition,  the  assembly  of  a  menacing 
army  of  Sikhs,  some  70,000  strong,  just  across  the  Satlej  river,  made 
him  nervous,  and  he  felt  that  it  would  be  courting  disaster  to  leave 
a  hostile,  undisciplined  force  in  his  rear,  close  to  the  important  town 
of  Agra,  especially  in  view  of  the  weakness  of  our  own  army.2  The 
best  reply  to  the  strictures  levelled  at  him  is  to  be  found  in  his  own 
letter  to  Lord  Ripon,  written  on  receiving  the  news  of  his  recall.8 
He  refers  to  the  criticism  passed  on  him  by  the  court  of  directors  in 
which  his  conduct  was  stigmatised  as  "wanting  in  decision  and 
inconsistent  with  itself",  and  says  in  reply,  that  he  is  unable  to 
controvert  this  opinion  because  he  has  not  "the  remotest  idea  to 
what  supposed  facts  it  can  possibly  refer".  He  then  turns  to  the  two 
objections  raised  by  the  court,  firstly  that  he  should  have  supported 
the  regent,  who  was  appointed  with  our  approval,  and  secondly  that 
he  should  not  have  crossed  the  Chambal  river  against  the  expressed 
wishes  of  the  maharani  and  the  sardars  of  the  states.  The  Mama  Sahib 
(the  regent),  he  points  out,  was  offered  military  support  but  refused 

1  Calcutta  Review,  1844,  T,  535.  '  Parliamentary  Papers,  loc.  cit.  pp.  143-344. 

*  Law,  India  under  Lord  EUenborough,  p.  28. 

37-2 


58o  THE  INDIAN  STATES,  1818-57 

it,  and,  when  his  fall  came,  it  was  so  sudden  as  to  preclude  any 
possibility  of  such  assistance  reaching  him.  On  19  May  (1843)  he 
was  in  full  control  of  the  administration,  on  the  2ist  he  was  removed 
from  the  regency  and  by  5  June  had  left  Gwalior,  a  fugitive.  It 
would,  moreover,  have  been  impossible  to  carry  out  military  opera- 
tions at  the  end  of  May,  with  the  rains  imminent  and  many  streams 
to  cross,  including  the  great  Chambal  river. 

With  regard  to  the  second  point,  the  crossing  of  the  Chambal  in 
December  against  the  wishes  of  the  durbar,  he  remarks  that  at  that 
season  the  winter  rains  were  expected  which  would  have  made  the 
river  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  cross;  provisions  were  not  obtain- 
able for  the  troops  at  his  encampment;  while  the  deep  ravines  which 
surrounded  his  position  made  it  dangerous.  To  have  withdrawn  the 
troops  would  have  led  to  an  immediate  cessation  of  all  negotiations, 
as  the  Gwalior  army,  which  was  de  facto  ruler  of  the  state,  would 
never  have  submitted  quietly  to  disbandment,  even  if  the  durbar  had 
really  intended  to  assist  us.  The  court's  view  was,  he  notes,  too 
limited,  in  regarding 

the  movement  as  an  insulated  transaction,  which  with  an  army  in  the  field  the 
Governor-General  could  deal  with  at  his  leisure. ...  It  should  rather  be  considered 
as  a  movement  upon  a  field  of  battle  extending  from  Scinde  through  the  Punjab 
even  to  the  frontiers  of  Nepaul. 

Delay  in  dealing  with  the  situation  would  have  induced  the  Sikhs  to 
advance,  and  to  have  left  a  hostile  force  of  40,000  men  within  a  few 
marches  of  Agra  would  have  been  the  height  of  folly.  He  concludes 
by  saying  that  no  negotiations  would  ever  have  been  effected  without 
the  presence  of  a  force  and  it  had  always  been  apprehended  that  its 
use  would  be  necessary. 

The  weak  point  in  Lord  Ellenborough's  procedure  was  his  reliance 
on  the  Treaty  of  Burhanpur,  *  of  1 804,  which,  though  never  denounced, 
had  been  objected  to  by  Lord  Cornwallis,  and  treated  as  a  dead 
letter  when  new  compacts  were  made  with  Gwalior  in  1805  and  1817. 
By  article  6  of  this  treaty  we  undertook  to  support  the  maharaja, 
should  necessity  arise,  with  a  subsidiary  force;  and  the  governor- 
general,  in  view  of  the  maharaja's  youth,  construed  the  disturbances 
of  1843  as  falling  under  the  spirit  of  this  article. 

In  July,  1844,  Lord  Ellenborough  was  recalled  and  Sir  Henry 
Hardinge  succeeded  him.  The  Sikh  War  engaged  most  of  the  governor* 
general's  attention  but  he  visited  the  king  of  Oudh  in  a  fruitless 
endeavour  to  induce  him  to  overhaul  his  administration,  informing 
him  that  unless  reforms  were  introduced  at  an  early  date,  the  British 
Government  would  be  obliged  to  take  over  the  state.  The  warning, 
however,  fell  on  deaf  ears.  Hardinge  also  urged  the  abolition  of 
sati  in  the  Indian  states,  following  the  lines  of  Lord  W.  Bentinck's 
enactment  in  British  India. 

1  Aitchison,  op.  tit.  iv,  53;  Pcalkamentary  Papers,  fa.  cit.  p.  146. 


SATARA  581 

In  January,  1848,  Lord  Dalhousie  assumed  the  governor-general-* 
ship.  His  name  is,  even  now,  apt  to  be  invidiously  coupled  with  the 
so-called  "annexation  policy'*  in  connection  with  the  Indian  states. 
But,  indeed,  in  all  probability,  no  criticism  would  have  been  roused 
by  his  action  had  not  the  Mutiny,  following  so  closely  on  his  retire- 
ment, called  for  a  scapegoat. 

The  cases  on  which  this  adverse  criticism  is  mainly  based  are  the 
absorption  of  Satara  (1848);  Nagpur  (1853);  Jhansi  (1854)  and 
Oudh  (1856).  There  were  also  some  other  but  less  important  in- 
stances. Of  all  these  only  that  of  Oudh  was  strictly  speaking  a  case 
of  deliberate  annexation;  in  every  other  case  Lord  Dalhousie  based 
his  decisions  on  the  fact  that  no  direct  heir  existed  to  inherit  the  state, 
which  was,  moreover,  "dependent",  that  is  created  by  ourselves  or 
held  on  a  subordinate  tenure.  In  each  case,  also,  a  decision  was  only 
arrived  at  after  infinite  pains  had  been  taken  to  ascertain  the  facts, 
and  was  invariably  carried  out  with  the  full  approbation  of  the  court 
of  directors. 

The  Satara  state  was  created  by  Lord  Hastings  in  1818,  the  treaty 
on  which  it  rested  (iSig)1  containing  no  clause  conferring  the  right 
of  adoption,  while  Sir  James  Rivett-Carnac  in  installing  the  raja 
had  warned  him  that,  being  childless  and  no  longer  young,  the 
state  would  lapse  at  his  death,  unless  as  a  mark  of  special  favour 
he  was  permitted  to  adopt  a  successor.  Lord  Dalhousie  left  no  stone 
unturned  to  arrive  at  a  just  decision;  no  argument  for  or  against 
adoption  escaped  his  scrutiny.  His  policy  was  based  on  the  well- 
established  Hindu  doctrine,  still  followed  by  the  ruling  princes  of 
India,  which  denies  the  right  of  succession  by  adoption  in  a  sub- 
ordinate state  or  estate  unless  the  previous  sanction  of  the  suzerain 
has  been  obtained,  a  rule  applying  equally  to  old-established  or 
recently-created  holdings.  Thus,  in  Central  India  it  is  followed  by  the 
big  Maratha  durbars  with  respect  to  Rajput  feudatories,  who  were 
established  much  earlier  than  their  masters.  This  permission  to  adopt 
must  in  every  case  be  given  by  the  suzerain  before  the  ceremony 
of  adoption  is  carried  out,  otherwise  the  adoption  is  not  legal.  On 
the  other  hand  it  is  not,  in  Indian  states,  customary  to  enforce  an 
escheat,  so  that  the  actual  absorption  of  an  entire  holding  is  very 
rare,  although  the  terms  of  the  tenure  are  often  modified  by  the  area 
being  reduced,  the  tribute  raised  or  some  new  conditions  imposed. 
A  succession  fee  called  nazarana  is  invariably  levied,  amounting  often 
to  one  year's  revenue  or  even  more. 

This  well-known  principle  was  disregarded  by  the  raja  of  Satara, 
who,  just  before  he  died,  in  1848,  adopted  a  son  without  informing 
the  British  Resident  or  obtaining  the  permission  of  the  governor- 
general.  Hence  Lord  Dalhousie  would  have  been  fully  within  his 
rights  in  ordering  escheat,  simply  on  the  basis  of  this  omission, 

1  Parliamentary  Papers,  1849,  xxxix,  267. 


582  THE  INDIAN  STATES,  1818-57 

-especially  as  the  court  of  directors  had,  in  1841,  enunciated  the 
principle,  that  the  right  to  political  succession  was  an  indulgence 
which  should  be  the  exception  and  not  the  rule,  and  be  granted  only 
as  a  mark  of  special  favour  and  approbation,  adding  that  the  Com- 
pany should  "persevere  in  the  one  clear  and  direct  course  of  aban- 
doning no  just  and  honourable  accession  of  territory  or  revenue, 
while  all  existing  claims  of  right  are  at  the  same  time  scrupulously 
respected".1 

Lord  Dalhousie  consulted  all  his  most  experienced  colleagues  and 
found  that  he  was  supported  by  the  majority  of  them  in  refusing  to 
recognise  the  adoption.  But  before  passing  orders  he  referred  the 
case  to  the  court,  which  agreed  with  his  view,  as  "being  in  accordance 
with  the  general  law  and  custom  of  India".2 

The  Nagpur  case  was  in  many  ways  similar.  The  raja  died  heirless 
in  1853.  He  had  not  adopted  any  one  and  no  lineal  descendant  in 
the  male  line  survived.  In  a  long,  careful  minute3  Lord  Dalhousie 
pointed  out  that  the  original  state  was  of  recent  creation  and  was 
founded  on  usurpation  and  conquest;  its  ruler  had  always  been 
hostile  to  us,  and  after  the  campaign  which  ended  in  his  defeat  it  had 
lain  entirely  with  us  to  deal  with  this  territory  as  we  thought  fit. 
Lord  Hastings  had  then,  as  a  concession  to  Maratha  sentiment, 
recreated  the  state  from  the  conquered  territory,  after  deducting  a 
considerable  portion  of  it.  Nagpur,  like  Satara,  was  thus  a  state  of 
our  own  making.  In  this  minute  Lord  Dalhousie  classed  the  Indian 
states  as  being  tributary  and  subordinate,  of  our  own  creation,  or 
independent.  In  the  first  case  he  considered  that  our  assent  was 
necessary  to  an  adoption,  in  the  second  case  that  adoption  should  not 
be  allowed,  while  in  the  third  case  we  had  no  right  to  interfere.4 

Lord  Dalhousie  found,  however,  that  in  the  Nagpur  case  many  of 
his  advisers  were  against  him,  especially  Colonel  Low,6  who  quoted 
the  views  of  Lord  Hastings,  Elphinstone,  Munro,  and  Metcalfe,  all  of 
whom  considered  that  the  adoption  of  heirs  to  states  by  Indian 
princes  should  be  recognised  by  us.  The  main  grounds  of  dissent  were, 
that  our  rule  was  generally  unpopular;  that  the  absorption  of  a  state 
invariably  meant  that  the  aristocracy  ceased  to  find  employment  and 
became  a  discontented  body;  that  the  rigorous  enforcement  of  the 
doctrine  of  lapse  would  only  lead  to  misgovernment,  as  every  childless 
raja,  feeling  that  his  state  must  come  to  an  end,  would  oppress  his 
subjects,  extorting  the  last  penny  from  them  for  his  own  use.  The 
case  was  referred  to  the  court,  which  upheld  the  escheat. 

The  Jhansi  case  (1854)  stood  on  quite  a  different  footing.  The 
subhedar  of  Jhansi  had  originally  been  a  provincial  governor  under 

1  Minute  of  30  August,  1848,  Parliamentary  Papers,  loc.  cit.  pp.  224-8. 
1  Parliamentary  Papers,  loc.  cit.  pp.  272-98. 
*  Parliamentary  Papers,  1854,  XLvra,  317  sqq. 


*  Minute  of  28  January,  1854,  idem,  pp.  337-53. 

•  Minute  of  10  February,  1854,  idem,  pp.  355-07. 


OUDH  583 

the  Peshwa,  and  was  in  no  sense  a  ruling  chief.  When  in  1818  all  the 
Peshwa's  lands  fell  to  us  the  province  of  Bundelkhand  passed  with 
them,  and  the  subhadar  with  it.  In  submitting  the  case  to  the  court 
the  governor-general  laid  stress  on  this  aspect  of  the  affair.1 

One  case  which  Lord  Dalhousie  took  up  cannot  well  be  brought 
into  the  same  category  as  the  three  just  mentioned,  and  that  is  the 
case  of  Karauli.  This  state  lies  in  Rajputana  and  was  founded  in  the 
eleventh  century.  Sir  Frederick  Currie  in  his  minute  on  the  case 
points  out  how  Karauli,  an  old  Rajput  state,  differed  entirely  from 
"Satara  the  offspring  of  our  gratuitous  benevolence".  Lord  Dal- 
housie, however,  recommended  the  escheat,  but  the  directors  decided 
that  their  policy  was  inapplicable  to  Karauli,  which  was  not  a 
dependent  state  but  a  "protected  ally".2  It  may  be  remarked  here 
that  the  absorption  of  Satara,  Nagpur  and  Jhansi  caused  no  real 
alarm  amongst  the  Indian  princes. 

The  crowning  act  of  Lord  Dalhousie's  administration  was  the 
annexation  of  Oudh,  a  genuine  case  of  annexation,  and  undoubtedly 
one  which  did  stir  the  hearts  of  the  princes  of  India.  It  is  only  fair  to 
the  governor-general  to  show  how  averse  he  was  to  the  procedure  he 
was  ordered  to  follow. 

Our  relations  with  the  state  of  Oudh  were  governed  by  the  treaty 
of  1 80 1  which  required  the  nawab  to  reform  his  administration  and 
follow  the  advice  of  the  Company's  officers.  Succeeding  governors- 
general  had  warned  him  that  unless  he  reformed  his  administration 
we  should  be  obliged  to  interfere,  but,  though  abuse  increased  year 
by  year,  we  took  no  steps  to  enforce  our  admonitions.  Wellesley,8 
when  granting  the  treaty  of  1801,  had  remarked  prophetically  that 
our  support  of  the  nawab  only  protected  the  vile  and  that  no  effective 
security  could  be  provided  against  the  ruin  of  the  province  of  Oudh 
until  we  took  over  the  administration.  In  1837  Lord  Auckland  made 
a  new  treaty  with  the  nawab  by  which  we  were  empowered  to 
intervene  in  case  of  misrule  and  put  our  own  officers  in  charge.  The 
king  accepted,  but  the  directors  refused  to  ratify  it.  Lord  Auckland, 
however,  never  informed  the  king  that  the  treaty  was  a  dead  letter, 
though  he  did  report  to  the  directors  that  he  had  not  done  so.4 
Lord  Hardinge,  nevertheless,  when  he  warned  the  king,  in  1847,  ^at 
he  must  reform,  cited  this  treaty  in  his  memorandum  as  if  it  was  still 
in  force  and  confirmatory  of  the  treaty  of  i8oi.6 

Convinced  by  the  reports  of  Sleeman  and  Outram  of  the  need  for 
immediate  action,  Dalhousie,  although  his  term  of  office  was  just 
expiring,  and  he  might  well  have  left  this  unpleasant  duty  to  Lord 
Canning,  investigated  the  case  with  his  usual  minute  care.  He  was 

1  Parliamentary  Papers,  1854-5,  XL,  87-103.  f  Idem. 

•  Wellesley,  Despatches,  u,  426— Despatch  of  22  January,  1801. 
4  Parliamentary  Papers,  1857-8,  xun,  307-65. 

*  Idem,  p.  368,  para.  8. 


584  THE  INDIAN  STATES,  1818-57 

informed  by  Mr  Dorin  and  General  Low,  members  of  council,  that 
though  the  treaty  of  1837  was  a  dead  letter,  this  fact  was  unknown 
to  the  king  of  Oudh.  Mr  Grant,  another  member,  urged  that  the 
king  should  be  informed  of  this  fact.  Dalhousie  referred  the  point  to 
the  directors  who  replied  that  the  best  course  to  take  was  to  leave 
things  as  they  were  until  circumstances  arose  necessitating  the  dis- 
closure.1 

Long  afterwards,  writing  to  Sir  George  Couper  on  6  January, 
iSsB,2  Dalhousie  refers  to  this  question.  He  remarks  that  it  was 
really  a  matter  of  indifference  to  the  king  and  the  people  of  Oudh, 
when  we  actually  took  over  the  state,  whether  it  was  done  under  the 
treaty  of  1837  or  by  the  strong  hand:  "for  every  human  being  knew 
the  assumption  would  be  permanent",  and  so  the  degree  of  their 
knowledge  could  not  have  affected  the  result.  But  he  held  that  the 
authorities  had  no  right,  at  the  time,  to  withhold  the  information. 

In  a  long  and  careful  minute8  the  governor-general  discussed  the 
whole  case.  He  put  the  treaty  of  1837  aside  as  being  a  dead  letter, 
and  pointed  out  that  "for  tolerating  so  long  this  total  disregard  of 
the  obligation  of  a  solemn  Treaty  [of  1801] . .  .the  British  Government 
is  heavily  responsible".  We  had  warned  and  counselled  but  never 
acted,  abuses  had  grown,  while  our  own  troops  in  Oudh  protected 
the  king  from  justifiable  revolt  on  the  part  of  his  subjects.  He  then 
suggested  four  courses  : 

(a)  that  the  king  should  abdicate,  Oudh  being  incorporated  in 
British  India; 

(V)  that  the  king  should  be  allowed  to  retain  his  tides  but  should 
vest  the  administration  in  us  in  perpetuity; 

(c)  that  the  administration  should  be  made  over  to  us  for  a  time; 

(d)  that  the  Resident  should  take  over  general  control  of  the  state 
administration. 

Lord  Dalhousie  declared  that  he  believed  the  first  course  would 
lead  to  the  happiest  issue,  but  added: 

yet  I  do  not  counsel  the  adoption  of  this  measure.  The  reform  of  the  administration 
may  be  wrought  and  the  prospects  of  the  people  secured  without  resorting  to  so 
extreme  a  measure  as  the  annexation  of  the  territory  and  the  abolition  of  the 
throne  and  I  for  my  part  do  not  advocate  the  advice  that  the  province  of  Oudh 
be  declared  British  territory. 

He  held  that  in  spite  of  maladministration  the  consistent  loyalty  to 
us  of  successive  nawabs  of  Oudh  precluded  annexation.  So  he  urged 
the  second  course  that  the  king  should  vest  control  in  us  but  retain 
his  titles  and  rank,  as  this  course  would  be  "  perpetual  in  duration 
as  well  as  ample  in  extent";  but  the  king  must  himself  do  this,  not 
be  forced  to  do  it.  Different  views  were  held  by  the  members  of  his 
council  but  the  general  opinion  was  against  Lord  Dalhousie  and  in 


1  Parliamentary  Papers,  1857-8,  xun,  307-65. 

1  Minute  of  1 8  June,  1855,  Parliamentary  Papers,  loc. 


1  Dalhousie,  Letters 9  p.  393. 
cit. 


OUDH  585 

favour  of  the  king's  abdication.  The  case  was  sent  to  the  court,  and 
the  directors  rejected  Dalhousie's  proposal,  ordering  annexation  and 
the  abolition  of  the  throne.1 

Dalhousie  undertook  to  carry  out  this  thankless  task,  although 
Lord  Canning  had  just  arrived  in  India  to  succeed  him  as  governor- 
general.  Outram,  the  Resident,  was  asked  to  induce  the  king  to  sign 
a  document  voluntarily  transferring  the  kingdom  to  us.  Outram  was 
confident  that  he  could  do  so,  but  the  king  refused  in  tears,  and  the 
proclamation  annexing  Oudh  was  at  once  issued.  No  disturbance 
arose.  Minute  directions  were  also  given  to  Outram  as  to  disarming  the 
province  but  these  were,  at  his  suggestion,  not  carried  out,  owing  to 
the  approach  of  the  hot  season,  and  the  order  was  later  on  cancelled 
by  Lord  Canning.  Had  it  been  carried  out,  Oudh  with  an  unarmed 
population  would  have  been  a  less  formidable  factor  in  the  dis- 
turbance of  1857.  Lord  Dalhousie  refers  to  this  in  a  private  letter  to 
Sir  George  Couper  of  5  February,  1858;*  he  says:  "Lord  Canning's 
Government  made  a  fatal  blunder  in  not  disarming  Oude  in  1856, 
when  it  might  have  been  done  easily  and  completely".  He  adds  that 
no  official  record  exists  of  his  determination  to  carry  this  out  because 
it  was  a  task  for  his  successor,  and  hence  it  only  appears  in  his 
confidential  demi-official  correspondence  with  Outram,  in  these 
words: 

It  is  my  intention  that  not  a  single  fortified  place  should  be  left  in  Oude,  with 
the  exception  of  those  that  belong  to  Government.  It  is  further  my  intention  that 
the  whole  population  should  be  disarmed. .  .as  was  done  with  such  excellent  effect 
in  the  Punjaub  in  1849. 

It  is  thus  clear  that  Lord  Dalhousie,  while  he  deprecated  half- 
measures,  was  strongly  opposed  to  the  policy  of  annexation,  though 
he  was  convinced  that,  so  far  as  the  people  of  Oudh  were  concerned, 
it  would  be  far  the  best  course  to  take. 

In  a  letter  to  Sir  George  Couper  written  on  15  December,  1855,* 
before  the  orders  of  the  court  had  arrived,  he  says : 

I  understand  that  they  [the  Directors]  mean  to  force  the  King  to  form  a  new 
treaty  or  to  assume  the  government  of  his  country.  This  is  all  very  well  for  the 
home  authorities  but  it  was  not  for  me  to  suggest  it, ...  The  course  proposed  by 
the  Court  is  not  warranted  by  international  law.  It  would  be  either  conquest  or 
usurpation  of  the  power  of  government  by  force  of  arms. 

This  argument  of  international  law  would  not  in  these  days  be  raised 
in  connection  with  the  Indian  states. 

Sleeman,  however,  Outram's  predecessor  as  Resident  at  Lucknow, 
expressed  the  opinion  that  the  annexation  was  a  political  blunder, 
holding  that  we  should  have  acted  under  the  treaty  of  1837,  abrogated 
though  it  was.  The  confiscation  of  the  state  would,  he  said,  "cause 
our  good  name  to  suffer",  and  "that  good  name  is  more  valuable 

1  Parliamentary  Papers,  1857, 3d,  109-17. 

1  Dalhousie,  op.  a*,  p.  399.  *  Idem,  p.  363. 


586  THE  INDIAN  STATES,  1818-57 

to  us  than  a  dozen  Oudes".  We  had  used  our  giant's  strength  like 
a  giant,  he  said,  and  had  injured  our  reputation  in  the  eyes  of  all 
India.  This  opinion  was  largely  instrumental  in  leading  to  the  grant 
of  "  Adoption  sanads"  in  1862.  But  any  such  step  would  have  been 
impossible  in  Dalhousie's  day  as  it  would  have  savoured  of  interfering 
with  the  "independent"  states. 

The  other  cases  with  which  Lord  Dalhousie  had  to  deal  were  the 
extinction  of  the  pension  granted  to  Baji  Rao,  the  last  Peshwa,  the 
disappearance  of  the  Carnatic  and  Tanjore  titles,  and  the  question 
of  the  Hyderabad  contingent. 

Baji  Rao  died  in  1852  leaving  no  heir,  and  the  governor-general 
ruled  that  the  pension,  being  personal,  terminated  with  his  death, 
though  the  large  private  fortune  accumulated  by  Baji  Rao  would 
pass  to  his  adopted  son,  Dhondu  Pant,  who  later  on  became  notorious 
in  the  Mutiny,  as  Nana  Sahib. 

Trouble  arose  in  regard  to  payment  of  the  Hyderabad  contingent 
force  by  that  durbar,  and  in  1853  the  Nizam  under  pressure  placed 
the  administration  of  the  Berar  province  of  his  state  under  our  control 
so  that  its  revenues  might  be  devoted  to  the  up-keep  of  that  force. 
This  arrangement,  made  with  such  reluctance  in  the  first  instance, 
has  since  been  the  cause  of  much  contention  and  is  likely  to  remain  so. 

The  nawab  of  the  Carnatic,  in  1855,  died  leaving  no  son  and,  on 
the  ground  that  his  state  was  created  by  us  in  1801,  and  on  the  fact 
that  his  title  was  personal,  his  estate  escheated  and  the  title  did  not 
descend  to  his  successors,  who  have  since  then  been  styled  Princes  of 
Arcot.1  A  similar  case  arose  on  the  death  of  the  raja  of  Tanjore. 

Reviewing  Lord  Dalhousie's  administration  in  so  far  as  it  affected 
the  Indian  states,  it  is  clear  that  the  policy  of  absorbing  them  in  cases 
of  failure  of  direct  heirs  was  not  of  his  making  but  was  inherited  by 
him,  and,  whether  right  or  wrong,  was  at  that  time  the  avowed 
policy  of  the  Company,  whose  one  anxiety  was  to  consolidate  its 
possessions. 

Lord  Dalhousie  was  careful  to  confine  action  under  this  policy  to 
the  "dependent"  states.  Thus,  when  he  was  urged  by  the  directors, 
soon  after  he  reached  India,  to  take  a  strong  line  and  interfere  in 
Hyderabad,  he  threatened  to  resign;  while  in  Bahawalpur,  when  the 
newly-installed  ruler  was  ousted  by  his  brother,  he  refused  to  support 
the  fugitive  nawab,  although  we  had  recognised  his  succession,  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  the  people  of  the  state  did  not  wish  to  haye  him 
as  their  ruler,  and  it  was  for  them  alone  to  decide.  These  two  cases 
occurred  in  "independent"  states.  Lord  Dalhousie  was  one  of  the 
most  scrupulous  and  conscientious  governors-general  who  ever  guided 
the  destiny  of  India;  he  was  absolutely  incapable  of  doing  an  injustice. 
On  the  other  hand,  a  sincerely  religious  man,  he  was  convinced  of 
the  desirability  of  substituting  our  ride  for  that  of  the  Indian  princes, 

1  Parliamentary  Papers,  1860,  ui,  531-78. 


DALHOUSIE'S  POLICY  587 

whenever  it  could  in  fairness  be  effected.   He  says  himself,  writing 
on  21  July,  1857,  to  Sir  George  Couper:1 

I  never  advised  annexing  any  principality  unless  it  lapsed  naturally  for  want  of 
heirs  or  was  forfeited  for  misconduct.  But  when  a  principality  does  so  fall  to  our 
disposal  it  does  seem  to  me  to  be  cruel  to  hand  over  its  inhabitants  to  be  squeezed 
and  skinned  by  a  native  despot,  merely  that  our  own  subjects  may  be  able  to 
compare  their  own  lot  favourably  with  that  of  those  whom  we  have  abandoned. . . . 

His  unflagging  warfare  against  abuses  of  all  kinds  and  his  desire 
to  extend  to  all  the  benefits  of  the  new  era  he  had  introduced  into 
British  India  certainly  dimmed  his  perception  of  other  points  of  view; 
as  for  instance  that  of  the  hereditary  ruling  princes  themselves,  that 
of  their  subjects  with  the  innate  reverence  for  their  natural  rulers 
which  then  did  (if  it  does  not  now)  distinguish  the  people  of  India, 
and  by  their  preference,  in  spite  of  abuses,  for  the  less  rigid  govern- 
ment of  an  Indian  state.  Never  did  his  administration  justify  the 
fancifully  fierce  condemnation  levelled  at  it  as  being  "more  like 
counting  out  the  spoil  of  brigands. .  .than. .  .the  acts  of  English 
statesmanship5',2  nor  did  any  man  ever  merit  less  the  stigma  of  being 
called  the  "very  worst  and  basest  of  rulers".8  We  must  not  judge 
those  days  by  these.  Besides  an  entire  change  of  policy  on  our  side, 
the  Indian  states  have  themselves,  for  the  most  part,  travelled  far 
administratively  since  1856,  and,  though  still  in  the  main  autocratic, 
have  reached  a  much  higher  standard  than  they  then  possessed, 
while  they  are  now  subjected  to  the  glare  of  criticism  and  the  anti- 
septic of  publicity  to  a  degree  impossible  in  those  days  of  a  limited 
public  press  and  very  inadequate  communications. 

The  sudden  upheaval  which  followed  so  soon  after  his  departure 
was  quite  unforeseen  by  Lord  Dalhousie  who  in  his  farewell  minute4 
considers  that  he  is  justified  in  saying  that  he  leaves  India  "at  peace 
without  and  within". 

To  summarise  the  results  of  the  policy  pursued  towards  the  Indian 
states  between  1818  and  1856. 

This  period  is  by  far  the  most  important  in  the  history  of  the 
relationship  of  the  states  to  the  British  Government.  It  witnessed 
their  metamorphosis  from  a  congeries  of  quasi-independent  units, 
some  openly  hostile,  most,  at  heart,  antagonistic  to  us,  and  all 
doubtful  and  resentful  of  our  intentions  towards  them,  into  a  body 
with  so  complete  an  acquiescence  in  our  paramount  position  that 
even  the  shock  of  the  Mutiny  could  not  subvert  it.  This  result  we  owe 
mainly  to  Lord  Hastings,  who  built  so  carefully  on  the  foundations 
laid  by  Lord  Wellesley,  the  structure  being  completed  by  the  generous 
policy  adopted  when  India  came  directly  under  the  crown.  For  Lord 

1  Dalhousie,  op.  cit.p.  381. 

*  Edwin  Arnold,  The  Marquis  of  Dalhousie9 s  Administration  of  British  India,  p.  199. 

9  Major  £.  Bell,  The  Empire  in  India,  p.  26. 

4  Parliamentary  Papers,  1855-6,  XLV,  107-52. 


588  THE  INDIAN  STATES,  1818-57 

Hastings  introduced  those  distinct  relations  of  supremacy  and  sub- 
ordination which  still  fundamentally  control  the  position  between  us 
and  the  states.  In  his  time  those  parts  of  India  not  directly  under 
our  administration  passed  equally  under  our  sovereignty;  and  our 
ascendancy,  as  also  our  indefeasible  right  to  interfere  if  the  peace  and 
security  of  India  was  menaced,  became  henceforth  unquestioned. 
Step  by  step,  sorely  against  its  will,  the  Company  had  been  driven, 
by  inexorable  fate,  to  abandon  its  policy  of  the  ring-fence  and  of 
non-interference,  and  so  we  passed  through  the  system  of  subordinate 
alliance  to  the  wise  and  generous  policy  of  co-operative  partnership 
which  holds  at  the  present  day. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  SOVEREIGNTY 
IN  BRITISH  INDIA 

JjRITISH  authority  in  India",  says  Ilbert,  "may  be  traced  to 
a  two-fold  source.  It  is  derived  partly  from  the  British  crown  and 
parliament,  partly  from  the  Great  Mogul  and  other  native  rulers 
of  India."1  The  development  has  been  slow  and  at  times  obscure. 
It  has  lent  itself  to  much  misinterpretation,  and  has  involved  strong 
contrasts  between  facts  and  theories.  One  of  the  great  difficulties 
has  arisen  from  the  fact  that  in  the  East  public  law  has  not  been  subject 
to  the  same  scrutiny  and  definition  that  it  has  undergone  in  Europe. 
Technical  terms,  such  as  sovereignly,  and  their  Persian  equivalents, 
seem  to  have  been  used  with  the  greatest  laxity,  both  by  Indians 
and  by  Englishmen  in  India;  while  in  most  of  our  documents  the 
needs  of  current  controversies  are  predominant,  and  one  is  seldom 
sure  whether  Hastings  and  Clive  were  laying  down  general  principles 
which  they  were  prepared  to  support  in  every  case  or  only  drawing 
temporary  arguments  from  an  ambiguous  position  in  order  to  defend 
a  particular  action. 

It  is  clear  that  from  the  first  the  position  of  the  English  in  India 
was  variable  and  uncertain.  The  fact  may  be  illustrated  by  the 
different  positions  held  by  the  English  in  the  seventeenth  century 
in  their  principal  settlements  of  Bombay,  Madras  and  Calcutta 
respectively.  In  the  first  the  Company  exercised  sovereign  powers 
under  the  English  crown,  to  whom  the  island  had  been  ceded  by  the 
Portuguese.  The  right  to  fortify  and  defend  the  place,  to  maintain 
troops  there,  to  administer  justice,  to  levy  taxes,  to  coin  money,  was 
clear,  full  and  indisputable.  All  inhabitants,  whether  English  or 
Indian,  were  presumably  subjects  of  the  English  crown. 

Madras  fell  in  another  category.  That  place  was  held  under  a  grant 
of  the  chief  of  Wandiwash,  who  empowered  the  English  Company  to 
build  a  castle  and  fortress,  to  mint  money,  together  with 

full  power  and  authority  to  govern  and  dispose  of  the  government  of  Madraspatam 
for  me  term  and  space  of  two  years  next  insueing  after  they  shall  be  seated  there 
and  possesst  of  the  said  fortifications;  and  for  the  future  by  an  equal  division  to 
receive  half  the  custom  and  revenues  of  that  port.2 

After  the  Hindu  power  had  been  overthrown  by  the  Muslim  kingdom 
of  Golconda,  the  grant  was  in  effect  continued;  but,  as  complaints 
perpetually  arose  over  the  division  of  the  customs,  a  new  grant  was 

1  The  Government  of  India,  p.  i.  •  Love,  Vestiges  9 1,  17. 


590  DEVELOPMENT  OF  SOVEREIGNTY 

made  in  1672,  which  commuted  the  share  of  the  customs  for  a  quit- 
rent  of  1 200  pagodas;  the  grant  continues: 

Neither  shall  any  avaldare  or  any  of  the  diwan's  people  ever  be  kept  or  placed 
in  the  town  of  Chinapatam,  and,  as  I  have  done,  that  no  person  whatsoever  shall 
have  to  do  in  the  least  with  the  town  of  Chinapatam,  but  that  it  shall  remain 
wholly  and  for  ever  under  the  English,  where  they  may  accordingly  act  all  the 
command,  government  and  justice  of  the  said  town  as  they  shall  think  necessary 
and  most  convenient  to  be  done.1 

When,  in  1687,  Golconda  was  conquered  by  Aurangzib,  no  change 
seems  to  have  been  made  in  the  English  status.  Here  then  was  a 
position  quite  different  from  that  at  Bombay.  The  English  exercised 
all  the  powers  of  sovereignty  subject  however  to  Indian  superiority 
shown  by  the  payment  of  quit-rent.  Here  too  it  should  be  noted, 
that  as  the  local  coinage  bore  no  superscription,  but  only  the  figures 
of  Hindu  deities,  it  did  not  carry  with  it  the  same  implications  that 
it  would  have  done  in  Northern  India;  and  when  the  Moghul 
authorities  permitted  the  coinage  of  rupees  at  Madras,  those  coins 
bore  the  usual  marks  of  Moghul  supremacy. 

At  Calcutta  the  position  was  again  different.  There  the  English 
had  been  allowed  to  purchase  the  zamindari  of  the  three  villages  that 
grew  into  the  capital  of  British  India.  Their  jurisdiction,  as  at  Madras, 
was  therefore  two-fold.  Over  Englishmen  the  Company  relied  upon 
its  chartered  powers;  but  over  Indians,  and  especially  over  Muslims, 
in  whom  alone  the  local  government  took  any  great  interest,  its 
authority  was  that  of  a  minor  zamindar  under  the  local  faujdar.  The 
position  is  shown  with  special  clearness  by  the  fact  that  the  Company 
could  not,  till  the  treaty  of  1757,  obtain  the  right  of  minting  coin  at 
Calcutta,  and  by  the  jurisdiction  of  the  law  courts  there.  The  Com- 
pany's criminal  court,  established  by  the  royal  charters  of  1727  and 
1 753,  was  limited  to  Europeans.  Indians  were  tried  in  the  zamindar's 
court.  In  theory  all  sentences  of  death  should  have  been  submitted 
to  the  faujdar  of  Hugli  and  the  Nazim  at  Murshidabad  before  being 
put  into  execution.2  In  practice  this  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
done;  but  the  Calcutta  Council  was  clearly  very  cautious  of  putting 
Muhammadans  to  death.  We  must  discount  Bolts's  story,  that  they 
were  flogged  to  death  instead  of  being  hanged,  out  of  deference  to 
Muslim  opinion;8  but  one  case  at  least  is  on  record,  where  the 
Muhammadan  members  of  a  party  of  criminals  were  spared  for  fear 
of  the  nawab's  interference.4 

This  position  at  Madras  and  Calcutta  was  profoundly  changed  by 
the  course  of  events  which  may  be  dated  from  the  War  of  the  Austrian 
Succession.  Madras  was  the  first  to  be  affected.  During  the  war  it 
passed  into  the  hands  of  the  French  by  right  of  conquest,  in  defiance 

1  Love,  of.  cit.  i,  345.  "Chinapatam"  is  Madras. 

1  Committee  of  Secrecy,  1773,  Sixth  Report,  pp.  a  and  n. 

*  Bolts,  Considerations,  i,  80.  *  Long,  Selections,  p.  51. 


THE  CARNATIC  591 

of  the  prohibitions  of  the  nawab;  it  remained  in  French  hands  during 
the  war,  although  Dupleix  agreed  to  make  a  formal  recognition  of 
the  nawab's  position  by  flying  his  flag  over  the  place  for  a  week.1 
At  the  end  of  the  war  it  was  restored  to  the  English  by  the  Treaty 
of  Aix-la-Chapelle.  From  that  time  the  English  might  have 
claimed  to  hold  it  independently  of  any  Indian  prince.  However, 
they  were  on  the  best  of  terms  with  Muhammad  *Ali,  whom  they 
were  seeking  to  establish  as  against  the  French  nominee;  and  so,  in 
1752,  as  a  mark  of  gratitude  the  quit-rent  was  abolished,  and 
with  it  went  the  last  fragment  of  dependence  upon  an  Indian  prince 
at  Madras.2 

That,  however,  only  applied  to  Madras  itself  and  a  very  narrow 
strip  of  land  round  its  walls.  The  rest  of  the  country  lay  within  the 
undisputed  control  of  the  nawab  under  the  nominal  sovereignty  of 
Delhi.  When,  in  1780,  the  nawab  applied  to  Hastings  to  secure  a 
settlement  of  outstanding  questions,  he  was  specially  eager  to  secure 
declarations  from  the  English  that  he  was  hereditary  prince  of  the 
Garnatic,  with  full  power  over  the  administration  of  his  country  and 
the  right  to  nominate  his  successor,  under  the  general  protection  of 
the  Company  and  the  English  nation.3  It  is  apparent  that  all  thoughts 
of  the  Moghul  emperor  have  disappeared,  although  doubtless  his 
name  was  still  recited  in  the  Friday  prayers  at  Arcot,  and  for  that 
matter  at  Madras.  In  fact  the  very  application  shows  that  the  Com- 
pany, and  not  the  emperor,  was  now  suzerain.  In  1 792  the  old  nawab 
died  and  was  succeeded  by  the  son  whom  for  so  many  years  he  had 
striven  to  disinherit;  but  the  succession  took  place  with  the  approval 
of  the  Company.  Finally,  ten  years  later,  for  reasons  which  have  been 
explained  in  a  previous  chapter,  on  the  next  demise  of  the  nawabship, 
the  Company  intervened  decisively.  Its  representative  refused  to 
recognise  any  succession  except  on  terms  which  at  a  stroke  reduced 
the  nawab  to  the  same  position  to  which  the  nawab  of  Bengal  had  only 
fallen  after  a  term  of  years.4  He  became  a  pensioner.  On  this  occasion 
we  hear  no  mention  of  Delhi  or  the  emperor.  Sovereign  powers  over 
the  Carnatic  passed  to  the  Company,  not  indeed  by  conquest,  but 
in  virtue  of  a  long-established  political  situation,  in  which  the 
Company  was  in  fact,  though  not  in  name,  the  overlord.  For  three 
generations  the  old  tide  and  dignity  were  allowed  to  survive;  but  in 
1855,  *&  fat  **me  of  Dalhousie,  they  were  deliberately  extinguished, 
as  a  "semblance  of  royalty  without  any  of  the  power  is  a  mockery 
of  authority  which  must  be  pernicious".5 

The  case  of  Bengal  was  much  more  complicated,  partly  because 
of  the  inferior  status  from  which  the  Company  set  out,  partly  because 

1  P.  12*  supra.  '  Madras  Public  Consultations,  31  August,  1757. 

1  Requests  of  the  Nawab  Walajah  of  the  governor-general,  Madras  Military  Con- 
sultations, 22  August,  1781,  p.  2280. 
4  P.  361  supra. 
•  Lee-Warner,  Dalhousie,  n,  140. 


59*  DEVELOPMENT  OF  SOVEREIGNTY 

it  offered  the  first  example  of  something  like  territorial  acquisitions 
on  a  large  scale,  and  partly  because  of  the  conflicts  and  hesitations 
of  the  crown  and  Company  in  England.  The  status  of  zamindar 
persisted  at  Calcutta  until  the  year  1756.  But  when  at  the  close  of 
that  year  Clive  recovered  the  place,  we  may  suppose  that  the  logic 
of  events  had  already  begun  to  modify  the  position.  It  was  recovered 
by  force;  and  we  may  infer  that  when  the  English  returned,  they 
returned  no  longer  as  humble  dependents  of  the  nawab.  The  change 
is  clearly  indicated  in  the  treaty  which  Clive  made  with  Siraj-ud- 
daula  on  9  February  following.  In  future  the  place  might  be  fortified 
as  the  English  thought  proper;  the  privilege  of  a  mint  was  granted; 
and  the  English  nation  and  Company  agreed  to  live  on  good  terms 
with  the  nawab  so  long  as  he  observed  the  treaty.1  The  theory  of 
Moghul  sovereignty  still  stood,  but  a  large  breach  had  been  made  in 
it.  The  breach  was  further  enlarged  when  the  English  proceeded  to 
overthrow  the  ruling  nawab  and  set  up  another.  In  the  treaty  with 
Mir  Ja'far,  although  the  sovereignty  over  the  country,  in  whosesoever 
hands  it  lay,  was  not  formally  impaired,  the  English  were  nevertheless 
established  as  an  imperium  in  imperio  with  the  right  of  doing  themselves 
justice.2  The  revolution  of  1760  was  designed  to  strengthen  the  nawab 
and  led,  as  we  have  seen,  to  a  conflict  between  the  person  invested 
with  the  sole  rights  of  administration  in  the  province,  and  the  cor- 
poration controlling  the  only  efficient  military  force  therein.  Again 
the  nawab  was  overthrown  and  Mir  Ja'far  restored,  not  as  had  for- 
merly  been  the  case,  with  the  aid  and  concurrence  of  his  friends  and 
supporters,  but  by  the  mere  act  of  the  Calcutta  Council.  In  1765  this 
de  facto  power  assumed  the  right  of  nominating  the  nawab's  principal 
minister,  and  in  the  same  year,  under  Clive's  Treaty  of  Allahabad, 
it  was  invested  with  the  right  of  revenue  administration.  The  formal 
sovereignty  still  lay  where  it  had;  but  alongside  of  the  emperor  and 
nawab  there  had  sprung  up  a  body  which  not  only  possessed  the  sole 
military  force  in  Bengal,  but  also  had  conquered  the  province  in  1 763, 
had  assumed  the  power  of  nominating  the  nawab's  chief  officer,  and 
was  now  invested  with  the  right  of  collecting  the  revenues.  It  was  an 
indefinite  situation  which  could  not  readily  be  brought  within  the 
scope  of  any  western  formulae. 

The  situation,  perplexing  as  it  was,  was  prolonged  by  the  hesitation 
of  the  English  authorities  to  assume  formal  sovereignty  over  the 
territories  which  in  fact  they  controlled.  Neither  the  crown  nor  the 
Company  was  prepared,  though  for  very  different  reasons,  to  lay 
claim  to  territorial  sovereignty  in  India.  The  Company  feared  that 
any  such  claims  would  provoke  or  hasten  interference  by  the  ministry  ;8 
the  crown  was  unwilling  to  assail  the  legal  rights  of  the  Company.4 

1  Hill,  Bengal  in  1756-7*  «>  215  sqq.  •  P.  171  supra. 

*  Verdst,  op.  cit.  p.  81. 

*  E.g.  Chatham  to  Shelburnc,  24  May,  1773  (Chatham  Correspondent*,  iv,  264). 


GROWN  AND  COMPANY  593 

Indeed,  the  establishment  of  such  a  position  was  the  precise  motive 
with  which  Clive  seems  in  1765  to  have  desired  the  diwanni  of  Bengal 
rather  than  any  territorial  cession,  which  could  have  been  obtained 
just  as  readily.  It  placed  the  Company  in  a  strong  tactical  position 
alike  as  regards  foreign  powers  and  as  regards  the  government  at 
home. 

This  had  not  always  been  dive's  aim.  After  Plassey  he  had  sought 
to  induce  Pitt  to  take  over  the  government  of  the  Company's  pos- 
sessions, in  despair  of  ever  seeing  that  body  establish  good  government. l 
But  Pitt  had  then  been  reluctant  to  intervene  in  so  complicated  a 
position.  How  complicated  it  was  may  be  seen  from  an  opinion 
delivered  by  the  law-officers  on  24  December,  1 757,  on  the  Company's 
memorial  praying  for  the  grant  of  all  booty  and  conquests  made  in 
India. 

"In  respect  to  such  places",  they  say,  "as  have  been  or  shall  be  acquired  by 
treaty  or  grant  from  the  Mogul  or  any  of  the  Indian  princes  or  governments,  your 
Majesty  s  letters  patent  are  not  necessary,  the  property  of  the  soil  vesting  in  the 
Company  by  the  Indian  grants,  subject  only  to  your  Majesty's  rights  of  sovereignty 
over  the  settlements  as  English  settlements,  and  over  the  inhabitants,  as  English 
subjects  who  carry  with  them  your  Majesty's  laws  wherever  they  form  colonies . . . 
In  respect  to  such  places  as  have  lately  been  acquired  or  shall  hereafter  be  acquired 
by  conquest,  the  property  as  well  as  the  dominion  vests  in  your  Majesty  by  virtue 
of  your  known  prerogative,  and  consequently  the  Company  can  only  derive  a  right 
to  them  by  your  Majesty's  grant. .  .."2 

But  although  the  Company  could  not  acquire  territory  by  conquest, 
it  could  nevertheless  "cede  conquests  made  upon  Indians",  since  by 
its  charters  it  had  power  to  make  war  and  peace  with  them.  In  1 765 
the  legal  view  undoubtedly  was  that  British  sovereignty  was  estab- 
lished in  Calcutta,  in  the  24-Parganas,  and  in  the  districts  of  Burdwan, 
Midnapur  and  Chittagong  ceded  by  Mir  Kasim,  but  not  in  the 
diwanni  districts,  a  result  which  accorded  well  with  the  Company's 
policy  of  that  time.  The  question  as  to  where  and  at  what  point 
Indian  inhabitants  of  places  subject  to  English  sovereignty  became 
English  subjects  does  not  seem  to  have  been  considered,  as  is  clear 
enough  from  the  uncertain  and  ambiguous  language  of  the  Regulating 
Act.  It  was  declared  at  Calcutta  in  1773  that  Sepoy  officers  were 
"not. .  .subjects  of  Britain,  but  aliens  and  natives  of  Hindustan",8 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  ministry  the  question  was  clearly 
two-fold:  internal  as  regarded  the  Company,  external  as  regarded 
the  French  and  other  foreign  nations.  It  will  be  most  convenient 
to  sketch  the  development  of  policy  under  these  two  heads,  and 
finally  to  describe  the  relations  between  the  Company's  government 
in  India  and  the  Moghul  emperor— the  de  facto  and  the  dejure  wielders 
of  Indian  dominion. 

i  Malcolm,  Life  of  Clive,  n,  1 19  sqq.i  Williams,  Life  of  Chatham,  n,  28-9. 
1  Public  Record  Office,  C.0. 77-19;  cf.  an  undated  and  unsigned  minute,  ap.  Chatham 
MSS,  i,  99. 
*  Forrest,  Selections  from  the  State  Papers  of  the  Foreign  Department,  i,  89. 


GH1V 


594  DEVELOPMENT  OF  SOVEREIGNTY 

The  first  direct  exercise  of  sovereign  power  in  India  by  the  crown 
since  the  cession  of  Bombay  to  the  Company  resulted  from  an  inter- 
national document,  the  Treaty  of  Paris  of  1763,  in  which  both  the 
French  and  the  English  governments  recognised  Muhammad  'Ali  as 
nawab  of  the  Carnatic  and  Salabat  Jang  as  subahdar  of  the  Deccan. 
No  one  seems  to  have  considered  how  far  these  stipulations  were 
consistent  with  the  structure  of  the  Moghul  Empire.  Indeed  they 
were  at  the  time  intended  only  to  secure  the  peace  between  the  two 
European  nations  in  India  by  preventing  them  from  continuing  to 
support  rival  princes  in  those  regions.  At  a  later  time,  however,  the 
clauses  were  put  to  a  new  use.  The  disputes  between  the  crown  and 
the  Company  which  came  to  a  head  in  1766-7  made  the  ministry 
anxious  to  find  some  means  by  which  it  could  learn  how  matters  were 
actually  going  in  India.  There  was  reason  to  distrust  the  execution 
which  the  Company's  servants  had  given  to  the  treaty  in  the  East; 
and  the  upshot  of  the  matter  was  that  when  the  Company  sent  out 
its  supervisors  to  reform  its  Indian  administration,  the  ministry  sent 
out  in  command  of  the  squadron  an  officer  vested  with  plenipotentiary 
powers  from  the  king  to  the  princes  of  India.  About  the  commission 
of  this  officer  there  was  much  underhand  work  that  ill  became  the 
dignity  of  the  ministry;  the  commission,  for  instance,  was  not  com- 
municated to  the  Company;  and  so  when  the  commodore  arrived  in 
India  he  found  that  the  Company's  governments  knew  nothing  about 
the  powers  that  had  been  granted  to  him.  The  natural  result  was  the 
outbreak  of  violent  disputes  between  the  representative  of  the  king's 
majesty  and  the  councils  which  exercised  the  powers  of  the  Company. 
These  divided  and  undefined  powers  were  bound  to  weaken  and 
impede,  rather  than  to  strengthen  the  conduct  of  affairs,  and  the 
time  had  not  yet  come  when  the  ministry  was  prepared  to  take  a 
decisive  part  in  determining  Indian  policy.  However,  it  is  curious  to 
note  that  among  the  other  duties  of  the  plenipotentiary  was  included 
a  mission  to  the  Moghul  emperor,  who  had  sent  presents  to  George  III 
by  the  hands  of  Clive,  and  these,  by  some  oversight,  had  never  been 
acknowledged.  Commodore  Lindsay  was  entrusted  with  a  letter  of 
thanks  from  the  king,  whose  titles  were  for  the  occasion  strangely 
modified,  obviously  with  a  view  to  impressing  the  court  of  Delhi  with 
a  due  sense  of  the  king's  importance.  "George  III",  the  letter  is 
headed,  "King. .  .Defender  of  the  Christian  faith. .  .and  Sovereign 
of  the  Seas,  etc."1  A  generation  later  the  same  style  was  employed 
in  a  letter  addressed  to  the  emperor  of  China. 

The  next  step  after  this  ill-concerted  effort  to  interfere  in  the 
Company's  Indian  administration  was  the  Regulating  Act  of  1773. 
That  act  takes  for  granted  the  existence  of  British  sovereignty  in 
Calcutta  and  its  immediate  neighbourhood,  but  not  apparently 

1  Weymouth  to  Lindsay,  14  September,  1769,  and  George  III  to  the  Moghul,  of  the 
same  date  (Brit.  Mus.  Add.  MSS,  18020,  ff.  46  verso  and  50  verso). 


ACTS  AND  TREATIES  595 

beyond.  At  best  its  language  is  hesitating  and  uncertain.  A  dis- 
tinction appears  between  British  subjects  and  the  native-born  in- 
habitants. The  India  Act  of  1 784  leaves  the  question  still  untouched, 
although  it  legislates  for  the  full  exercise  of  all  sovereign  powers  in 
territory  that  in  1773  was  clearly  not  yet  a  part  of  the  dominions  of 
the  crown.  The  act  of  1793  merely  declared  that  all  territorial 
acquisitions  and  their  revenues  were  to  remain  in  the  possession  of 
the  East  India  Company  for  the  next  twenty  years,  thus  leaving  the 
question  of  sovereignty  still  open.  Not  until  1813  do  we  find  the  claim 
to  sovereignty  formally  asserted.  In  the  act  renewing  the  Company's 
privileges  in  that  year  the  territorial  acquisitions  were  continued 
under  its  control  "without  prejudice  to  the  undoubted  sovereignty 
of  the  crown  of  the  United  Kingdom,  etc.  in  and  over  the  same". 
But  at  what  moment  that  sovereignty  came  into  being  still  remained 
a  riddle. 

Much  the  same  attitude  is  displayed  by  the  treaties  concluded  in 
this  period.  At  first  the  question  of  sovereignty  is  not  raised  except 
in  regard  to  the  factories  possessed  by  the  European  nations,  and 
which  it  was  taken  for  granted  formed  part  of  their  respective  terri- 
tories. Thus  Article  1 1  of  the  Treaty  of  Paris  declares, 

Dans  les  Indes  Orientales  la  Grande  Bretagne  restituera  £  la  France... les 
differents  comptoirs  que  cette  couronneppss&iait. .  .Et  sa  majest£  Tres  Chr6tienne 
renonce  a  toute  prevention  atix  acquisitions  qu'elle  avait  faite  sur  la  c6te  de 
Coromandel  et  d  Orixa  depuis  le  dit  commencement  de  1'annee  1 749 . . .  .Elle 
s'engage  de  plus  a  ne  point  £riger  des  fortifications  et  £  ne  point  entretenir  des 
troupes  dans  aucune  partie  des  etats  du  soubah  de  Bengale .... 

It  is  clearly  implied  that  the  English  enjoyed  a  special  position  in 
Bengal  by  the  limitations  which  the  French  engaged  to  observe;  but 
neither  then  nor  till  long  after  was  the  least  attempt  made  to  define 
the  position  by  the  use  of  any  of  the  political  terms  employed  in 
Europe.  The  article  in  the  Treaty  of  Versailles  of  1 783  even  more 
obviously  evades  the  matter.  After  providing  for  the  restoration  of 
the  French  factories  in  Bengal,  it  continues : 

Et  sa  Majest6  Britannique  s'engage  a  prendre  les  mesures  qui  seront  en  son 
pouvoir  pour  assurer  aux  sujets  de  la  France  dans  cette  partie  de  FInde.  comme 
sur  la  cdte  de  Coromandel,  et  de  Malabar,  un  commerce  sur,  libre  et  indepen- 
dant.... 

In  1786-7,  when  troubles  with  the  French  in  Bengal  produced 
renewed  discussions  in  Europe,  leading  to  the  convention  of  1787, 
the  most  inconsistent  language  was  used,  showing  that  the  English 
still  had  not  been  able  to  make  up  their  minds  as  to  their  position 
in  India.  Thus  the  Committee  of  Secrecy  writes  to  the  Governor- 
General  in  Council,  19  July,  1786,  stating  that  the  French  could 
hardly  expect  the  benevolent  intervention  of  the  Company  so  long 
as  they  assumed  a  position  of  independence  and  did  not  "acquiesce 
in  the  general  controuling  power  existing  in  the  English  Company 

38-2 


596  DEVELOPMENT  OF  SOVEREIGNTY 

as  Dewan  of  the  provinces".1  But  in  Paris,  on  6  February,  1787, 
Eden,  who  was  negotiating  the  convention,  took  up  a  very  different 
position  in  an  explication  confidentielle  which  he  delivered  to  Montmorin. 
His  proposals,  he  said,  were  intended, 

sans  rien  faire  qui  soit  cense*  d&roger  a  la  souverainte*  possessoire  et  exclusive  dont 
PAngleterre  jomt  dans  Plnde,  de  donner  a  la  France  toutes  les  facilit&  praticables, 
dans  la  vue  de  former  un  trait£  de  commerce . . .  .C'est  un  fait  incontestable  que 
1'Angleterre  ppssede  tous  les  droits  substantiels  de  la  souverainte*  dans  les  provinces 
de  Benjjale,  Bahar,  et  Orixa. .  ..C'est  en  supposant  cette  gualite*  effective  de  la 
souveramt£  que  les  deux  cours  ont  formes  Tarticle  1 1  de  traite*  de  Paris  et  Particle 
13  de  celui  de  Versailles. ,  ..* 

The  French,  however,  did  not  accept  this  doctrine,  which  can  hardly 
be  read  into  the  treaties  mentioned  without  vigorous  interpolation. 
The  position  is  clearly  summed  up  in  an  unpublished  letter  of  Corn- 
wallis  to  the  Committee  of  Secrecy,  dated  16  November,  1786.  "From 
this  complicated  system",  he  says,  "founded  on  grants  conferred  and 
powers  assumed,  of  sovereignty  exercised  though  not  avowed,  many 
difficulties  arise  in  all  negotiations  with  foreign  nations."3 

The  Treaty  of  Amiens  only  dealt  with  India  under  a  general  article, 
but  the  Treaty  of  Paris  of  1814,  and  the  convention  with  the  Nether- 
lands of  the  same  year,  both  place  the  position  of  the  English  Govern- 
ment in  India  beyond  question  internationally.  Both  refer  specifically 
to  the  British  sovereignty  in  India,  which  was  then  for  the  first  time 
acknowledged  by  the  French  and  the  Dutch.  In  this  connection,  and 
as  displaying  the  contrast  which  this  treaty  displays  with  previous 
diplomatic  language,  a  sentence  from  Article  12  of  the  Treaty  of 
Paris  may  be  quoted: 

Sa  Majest£  Britannique  s'engage  a  faire  iouir  les  sujets  de  sa  Majest6  Tres 
Chr£tienne  relativement  au  commerce  et  a  la  stirete*  de  leurs  personnes  et  pro- 
prie"t£s  dans  les  limites  de  la  souverainte"  britaiuiique  sur  le  continent  des  Indes, 
des  m&mes  facilites,  privileges  et  protection,  qui  sont  a  present  ou  seront  accorded 
aux  nations  les  plus  tavoris^es. 

Thus  the  claim  put  forward  by  the  legislation  of  1813  was  in  the 
following  year  formally  announced  to  the  diplomatic  world  of  Europe 
and  recognised  by  the  two  powers  principally  interested  in  the  East. 
We  must  now  turn  to  see  how  in  India  itself  the  position  of  the 
East  India  Company  gradually  developed.  The  obvious  point  of 
departure  is  the  Treaty  of  Allahabad,  by  which  Clive  secured  for  the 
Company  a  grant  of  the  diwanni,  agreeing  in  return  to  pay  to  the 
emperor  twenty-six  lakhs  of  rupees  a  year  besides  giving  him  pos- 
session of  Allahabad  and  the  revenues  of  the  neighbouring  country. 
The  emperor  at  the  time  when  he  made  the  grant  was  a  fugitive  from 
his  capital,  without  money,  without  troops,  dependent  on  the  English 
for  his  daily  bread.  His  grant  gave  them  nothing  which  they  could 

1  India  Office,  French  in  India,  vol.  xra.  •  Idem. 

*  Idem. 


THE  BENGAL  TRIBUTE  597 

not  very  well  have  taken  for  themselves  had  they  been  so  minded, 
and  Olive's  reason  for  his  generosity,  as  has  been  pointed  out  above, 
referred  not  to  the  position  of  affairs  in  India  but  to  the  Company's 
relations  with  the  crown  and  the  French.  The  grant  was,  Hastings 
said,  "a  presumptuous  gift  of  what  was  not  his  to  give",1  and 

The  sword  which  gave  us  the  dominion  of  Bengal  must  be  the  instrument  of  its 
preservation;  and  if. .  .it  shall  ever  cease  to  be  ours,  the  next  proprietor  will  derive 
his  right  and  possession  from  the  same  natural  charter.1 

Holding  these  views  Hastings  was  inevitably  opposed  to  dive's 
settlement  so  far  as  it  concerned  the  action  of  the  governments  in 
India.  Indeed,  he  had  hardly  taken  over  the  government  in  Bengal 
in  1772  before  an  opportunity  arose  for  him  to  give  effect  to  his  ideas. 
The  emperor,  Shah  'Alam,  having  quitted  English  protection  at 
Allahabad  for  Maratha  protection  at  Delhi,  Hastings  decided  to  stop 
payment  of  the  Bengal  tribute.  "I  think  I  may  promise",  he  wrote, 
"that  no  more  payments  will  be  made  while  he  is  in  the  hands  of 
the  Mahrattas,  nor,  if  I  can  prevent  it,  ever  more"*  The  refusal  was 
diplomatically  placed  to  the  account  of  the  Bengal  famine  of  1769-70. 
There  followed  an  unceasing  stream  of  letters  from  Delhi,  in  which 
the  emperor  or  one  of  his  ministers  called  upon  the  English  to 
withdraw  from  their  position,  or  at  the  least  to  lend  the  emperor 
troops  who  might  be  paid  out  of  the  arrears.  Hastings  at  last  wrote, 
"I  must  plainly  declare  that  until  the  safety  and  welfare  of  these 
provinces  will  admit  of  it,  I  cannot  consent  that  a  single  rupee  be 
sent  out  of  them  which  it  is  in  my  power  to  retain".4  The  payment  of 
tribute  was  the  one  really  crucial  element  in  the  relations  between  the 
emperor  and  the  rulers  of  the  provinces.  A  governor  might  strike 
coin  and  have  the  Friday  prayers  read  in  the  emperor's  name;  he 
might  pay  handsomely  to  obtain  the  imperial  confirmation  of  his 
succession,  and  offer  large  sums  for  the  continuance  of  his  predecessor's 
tides;  but  these  things  meant  little  except  when  they  were  accom- 
panied by  the  regular  remittance  of  the  annual  tribute,  which  alone 
signified  a  real,  living  allegiance  to  the  imperial  power.  Hastings's 
refusal  of  tribute  was  in  effect  a  declaration  of  the  practical  inde- 
pendence of  Bengal. 

It  was  accompanied  by  another  act  which  in  its  way  was  equally 
significant.  The  districts  of  Kora  and  Allahabad  were  ceded  to  the 
nawab  of  Oudh.  Clive's  arrangement  by  which  they  had  been  given 
to  the  emperor  might  conceivably  have  been  represented  as  obedience 
to  the  monarch's  commands.  Not  so  the  decision  which  dispossessed 
the  imperial  revenue-officers  and  transferred  the  districts  back  to  the 
nawab  of  Oudh  in  return  for  fifty  lakhs  paid  into  the  Company's 

1  Minute,  ap.  Bengal  Select  Committee,  4  October,  1773. 

1  Minute,  loc.  cit.  12  October,  1772. 

1  Hastings  to  Purling,  22  March,  1772  (Monckton  Jones,  op.  cit.  p.  147). 

4  Hastings  to  Shah  'Alam,  13  September,  1773  (Forrest,  op.  cit.  i,  58). 


598  DEVELOPMENT  OF  SOVEREIGNTY 

treasury.  As  if  in  order  to  make  the  position  clearer  still,  Hastings 
declined  the  title  which  the  emperor  offered  him.1  In  another  way, 
too,  Hastings  aimed  at  introducing  English  sovereignty,  though 
circumstances  did  not  allow  him  to  carry  it  into  execution.  He 
advocated  the  replacement  of  alliances  between  Indian  princes  and 
the  Company  by  alliances  between  them  and  the  crown.  The  first 
occasion  on  which  he  placed  these  ideas  on  paper  seems  to  have  been 
in  a  letter  to  North  of  26  February,  I775J2  but  from  a  later  letter  to 
Elliot  of  1 2  January,  1 777, 3  it  appears  that  the  subject  must  have  been 
discussed  between  him  and  Shuja-ud-daula  when  he  visited  Benares 
in  1773.  He  states  that  the  nawab  was  desirous  of  alliance  with 
George  III  and  even  offered  to  coin  money  in  the  name  of  the  English 
monarch.  Hastings  was  still  in  favour  of  this  project  in  1777,  and 
thought  it  might  be  applied  not  only  to  Oudh  but  also  to  Berar. 
Had  this  policy  been  carried  into  effect,  it  would  have  led  to  a  formal 
assertion  of  English  paramountcy  in  India.  But  the  directors,  had  it 
even  been  proposed  to  them,  would  have  objected  to  it  as  lessening 
their  importance,  while  the  ministry  of  the  time  had  no  clear-cut 
conception  of  its  own  purposes.  The  plan  thus  came  to  nothing,  and 
survives  only  as  a  project,  foiled,  like  so  many  of  Hastings's  plans,  by 
the  opposition  or  the  inertia  of  others. 

While  Hastings  was  thus  bent  on  repudiating  the  emperor's 
authority  over  Bengal,  he  was  equally  active  in  reducing  even  the 
ostensible  part  played  by  that  phantom  the  nawab  in  its  internal 
management — implanting,  as  he  said,  the  authority  of  the  Company 
and  the  sovereignty  of  Great  Britain  in  the  constitution. 

"The  truth  is",  he  wrote  to  the  Secret  Committee  on  i  September,  1772,  "that 
the  affairs  of  the  Company  stand  at  present  on  a  footing  which  can  neither  last 
as  it  is  nor  be  maintained  on  the  rigid  principles  of  pnvate  justice.  You  must 
establish  your  own  power,  or  you  must  hold  it  dependent  on  a  superior,  which 
I  deem  to  be  impossible."4 

In  these  ideas  he  was  encouraged  by  the  Company's  decision 
"to  stand  forth  as  diwan".  One  of  the  guiding  principles  which 
inspired  the  reforms  of  the  period  1772-4  was  to  make  Calcutta 
the  visible  capital  of  the  province.  Thither  was  moved  the  chief 
revenue-office,  and  thither  went  the  appeals  from  the  courts  which 
he  established.  "In  a  word",  he  claimed  in  1773,  "the  sovereign 
authority  of  the  Company  is  firmly  rooted  in  every  branch  of  the 
state."5 

But  in  this  he  had  out-run  the  intentions  of  his  masters,  the  directors, 
and  their  masters,  the  parliament  and  crown.  Lawyers  like  Thurlow 
might  with  brutal  directness  declare  that  in  India  existed  no  powers 

1  Hastings  to  Shah  'Alam,  i  August,  1773  (Calendar  of  Persian  Correspondence,  rv,  77), 

1  Gleig,  op.  cit.  i,  508. 

*  Idem,  n,  136. 

4  Idem,  i,  254.  •  Idem,  p.  332. 


HASTINGS  AND  THE  COUNCIL  599 

or  rights  but  force,  and  that  it  was  "a  country  with  no  public  moral 
or  faith".1  But  no  one  in  England  was  yet  ready  to  accept  the  idea 
of  filling  with  British  sovereignty  the  void  created  by  the  dissolution 
of  the  Moghul  power.  The  vagueness  of  the  Regulating  Act  corre- 
sponded in  its  own  way  with  the  vagueness  of  the  directors' 
orders.  They  might  resolve  directly  to  administer  the  Bengal  revenues 
on  reports  that  their  Indian  deputy  was  playing  them  false;  but 
though  they  enjoyed  the  powers  they  were  not  prepared  to  assume 
the  position  of  the  masters  of  Bengal.  When  they  received  complaints, 
for  instance,  that  the  French  were  refusing  to  obey  the  orders  issued 
in  the  nawab's  name,  they  replied : 

We  direct  that  you  afford  the  Country  Government  all  necessary  assistance  in 
the  execution  of  such  equitable  laws  as  are  or  may  be  framed  for  the  protection 

of  the  natives If  the  French  persist  in  their  contempt  of  the  Nabob,  it  is  our 

order  that  you  decline  as  much  as  possible  entering  into  a  discussion  of  such  of  their 
complaints  as  shall  be  cognizable  by  the  Nazim  of  the  province,  for  so  long  as  the 
English  pay  attention  to  His  Excellency,  it  cannot  be  expected  that  other  Europeans 
should  be  allowed  to  disregard  him . . . . 2 

So  when  Clavering  and  his  followers  arrived  in  India,  and  found  that 
Hastings  had  adopted  a  different  policy,  and  above  all  when  they 
found  the  Supreme  Court  taking  the  same  line,  calling  the  nawab 
"a  man  of  straw",  and  demanding  that  the  majority  should  make 
oath  that  he  was  a  sovereign  independent  prince,  conducting  his 
own  affairs  independently  of  their  government  and  capable  of  making 
war  and  peace  with  Calcutta,  though  they  were  unable  to  make  the 
required  affidavits  they  were  strongly  inclined  to  adopt,  support,  and 
enforce  the  Company's  views,  reviving  the  phantom  which  Clive  had 
summoned  up.  Not  impossibly  the  latter  had  urged  this  course  on 
Francis  in  some  of  those  meetings  which  took  place  at  Walcot  shortly 
before  the  majority  sailed  from  England  and  which  were  full  of  evil  omen 
for  the  relations  between  the  governor-general  and  his  new  colleagues. 
Hence  their  endeavour  to  maintain  the  fiction  of  the  dual  government 
and  to  hide  the  authority  of  the  East  India  Company.  Accordingly 
they  insisted  on  re-establishing  Muhammad  Riza  Khan  as  deputy 
nazim  and  supported  their  decision  by  taunting  Hastings  with  neglect 
of  the  Company's  intentions.8 

"The  Governor  roundly  insists",  we  read,  "on  the  futility  of  attempting  to 
maintain  a  country  government. . .  .An  old  servant  of  the  Company  might  at  least 
have  treated  their  Deliberate  and  invariable  opinion  with  greater  respect.  With 
regard  to  us,  if  our  ideas  on  this  subject  had  not  entirely  concurred  with  theirs, 
and  if  we  had  not  been  convinced  that  in  their  circumstances  it  was  the  only 
rational  system  they  could  pursue,  we  should  still  have  thought  it  our  duty ...  to 
have  adopted  their  doctrines." 

1  Thurlow's  Opinion  on  Olive's  Jagir  Case. 

*  Company  to  Bengal,  3  March,  1775,  para*.  59  sqq. 

1  Bengal  Secret  Consultations,  29  February,  1776. 


6oo  DEVELOPMENT  OF  SOVEREIGNTY 

Beside  these  thin  and  hollow  declarations  should  be  placed  Hastings's 
vigorous  and  (in  this  case)  accurate  language. 

All  the  arts  of  policy  cannot  conceal  the  power  by  which  these  provinces  are 
ruled,  nor  can  all  the  arts  of  sophistry  avail  to  transfer  the  responsibility  of  them 
to  the  Nabob,  when  it  is  as  visible  as  the  light  of  the  sun  that  they  originate  from 
our  own  government,  that  the  Nabob  is  a  mere  pageant  without  so  much  as  the 
shadow  of  authority,  and  even  his  most  consequential  agents  receive  their  appoint- 
ment from  the  recommendation  of  the  Company  and  the  express  nomination  of 
their  servants.1 

Absolute  as  the  opposition  appears,  it  is  nevertheless  deceptive. 
The  majority  were  ready  to  use  any  stick  to  beat  Hastings  with,  even 
if  it  was  not  one  of  their  own  growing;  and  although  under  the  stress 
of  controversy  they  found  themselves  committed  to  the  views  set 
down  above,  they  had  not  always  considered  the  dual  system  of 
government  that  best  adapted  to  the  situation  of  Bengal.  In  a  letter 
written  early  in  1775  Francis  had  pointed  out  that  under  the  system 
which  in  the  next  year  the  majority  advocated  so  heartily,  the  people 
of  Bengal  had  either  two  sovereigns  or  none,  and  that  the  only  course 
to  follow  was  to  declare  the  sovereignty  of  the  king  of  Great  Britain 
over  the  whole  of  the  provinces;  and  at  this  time  his  criticisms  of 
Hastings's  conduct  seem  confined  to  the  fact  that  in  abolishing  the 
Moghul  sovereignty  he  had  not  formally  declared  the  British.2 
Francis  had  recorded  similar  sentiments  in  a  minute  of  8  March,  1775. 
After  this  it  is  odd  to  find  him,  in  a  private,  unpublished  letter  to 
Lord  North,  declaring  that  the  English  should  set  about  giving 
or  restoring  an  active  constitution  to  the  Moghul  Empire.  "The 
authority  of  the  Emperor  should  be  in  a  considerable  degree  restored 
and  means  given  him  to  support  it."3  The  revival  of  the  empire  would 
have  been  wholly  inconsistent  with  English  authority  in  Bengal. 

It  is  worth  noting  that  in  this  respect  the  policies  of  the  English 
and  the  French  had  been,  and  continued  to  be,  diametrically  opposed. 
Dupleix  and  Bussy  had  consistently  acted  within  the  theory  of  the 
empire.  They  had  based  their  claims  in  Southern  India  on  the 
authority  of  Salabat  Jang,  as  legitimate  subahdar  of  the  Deccan. 
Even  in  the  Seven  Years'  War,  when  matters  were  going  ill  for  the 
French,  Bussy  advocated  summoning  the  subahdar's  brother,  Basalat 
Jang,  into  the  Carnatic,  on  the  ground  that  the  authority  of  his  name 
and  connection  with  the  subahdar  would  enable  the  French  to 
collect  revenues  where  without  him  they  could  not  raise  a  rupee. 
All  their  intrigues  of  a  later  date  included  schemes  to  secure  the 
influence  of  the  imperial  name,  as  if  that  could  give  them  a  man  more 
in  the  field  or  a  rupee  more  in  the  treasury.  Down  to  the  time  of 
Wellesley  they  continued  to  dream  of  reviving  the  empire  in  order 

1  Hastings's  Minute,  ap.  Bengal  Secret  Consultations,  7  December,  1775. 
1  Francis  to  North,  February,  1775  (Parkea  and  Merivale,  n,  27). 
*  Same  to  same,  ai  November,  1775  (Public  Record  Office,  T  49-8). 


BROWNE'S  MISSION  601 

thereby  to  establish  their  own  supremacy;  and  so  obsessed  were  they 
with  this  idea  that  some  of  them  even  attributed  it  to  their  English 
rivals.1 

But  Jean  Law,  the  coolest  head  among  them,  saw  better  and  more 
clearly  into  the  heart  of  things.  In  a  mtmoire  composed  in  1777  he 
pointed  out  with  incisive  force  that  English  security  depended  on  the 
existence  of  many  independent  princes,  certain  to  be  divided  among 
themselves,  and  so  incapable  of  a  united  attack  on  the  foreigner; 
but,  if  the  government  of  Calcutta  set  to  work  to  increase  its  power 
under  cover  of  re-establishing  the  Moghul  Empire,  it  would  be 
following  the  only  policy  which  would  give  every  prince  of  India  an 
urgent  motive  for  attacking  it.2  The  ideas  with  which  Francis  dallied 
had  occurred  to  many  Englishmen  before  him — to  Clive,  who  had 
resolutely  put  them  aside;  to  Vansittart,  who  had  been  willing  to  put 
them  into  action  but  luckily  had  been  prevented  by  circumstances. 
Here  the  Company  was  in  complete  agreement  with  its  servants' 
actual  policy.  An  attempt  to  restore  the  emperor  at  Delhi,  the  Com- 
pany had  written,  "might  bring  on  the  total  ruin  of  our  affairs;  and 
we  add  that,  should  you  be  persuaded  into  so  rash  and  dangerous 
a  measure,  we  shall  deem  you  responsible  for  all  the  consequences".8 

Hastings,  however,  was  never  adverse  to  modifying  his  policy,  if 
it  seemed  desirable,  with  all  that  freedom  from  the  shackles  of  a  formal 
consistency  which  is  the  peculiar  privilege  of  the  despot.  Not  that 
he  ever  weakened  on  the  point  of  English  sovereignty  in  Bengal, 
but  in  1782  he  thought  it  desirable  to  re-enter  into  relations  with 
Delhi,  and  with  that  object  had  appointed  Major  James  Browne  to 
be  his  agent  at  that  place.  Browne  was  first  to  visit  the  nawab  of 
Oudh  and  ascertain  his  views,  since  Hastings  desired  "to  second  and 
assist  his  views  [rather]  than  to  be  the  principal  or  leader  in  any  plan 
that  may  be  undertaken".  Aware  that  the  emperor  might  take 
advantage  of  the  agent's  appearance  to  raise  once  more  the  old 
question  of  the  tribute  and  Allahabad,  Hastings  instructed  him  to 
avoid  if  possible  the  discussion  of  such  unpleasant  topics,  "since  it  is 
not  in  my  power  to  grant  either  one  or  the  other".  The  purpose  of  the 
mission  was  rather  to  secure  information  than  anything  else.  "Hitherto 
we  have  known  nothing  of  the  political  state  of  the  court  but  from 
foreign  and  suspected  channels.  Your  first  care  must  be  to  collect 
the  materials  for  a  more  complete  and  authentic  knowledge,"  not 
only  of  Shah  'Alam's  court  but  also  of  "the  independent  chiefs  and 
states  whose  territories  border  on  his".4  This  was  then  no  revival  of 
the  schemes  of  Vansittart,  merely  an  extension  of  political  relations  to 

1  Gf.  Modave's  Memorandum  of  1774,  ap.  Barbe1,  Madec,  p.  65. 

1  Law,  £tat  politiqut  de  VInde  en  1777,  pp.  76-7. 

1  Company  to  Bengal,  16  March,  1768. 

4  Hastings  to  Browne,  20  August,  1782,  ap.  Bengal  Secret  Consultations,  10  September, 
1783.  A  collection  of  papers  bearing  on  the  British  relations  with  Delhi  forms  Home 
Miscellaneous  volume  no.  336  at  the  India  Office. 


602  DEVELOPMENT  OF  SOVEREIGNTY 

a  prince  of  exalted  dignity  and  pretensions  but  of  definitely  circum- 
scribed territorial  power,  and  whose  sovereignty,  as  Hastings 
observed  on  a  later  occasion,  "is  universally  acknowledged  though  the 
substance  of  it  no  longer  exists". 

Browne's  mission  led  to  no  action  of  any  kind;  but  on  the  occasion 
of  Hastings's  final  visit  to  Benares  in  1784,  he  was  brought  into  contact 
with  a  fugitive  prince,  Mirza  Jiwan  Bakht,  who  had  fled  from  Delhi 
and  was  anxious  for  English  or  any  other  intervention  to  procure  his 
return.  At  this  time  Hastings  was  regarding  with  a  speculative  eye 
the  rise  of  the  Sikh  power  in  Northern  India,  whence  he  predicted 
the  emergence  of  new  dangers  to  the  Company's  possessions  "if  this 
people  is  permitted  to  grow  into  maturity  without  interruption". 
He  seems  to  have  contemplated  the  possibility  of  affording  assistance 
to  the  prince  with  a  view  to  checking  the  advances  of  the  Sikhs;  but 
preferred  that  Mahadaji  Rao  Sindhia  should  be  committed  to  this 
enterprise;  indeed  very  shortly  after  this,  on  the  occasion  of  the 
murder  of  Afrasiab  Khan,  Sindhia  did  assume  control  of  affairs  at 
Delhi;  and  this  was  the  position  of  affairs  when  Hastings  quitted 
India  early  in  1785. 

The  degree  in  which  the  decay  of  the  Moghul  Empire  was  apparent 
to  and  recognised  by  the  people  of  India,  and  the  aspect  under  which 
the  rising  power  of  the  East  India  Company  appeared  to  them,  must 
have  varied  widely  according  to  the  class  and  the  interests  of  the 
observer.  Princes  such  as  the  nawab  of  Oudh  or  the  Nizam  of 
Hyderabad  still  made  haste  on  their  accession  to  obtain  a  formal 
confirmation  in  their  offices  and  the  grant  of  titles;  and  for  these  they 
were  willing  to  pay  in  hard  cash.  They  still  struck  coin  in  the  emperor's 
name;  in  his  name  were  still  read  the  prayers  in  the  mosques;  and  the 
seals  which  they  used  to  authenticate  their  public  documents  still 
declared  them  the  humble  servants  of  the  emperor.  But,  in  strong 
contrast  to  the  observance  of  these  forms,  none  thought  of  obeying 
his  orders,  of  remitting  to  him  the  surplus  revenues  of  the  provinces, 
of  mustering  troops  for  his  support.  Shah  'Alam  himself  with  his 
immediate  courtiers  doubtless  regarded  them  all  as  rebels  whom  he 
would  duly  chastise  had  he  the  power;  but  in  view  of  his  complete 
impotence  he  could  only  acquiesce.  To  the  common  people  these 
affairs  were  too  remote  to  concern  them  in  any  way.  They  had 
suffered  in  silence  the  establishment  of  Muslim  rule;  they  had 
watched  with  unconcern  one  Muslim  dynasty  replace  another;  and 
now  they  watched  unmoved  the  last  of  these  falling  into  decay  and 
dishonour,  while  they  paid  their  taxes  to  whatever  power  appeared 
with  armed  force  to  demand  them,  whether  it  were  Muslim,  Maratha, 
or  European. 

Among  the  princes  of  India  two  policies  emerged  as  alternatives 
to  that  policy  of  drift  to  which  most  of  them  were  inclined.  One  was 
to  declare  their  independence  of  the  empire,  as  Tipu  did  when  he 


CORNWALLIS  603 

proclaimed  himself padshah  in  his  own  right;1  the  other  was  to  espouse 
the  imperial  cause  and  extend  a  personal  dominion  under  the  shadow 
of  the  imperial  name,  as  Mahadaji  Rao  Sindhia  sought  to  do.  Of 
these  the  first  was  generally  reprobated  by  Muslims,  to  whom  even 
the  later  Moghul  emperors,  as  in  an  earlier  century  even  the  later 
Abbasid  Khalifs,  symbolised  religious  as  well  as  political  sentiments, 
though  no  longer  capable  of  transforming  them  into  effective  action; 
while  the  second  of  the  two  could  only  commend  itself  to  able  and 
ambitious  individuals,  like  Sindhia,  who  perhaps  dreamed  of  ulti- 
mately transforming  the  empire  from  Muslim  to  Hindu. 

When  matters  were  in  this  state  of  flux,  Cornwallis  arrived  in  India 
and  a  new  period  begins  in  the  development  of  the  East  India 
Company's  position.  Cornwallis  and  the  later  governors-general 
could  not  be  expected  to  and  in  fact  did  not  display  that  sympathy 
with  Indian  ideas  which  made  the  Company's  servants  not  unwilling 
to  perpetuate  traditional  forms,  even  though  they  might  obscure 
the  essential  facts  of  the  situation.  To  Cornwallis  the  customary 
diplomatic  language  was  a  "pompous,  unmeaning  jargon".2  The 
tone  of  the  Calcutta  government  rises. 

"I  expect",  writes  Cornwallis,  "that  all  the  princes  of  the  country  except  those 
of  the  royal  family  shall  habituate  themselves  to  consider  the  English  residents  at 
their  respective  courts  as  the  representatives  of  a  government  at  least  equal  in 
power  and  dignity  to  their  own.  3 

When  Shah  'Alam  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  cruel  Rohilla  Ghulam 
Kadir  Khan,  Cornwallis,  though  horrified  at  the  torture  inflicted  on 
him,  could  see  no  political  reason  for  interference.  "If  we  should 
now  free  him,"  he  said,  "unless  we  could  give  him  an  army  or  a 
permanent  fund  for  the  payment  of  it,  he  would  immediately  again 
become  the  slave  and  perhaps  the  prisoner  of  some  other  tyrant."4 
Casual  interference  would  thus  be  useless;  and  practical  statesmen 
could  not  be  expected  to  employ  their  resources  in  restoring  a 
vanished  empire. 

"I  have  received  several  melancholy  [letters]  from  the  King",  Cornwallis  writes 
to  Shore,  "calling  on  me  in  the  most  pressing  terms  for  assistance  and  support. 
This  morning  I  wrote  him  a  letter,  perfectly  civil  and  respectful,  but  without  all 
that  jargon  of  allegiance  and  obedience,  in  which  I  stated  most  explicitly  the 
impossibility  of  our  interference."5 

This  was  not  Cornwallis's  only  assertion  of  the  Company's  inde- 
pendence. In  1 790  the  Bombay  Government  proposed  that  advantage 
should  be  taken  of  the  death  of  the  nawab  of  Surat  to  obtain  a  farman 
from  Shah  'Alam  for  the  country  in  the  Company's  name.  Cornwallis 
rejected  the  proposal.  For  one  thing  the  nawab  had  left  a  son  whose 
claims  should  not  be  overlooked;  and  for  another,  "I  am. .  .unwilling 

1  Wilks,  Historical  Sketches,  ed.  1867,  n,  1 10. 

*  Cornwallis  Correspondence,  i,  418. 

1  Idem,  p.  558.  4  Idem,  p.  352.  •  Idem,  p.  295. 


604  DEVELOPMENT  OF  SOVEREIGNTY 

to  lay  much  stress  on  a  sannud  from  the  King,  as  a  formal  acknow- 
ledgment of  its  validity  might  be  turned  to  the  disadvantage  of  the 
Company  upon  some  other  occasion".1  Accordingly  the  nawab's 
son  was  recognised  as  his  successor  by  the  Company,  and  there  the 
matter  was  left.  The  same  procedure  was  adopted  in  1793  when 
Nasir-ul-mulk  was  recognised  as  nawab  of  Bengal.  Sindhia  in  the 
name  of  Shah  'Alam  protested;  but  his  protests  were  disregarded. 
Similarly  too  when  Sindhia  indirectly  sought  to  revive  the  demand 
for  Bengal  tribute  in  1792.  Sindhia  was  at  once  informed  that  any 
such  claim  would  be  warmly  resented,  on  which  he  hastened  to  assure 
Cornwallis  that  he  regarded  the  British  as  supreme  within  their  own 
territories. 

The  government  of  Shore  displays  no  change  in  the  Company's 
position;  and,  indeed,  if  circumstances  had  demanded  of  him  any 
important  decision,  he  would  hardly  have  borne  the  Company's 
banner  so  high.  He  was  much  more  careless  of  the  political  deductions 
that  might  be  drawn  from  a  compliance  with  forms,  and  actually 
submitted  to  be  invested  with  a  khiVat  or  dress  of  honour  by  the 
princes  whom  he  visited  at  Benares  in  I797-2  But  when  in  the 
following  year  he  was  succeeded  by  Mornington  as  governor-general, 
a  change  of  tone  rapidly  became  apparent.  In  the  course  of  the  war 
with  Sindhia,  Lake  defeated  the  enemy  before  Delhi  in  1803,  and 
the  capital  and  the  person  of  the  emperor  fell  into  English  hands. 
This  was  an  object  which,  on  account  of  French  intrigues,  Morning- 
ton,  now  become  Lord  Wellesley,  had  much  at  heart.  A  French 
paper,  written  by  one  of  Decaen's  officers,  had  fallen  into  his  hands, 
stating  that  Shah  'Alam 

ought  to  be  the  undisputed  sovereign  of  the  Mogul  empire . . .  .The  English 
Company  by  its  ignominious  treatment  of  the  Great  Mogul,  has  forfeited  its  rights 
as  dewan  and  treasurer  of  the  empire. . . ;  thus  the  Emperor  of  Delhi  has  a  real 
and  indisputable  right  to  transmit  to  whomsoever  he  may  please  to  select,  the 
sovereignty  of  his  dominions,  as  well  as  the  arrears  due  to  him  from  the  English.3 

Wellesley  concluded  that  the  English  interests  demanded  the  removal 
of  Shah  'Alam  from  the  reach  of  such  dangerous  suggestions.  The 
emperor  might  confer  on  the  French  an  independent  sovereignty  in 
the  French  possessions  and  factories,  and  that,  in  a  time  of  peace  in 
Europe,  might  produce  most  embarrassing  consequences.  Accordingly 
when  Sindhia's  troops  fled  from  Delhi,  the  person  of  the  emperor 
was  reckoned  among  the  most  precious  spoils  of  victory.  In  Maratha 
hands  the  imperial  name  and  prestige  had  not  counted  for  much,  as 
was  demonstrated  clearly  enough  by  the  events  of  this  same  war,  for, 
though  Sindhia  was  as  deputy  wakil-i-mutlak  master  of  all  the  resources 
of  the  empire,  and  on  the  outbreak  of  war  had  caused  the  emperor  to 
declare  that  he  had  erected  his  conquering  standards  and  entered  his 


WELLESLEY  AND  SHAH  'ALAM  605 

tents  in  order  to  settle  the  points  at  issue,  it  is  certain  that  Sindhia 
neither  strengthened  himself  nor  weakened  the  Company  by  his  use 
of  the  imperial  name.  But  it  might  have  been  very  different  if  a 
French  army  had  taken  the  field,  or  if  French  diplomatists  in  Europe 
could  have  fortified  their  pretensions  with  imperial  grants. 

The  situation  created  by  Wellesley's  occupation  of  Delhi  can  hardly 
be  expressed  by  the  technical  language  of  the  West,  which  carries 
with  it  too  sharply  defined  ideas  to  be  appropriate  to  such  vague 
relations  as  were  established.  The  facts  were  these :  Shah  'Alam  blandly 
acquiesced  in  the  defeat  of  his  lieutenant.  He  received  Lake  in  his 
palace,  conferred  on  him  a  khil'at  and  a  title;  and  shortly  after  it 
was  decided  to  continue  the  jagirs  assigned  by  the  Marathas  for  his 
maintenance,  but  they  were  to  be  administered  by  the  Company's 
Resident  at  Delhi  who  was  also  in  charge  of  the  administration  of  the 
city;  these  functions  were  to  be  discharged  under  orders  from  Calcutta 
in  the  emperor's  name,  and  the  only  area  in  which  the  imperial  orders 
were  really  effective  was  the  palace  and  its  precincts.  No  written 
engagements  of  any  sort  were  given;  no  grants  of  any  kind  were 
requested;  everything  that  was  done  was  done  by  the  authority  of 
the  Company's  government  at  Calcutta ;  but  it  was  intimated  that  the 
latter  did  not  intend  "to  interdict  or  oppose  any  of  those  outward 
forms  of  sovereignty  to  which  His  Majesty  has  been  accustomed.  His 
Excellency  is  desirous  of  leaving  His  Majesty  in  the  unmolested 
exercise  of  all  his  usual  privileges  and  prerogatives5',  and  the  Resident 
was  directed  to  use  all  the  forms  of  respect  "considered  to  be  due  to 
the  emperors  of  Hindustan".1  Wellesley's  view  of  the  matter  was 
that  the  emperor  had  passed  under  the  protection  of  the  British 
Government.  The  palace  view  possibly  was  that  the  Company  had 
returned  to  its  obedience;  but  in  the  eyes  of  India  the  fortune  of  war 
had  transferred  Shah  'Alam  from  the  custody  of  Sindhia  into  that  of 
the  Company. 

Down  to  this  time  the  British  assertion  of  sovereignty  within  the 

Company's  possessions  had  been  spasmodic  and  incomplete.    But 

from  the  arrival  of  Lord  Moira  in  1813  it  was  definite  and  full.  The 

date  corresponds  with  the  statutory  assertion  of  the  king's  sovereignty 

and  only  precedes  by  a  year  the  diplomatic  acknowledgment  of  the 

claim  by  France  and  Holland.     Moira  was  persuaded  of  "the 

expedience  (and  indeed  necessity)  of  extinguishing  the  fiction  of  the 

Mogul  government".2  His  seal,  therefore,  no  longer  bore  the  phrase 

proclaiming  the  governor-general  the  servant  of  the  emperor.  The 

nazars— gifts  offered  by  an  inferior  to  his  lord — were  no  longer 

presented  in  the  name  of  the  governor-general.3  Akbar  II,  whqj^ 

succeeded  his  father  Shah  'Alam  in  1806,  desired  an  interyicw-Vitfi 

Moira,  but  the  latter  declined  unless  the  other  waived  all^rcmooial 

1  Idem,  pp.  153,  237,  542  and  553. 
8  Hastings'*  Private  Journal,  i,  78. 


606  DEVELOPMENT  OF  SOVEREIGNTY 

implying  supremacy  over  the  Company's  dominions.  "Nothing", 
Moira  wrote  in  his  journal,  "has  kept  up  the  floating  notion  of  a  duty 
owed  to  the  imperial  family  but  our  gratuitous  and  persevering 
exhibition  of  their  pretensions."  He  encouraged  the  nawab  of  Oudh 
to  assume  the  title  of  king,  and  declared  the  expediency  of  granting 
tides  of  honour.  And  while  he  thus  refused  to  acknowledge  any 
supremacy  but  that  of  his  own  master,  he  established  the  Company's 
power  on  a  new  and  broader  basis  by  his  decisive  overthrow  of  the 
Marathas  and  the  network  of  protective  alliances  which  he  cast  over 
Northern  India. 

Probably  these  developments  had  their  share  in  deciding  Akbar  II 
to  receive  his  successor,  Amherst,  in  1827,  without  that  ceremonial 
to  which  Hastings  had  objected.  The  two  entered  the  Diwan-i-khas 
at  Delhi  from  opposite  sides  at  the  same  moment;  they  met  in  front 
of  the  throne,  exchanged  embraces,  and  then  took  their  seats,  the 
emperor  on  his  throne,  the  governor-general  on  a  state-chair  placed 
on  the  right;  no  nazar  was  offered;  and  on  Amherst's  departure,  the 
emperor  presented  him  with  a  string  of  pearls  and  emeralds.1  Amherst 
also  modified  the  style  of  letters  addressed  to  the  emperor,  using  forms 
which  recognised  the  other's  superiority  but  excluded  allegiance  or 
vassalage  on  the  part  of  the  British  Government.2  In  1835  the  coinage, 
which  ever  since  1778  had  purported  to  have  been  issued  in  the 
nineteenth  regnal  year  of  Shah  'Alam,  was  replaced  by  the  Company's 
rupee  bearing  the  English  monarch's  image  and  superscription/ 

With  this  change  the  absolute  disappearance  of  the  old  style  and 
titular  dignity  came  in  sight.  Ellenborough,  an  enthusiast  for  the 
direct  government  of  India  by  the  crown,8  cherished  a  scheme  for 
inducing  the  Delhi  family  to  quit  the  palace  that  had  been  built  by 
Shah  Jahan,  and  to  resign  the  title  which  was,  by  voluntary  request 
of  the  chiefs,  to  be  offered  to  the  queen,4  despite  the  oddity — had  his 
ideas  been  carried  into  effect — of  her  figuring  as  Padshah  Ghazi,  the 
imperial  champion  of  Islam,  which  would  have  made  a  queer  pendant 
to  the  Fidei  defensor.  Dalhousie  shared  Ellenborough's  dislike  of  such 
survivals  of  the  past  world  of  India.  Under  his  reformatory  rule  the 
titles  of  nawab  of  the  Carnatic  and  raja  of  Tanjore  were  allowed  to 
lapse  along  with  the  pension  which  had  been  granted  to  the  Peshwa 
on  his  surrender  in  1818.  He  proposed  that  with  the  death  of  the 
existing  emperor,  Bahadur  Shah  II,  the  imperial  dignity  too  should 
be  allowed  to  lapse.  In  this  matter  the  Court  of  Directors  was  strongly 
opposed  to  him,  and  though  the  president  of  the  Board,  Sir  John 
Hobhouse,  obliged  it  to  sign  a  dispatch  formally  sanctioning  such 
action,  he  also  wrote  to  the  governor-general,  informing  him  that 
there  was  strong  feeling  against  his  plan,  and  hinting  that  it  would 

1  Selections  from  the  Panjab  Records,  i,  337.  *  Idem>  p.  343  sqq. 

*  Colebrooke,  Elphinstone,  n,  266. 
«  Durand,  Ltfe  of  Sir  H.  Durand,  i,  84. 


END  OF  THE  MOGHUL  EMPIRE  607 

be  well  to  reconsider  matters,  while  the  chairman  of  the  Court, 
General  Sir  A.  Galloway,  strongly  urged  the  impolicy  of  any  measures 
that  had  not  the  assent  of  the  heir  to  the  title.  In  these  circumstances 
Dalhousie  decided  not  to  carry  out  the  original  plan,  but  to  negotiate. 
Prince  Fakr-ud-din  was  therefore  approached  with  proposals  offering 
recognition  as  emperor  on  his  father's  death,  provided  he  would 
consent  to  meet  the  governor-general  at  all  times  on  equal  terms, 
and  to  remove  the  imperial  family  from  the  palace  in  Delhi  to  the 
Kutb,  some  miles  to  the  southward  of  the  modern  city.  To  these 
terms  the  prince  assented,  so  that  it  seemed  that  the  principal  purpose 
which  had  inspired  all  these  manoeuvres,  securing  possession  of  the 
palace  not  only  as  a  symbol  of  sovereignty  but  also  as  the  ideal 
site  for  the  principal  military  depot  in  Upper  India,  would  be 
accomplished  within  a  few  years.1  This,  it  may  be  noted,  explains 
how  it  came  to  pass  that  the  vigorous  Dalhousie  took  no  action 
regarding  the  famous  magazine  at  Delhi  beyond  removing  the 
powder  magazine  to  a  point  outside  the  city  walls. 

But  on  the  death  of  Fakr-ud-din  in  1856  the  question  was  raised 
once  more.  Bahadur  Shah  urged  that  another  son,  Jiwan  Bakht, 
should  be  recognised  as  heir,  but  Canning,  who  had  by  then  replaced 
Dalhousie,  was  more  obstinately  determined  than  had  been  his  pre- 
decessor on  the  abolition  of  the  dignity.  In  this  decision  he  seems  to 
have  been  supported  by  all  the  Company's  servants  in  a  position  to 
be  consulted — the  Resident  at  Delhi,  the  lieutenant-governor  of  the 
North-West  Provinces,  and  the  members  of  the  governor-general's 
council;  the  court  of  directors  either  changed  its  mind  or  was  over- 
ruled; and  nine  months  before  the  outbreak  of  the  Mutiny  it  was 
decided  that  the  imperial  rank  should  no  longer  be  recognised  after 
the  death  of  Bahadur  Shah.2 

But  at  last  circumstances  precipitated  the  crisis.  After  the  fall 
of  Delhi  the  old  emperor  was  tried  for  complicity  in  the  Mutiny, 
and  ended  his  days  in  exile  in  Rangoon,  while  the  direct  government 
of  the  Company's  possessions  by  the  British  crown  was  at  last  estab- 
lished. That  the  course  of  events,  the  gradual  stripping  of  the  imperial 
house  of  all  the  emblems  of  royalty,  and  the  final  resolve  to  terminate 
its  honours,  created  a  furious  resentment  within  the  walls  of  the 
palace,  and  was  represented  as  a  blow  at  their  faith  by  the  more 
fanatical  Muslims  in  India,  may  be  accepted  as  certain.  But  to 
regard  it  as  the  main,  or  one  of  the  main,  causes  of  the  outbreak 
involves  the  absurdity  of  attempting  to  explain  a  complex  move- 
ment by  viewing  it  from  one  only  of  its  many  aspects.  The  hos- 
tility of  the  Moghul  court  had  been  a  constant  factor  from  the  day, 
eighty  odd  years  earlier,  when  Warren  Hastings  had  refused  to  con- 
tinue the  tribute  due  from  Bengal  as  a  Moghul  province;  it  had 

1  Lee- Warner,  Dalhousie,  n,  135  sqq.  Selections  from  the  Panjab  Records,  i,  405  sqq. 
1  Idem,  p.  456  sqq. 


6o8  DEVELOPMENT  OF  SOVEREIGNTY 

inspired  Akbar  II  when  he  saw  the  Company's  government  assuming 
the  marks  of  eastern  sovereignty;  and  it  was  in  itself  no  more  for- 
midable in  1857  than  it  had  been  any  time  in  the  previous  eighty 
years. 

If  this  shadow-king  had  had  influence  enough  to  make  the  Com- 
pany's sepoy  forces  mutiny,  he  would  have  used  it  many  years  before. 

Finally,  it  should  be  noted  that  such  survivals  of  vanished  power 
were  by  no  means  uncharacteristic  of  eastern  history.  The  khalif  of 
Baghdad  was  visited  by  embassies  bearing  gifts  and  seeking  tides 
long  after  the  provinces  of  the  Abbasid  Empire  had  become  inde- 
pendent, and  ceased  to  send  their  tribute  to  the  imperial  treasury. 
A  nearer  parallel  may  be  found  in  India  itself.  When  the  Peshwas 
founded  their  power  at  Poona,  they  did  not  overthrow  the  Maratha 
monarchy.  The  descendants  of  Sivaji  continued  to  reign  at  Satara 
while  for  a  century  their  ministers  ruled  from  Poona,  and  each 
Peshwa  solemnly  sought  investiture  from  the  king,  although  the  king 
could  only  do  as  he  was  directed.  At  Mysore  Hydar  and  Tipu 
preserved  the  old  Hindu  kingly  family,  and  showed  its  representative 
periodically  to  the  people;  and  at  Nagpur  the  Bhonsles  preserved  a 
Gondh  prince,  to  whom  they  left  the  title  of  raja  and  in  whose  name 
they  issued  their  orders.  The  relations  between  the  East  India  Com- 
pany and  the  Moghul,  the  one  exercising  and  the  other  claiming  the 
attributes  of  sovereignty,  the  one  possessed  of  material  power  and 
the  other  of  mystic  superiority,  the  one  obeyed  and  the  other  revered, 
were  by  no  means  extraordinary.  The  peculiar  factor  in  this  case  was 
not  the  separation  of  right  and  power,  but  the  fact  that  the  East  India 
Company  was  not  a  purely  Indian  body,  that  it  represented  the 
sovereign  of  Great  Britain  and  brought  with  it  a  European  impatience 
of  pretensions  that  had  ceased  to  have  a  basis  in  fact. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  PORTUGUESE  IN  INDIA 
A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 
(i)  PORTUGUESE  SOURCES 

MANUSCRIPT 

The  official  records  are  contained  in  the  Archiyo  da  Torre  do  Tombo  and  the 
Bibliotheca  Nacional  at  Lisbon,  and  in  the  archives  at  Goa.  The  records  in  the 
Torre  do  Tombo  are  described  in  P.  A.  de  Azevedo  and  A.  Baiao,  0  Archive  da 
Torre  do  Tombo,  Lisbon,  1905;  A.  Mesquita  de  Figueiredo,  Archive  Nacional  da 
Torre  do  Tombo,  Lisbon,  1922;  and  F.  C.  Danvers,  Report  on  the  Portuguese  Records, 
1892. 

In  this  c'ountry  the  India  Office  Records  include  an  important  series  of  transcripts 
and  translations  from  the  Lisbon  records  made  under  the  direction  of  F.  G. 
Danvers.  They  are  drawn  chiefly  from  the  Livros  das  Monfies,  the  Corpo  chronologico, 
the  Gavetas  Antigas,  and  the  Conselho  Ultramarino.  A  full  list  is  printed  in  the  India 
Office  List  of  General  Records. 

A  number  of  Goa  Records  were  purchased  by  William  Marsden.  Part  of  these 
were  presented  to  the  British  Museum  (Add.  MSS,  9390-9397,  and  9852-9861) 
during  Marsden 's  lifetime,  the  remainder  were  presented  to  King's  College  in 
1835  and  transferred  to  the  School  of  Oriental  Studies  with  the  whole  of  Marsden 's 
Library  in  1917.  The  MSS  of  Almeida,  Storia  de  Etiopia  a  alia,  were  in  Marsden 's 
possession;  one  of  these,  which  was  used  by  Beccari  for  his  printed  edition,  is  now 
in  the  British  Museum  (Add.  MS,  9861);  the  other,  which  seems  to  bear  the 
corrections  of  Almeida  himself,  is  in  the  School  of  Oriental  Studies.  (See  Bulletin 
School  of  Oriental  Studies,  n,  513-38.) 

The  British  Museum  possesses  a  large  collection  of  official  documents  relating  to 
the  Portuguese  possessions  in  India  ranging  from  1518  to  1754  (Add.  MSS, 
20861-20913),  also  the  Resende  MS  (Sloane,  197). 

Notes  on  the  Goa  archives  will  be  found  in  Surendranath  Sen,  Historical  Records 
at  Goa,  Calcutta,  1 925,  and  A  Preliminary  report  on  the  historical  records  at  Goa,  Calcutta, 
1925- 

PRINTED 
Periodicals 

O  Oriente  Portugues.  Revista  da  Commissao  Archeologica  da  India  Portuguesa. 

Nova  Goa,  1904-    . 

Archivo  Historico  Portuguez.  Vols.  II  and  III.  Lisbon,  1904-5. 
Boletim  da  Sociedade  de  Geographia  de  Lisboa.  Lisbon,  1875,  etc. 
Royal  Asiatic  Society.  Journals  of  the  Ceylon  Branch.  Colombo. 

Chronicles  and  contemporary  documents 

ALBUQUERQUE.  Cartas  de  Affonso  de  Albuquerque.  (Colleccao  de  Monumentos 
ineditos  para  a  historia  das  conquistas  dos  Portuguezes  em  Africa,  Asia,  e 
America.  Tom.  x-xvr.  Lisbon,  1084-1915.,) 

Commentaries  do  Grande  Afonso  d  Albuquerque.  4  vols.  Lisbon,  1 774. 

•  The  commentaries  of  the  Great  Afonso  Dalboquerque.  Translated  from  the 

Portuguese  by  Walter  de  Gray  Birch.   (Hakluyt  Society.)   1875-7. 

Alguns  documentos  do  archivo  nacional  da  Torre  do  Tombo  acerca  das  nave- 
gagOes  e  conquistas  portuguezas.  Lisbon,  1902. 

crov  39 


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ARAGAO,  A.  TEIXEIRA  D'.  Vasco  da  Gama.  Lisbon,  1898.  3rd  ed. 
ARGENSOLA.    Histoire  de  la  conqu£te  des  isles  Moluques  par  les  Espagnols,  les 
Portugais,  et  les  Hollandois.  Translated  by  J.  des  Bordes.  Amsterdam,  1707. 
BALDAQUE  DA  SILVA,  A.  A.  Noticia  sobre  a  nao  S.  Gabriel  em  que  Vasco  da  Gama 

foi  pela  primeira  vez  a  India.  Lisbon,  1892. 
BALSEMAO,  EDOUARDO  AUGOSTO  DE  SA  NOGUEIRA  PINTO.    Os  Portuguezes  no 

Oriente.  Goa,  1881. 
BARCELLOS,  C.  J.  DE  SENNA.  "  ConstruccSes  de  naus  em  Lisboa  para  a  carreira  da 

India  no  come9O  do  secolo  xvii."   (Bol.  da  Soc.  de  Geo.  de  Lisboa,  1899.) 
BEAZLEY,  C.  R.  The  dawn  of  modern  geography.  3  vols.  1897-1906. 
CALDWELL,  R.   A  ...  history  of  the  district  of  Tinnevelly.  Madras,  1  88  1. 
CAMPOS,  J.  DE.   "Numismatica  indo-portugueza."   (Bol.  da  Soc.  de  Geo.  de  Lisboa  , 

1901.) 

CAMPOS,  J.  J.  A.  The  Portuguese  in  Bengal.  Calcutta,  1919. 
COMMISSARIAT,  M.  S.  "A  brief  history  of  the  Gujarat  Saltanat."  (Journal,  Bombay 

branch.  Royal  Asiatic  Society,  1920.) 
CORVO,  J.  DE  ANDRADE.  Estudos  sobre  as  provincias  ultramarinas.  Lisbon,  1883- 

87.  4  vols. 

-  Chaul  and  Bassein.  Bombay,  1876. 
DALGADO,   SEBASTIAO   RODOLFO.    Glossario  Luso-Asiatico,    2  vols.    Coimbra, 

1919-21. 
DAMES,  M.  LONGWORTH.  "The  Portuguese  and  the  Turks  in  the  Indian  Ocean  in 

the  sixteenth  century."  (Journal  Royal  Asiatic  Society,  1921,  part  i.) 
DANVERS,  F.  C.  History  of  the  Portuguese  in  India.  2  vols.  1894. 
FARIA  v  SOUSA,  MANGEL.  Asia  Porrugueza.  Lisbon,  1666-75. 
FONSECA,  JOSE  NICOLAU  DE.  Goa.   1878. 
Gazetteer  of  the  Bombay  Presidency.  Bombay,  1877. 
HEYD,  W.  Histoire  du  commerce  du  Levant.  Translated  by  F.  Raynaud.  2  vols. 

Reprinted  Leipzig,  1923. 
HUMMERICH,  F.  Vasco  da  Gama  und  die  Entdeckung  des  Seewegs  nach  Ostindien. 

Munich,  1898. 

INNES,  C.  A.  Madras  District  Gazetteers  —  Malabar  and  Anjengo.  Madras, 
JAYNB,  K.  G.  Vasco  da  Gama  and  his  successors.   1910. 
KLOGUEN,  C.  DE.  Sketch  of  Goa.  Madras,  1831. 

LANNOY,  C.  DE,  and  LINDEN,  H.  VAN  DER.  L'expansion  coloniale  des  peuples 
curop^em—  Portugal  et  Espagne.  Paris,  1907. 

Bergomi, 


MAJOR,  "R.]ft.  Prince  "Aenry  \!he^av\gator.  i%8&. 

—  —  The  discoveries  of  Princr  Henry  the  Navigator,  1877. 

MENDES,  A.  LOPES.  A  India  Portugueza.  Lisbon   1886 

MOCQUET,  JEAN.   Voyages.  Paris,  1830. 

PffiRis,P.E.  Ceylon:  tHe  Portuguese  era.  a  vols.  Colombo,  1913-14, 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  613 

Ross,  Sir  E.  D.  "The  Portuguese  in  India  and  Arabia  between  1507  and  1517," 

(Journal  Royal  Asiatic  Society,  192 1 ,  part  n.) 
XSMITH,  V.  A.  Akbar  the  Great  Mogul.  Oxford,  1917. 
SOUSA  PINTO,  MANOEL  DE.  Dom  JoSo  de  Castro.  Lisbon,  1912. 
USTARIZ.  Teorica  epratjca  de  comercio  y  marina.  3rd  ed.  Madrid,  1757. 

,  R.  S.  The  rise  of  the  Portuguese  power  in  India,  1497-1550.  1899. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  DUTCH  IN  INDIA 
A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

The  archives  of  the  Dutch  East  India  Company  are  now  preserved  at  the 
Rijksarchief  at  the  Hague.  Among  the  papers  sent  over  annually  from  Batavia 
were  copies  of  the  correspondence  carried  on  by  the  Governor-General  and 
Council  with  the  various  establishments  in  India.  Further  documents  concerning 
these  establishments  preserved  at  Batavia  were  also  transferred  to  the  Hague  in  the 
third  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  Rijksarchief  further  possesses  certain 
collections  of  private  papers  formed  by  servants  of  the  Company.  A  work  of  great 
importance  for  the  administrative  and  commercial  history  of  the  Company  was 
composed  at  the  request  of  the  Seventeen  by  Pieter  van  Dam  between  1689  and 
1701;  it  fills  eight  large  manuscript  volumes,  preserved  in  the  Rijksarchief;  its 
publication  has  been  undertaken  by  the  Rijks  Geschiedkundige  Publicatie 
Commissie. 

At  the  India  Office  are  seventy  volumes  of  "Hague  Transcripts"  with  thirty-six 
volumes  of  translations  (see  List  of  General  Records) ;  and  a  collection  of  volumes  con- 
cerning relations  with  the  Dutch  down  to  1824  (see  Sir  William  Foster,  Guide  to  the 
India  Office  Records ,  pp.  96-7).  Numerous  Dutch  papers  occur  among  the  Mac- 
"  C.  O.  Blag<  "  


kenzie  MSS  (see  C.  O.  Blagden,  Cat.  of  the  Mackenzie  Collections,  Part  i). 

At  the  Madras  Record  Office  is  preserved  a  large  collection  of  records  relating 
principally  to  Cochin,  though  it  includes  a  number  of  transcripts  of  memoirs, 
obtained  from  Batavia,  relating  to  Negapatam.  See  the  Catalogue  of  Madras  Records, 
and  the  Press  List  of  Ancient  Dutch  Records  from  1657  to  1825  (Madras,  n.d.). 

At  the  Colombo  Record  Office  are  still  preserved  a  great  body  of  documents 
relating  to  the  Dutch  administration  of  that  island,  including  some  3000  volumes 
of  "General  Records"  and  700  volumes  of  the  proceedings  of  the  Council.  See 
R.  G.  Anthonisz,  Report  on  the  Dutch  Records  in  the  Government  Archives  at  Colombo 
(Colombo,  1907). 

PUBLISHED  DOCUMENTS 

Crajs,  J.  A.  VAN  DER.   Nederlandsch-Indisch  plakaatboek  1602-1811.    17  vols. 

Batavia,  1885-91. 

Dagregister  gehouden  in't  Casteel  van  Batavia.  Batavia,  1887,  etc.  (Covers  the 
<*       period  1624-1693,  and  is  to  be  continued.) 
HEERES,  J.  E.   Corpus  Diplomaticum  Neerlandico-Indicum.  The  Hague,  1907. 

(Only  the  first  volume,  down  to  1650,  has  appeared.) 
LOPES,  D.  "Cartas  de  Raja  Singa  rei  de  Candia  aos  HoJIandezes."  (Bo/,  da  Soc. 

de  Geo.  de  Lisboa,  1907.) 

MIJER,  P.   Verzameling  van  instruction,  ordonnanzie'n,  en  reglementen  voor  de 
s     regeering  van  Nederlandsch  Indie.  Batavia,  1848. 
FORELAND,  W.  H.  and  P.  GEYL.  Jahangir's  India:  the  Remonstrantie  of  Fr. 

Pelsaert,  translated  from  the  Dutch.  Cambridge,  1925. 

REA.  A.   "Monumental  remains  of  the  Dutch  E.I.  Coy.  in  the  Presidency  of 
Madras."  (Arch.  Sur.  of  India,  New  Imp.  Sen  vol.  xxv.  Madras,  1897.) 


614  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Selections  from  the  Records  of  the  Madras  Govt.  Dutch  Records.  Ed.  by  the  Rev. 
Fathers  A.  J.  van  der  Burg,  P.  Groot,  and  J.  Fruictier,  and  A.  Galletti,  I.C.S. 
15  vols.  Sm.  fol.  Madras,  1908-1 1 : 
Gedenkschrift  van  J.  V.  S.  van  Gollenesse  (1743).  1908. 
Gedenkschrift  geschreven  in  1781  door  Adriaan  Moens.   1908. 
Memorie  van  den  afgaanden  commandeur  Fredrik  Cunes  (1756).   1908. 
Memorie  van  J.  G.  van  Angelbeek  (1793).   1908. 
Verhaal  van  den  Nabab  Aider  Alij  Chan  van  1763.   1908. 
Catalogue  van  hollandsche  handschriften,  brieven  en  officieele  stukken  (n.d.). 

1909. 

Gopia  memoria  van  den  Commandeur  G.  Breekpot  (1769).   1909. 
Dagboek  der  gebeurtenissen  gedurende  den  oorlog    met   den    Zammorijn 

(1716-17).   1910. 

Uittreksels  uit  de  algemeene  transports  van  de  jaren  1743, 1761,  en  1780.  1909. 
Dagregister  gehouden  door. .  .den  E.  Capitain  J.  Hackert  gedurende  den  train 

tegen  den  Koning  van  Trevancoor  (1739-40).   1909. 
Memorie  nagelaten  door  den  commandeur  G.  de  Jong  (1761).   1910. 
>lemorie  van  den  commandeur  G.  Weijerman  (1765).   1910. 
J^The  Dutch  in  Malabar,  being  a  translation  of  selections  nos.  i  and  2.    191 1. 
Gedenkschrift  geschreven  in  1677  door  H.  A.  van  Rheede.   1911. 
Verklaringen  van  brieven  gezonden  van  Negapatnam  (1748-58).   191 1. 

Memoirs  of  the  Dutch  Governors,  etc.  of  Ceylon.   10  vols.  Colombo,  1908-15. 
Instructions  from  the  Governor-General  and  Council  of  India,  1656-65.    1908. 
Memoir  left  by  Ryclof  van  Goens,  1679.    1910. 
Memoir  of  H.  Zwaar  de  Croon,  1697.   1911. 
Memoir  by  Anthony  Mooyaart  1766.   1910. 
Memoir  left  by  J.  C.  Pielat.   1734.  n.d. 
Memoir  left  by  G.  W.  van  ImhofT.   1740.   1911. 
Memoir  of  C.  J.  Simons,  1707.    1914. 
Memoir  of  H.  Becker,  1716.   1914- 
Diary  of  G.  de  Heere,  1697.   1914. 
Memoir  of  T.  van  Rhee,  1697.   1915. 


TRAVELS 


BALDAEUS,  PHILIPPUS.  Nauwkeurige  beschrijvinge  van  Malabar  en  Choromandel, 
. .  .en  het  machtige  Eyland  Ceylon.  Amsterdam,  1672.  English  translation  in 
Churchill's  Voyages,  vol.  m,  1745. 

HAVART,  D.  Op-  en  Ondergang  van  Coromandel.  Amsterdam,  1693. 

VALENTYN,  Fr.  Oud  en  Nieuw  Oost  Indien.  Dordrecht-Amsterdam,  1724-6. 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 

AALBERS,  J.  Rijcklof  van  Goens,  Commissaris  en  Veldoverste  der  Oost-Indische 
Compagnie,  en  zijn  arbeidsveld,  1653-54  en  1657-58.  1916. 

eschiedenis  van  het  Eur 


BERCKEL,  G.  J.  A.  VAN.  Bijdrage  tot  de  geschiedenis  van  het  Europeesch  opper- 

bestuur  over  Nederlandsch-Indie,  1780-1806.  Leiden,  1880.  * 

BRAKEL,  S.  VAN.   De  Hollandsche  Handelscompagnieen  der  zeventiende  Eeuw. 

1908. 
CHIJS,  J.  A.  VAN  DER.  Geschiedenis  der  stichting  van  de  vereenigde  Oost-Indische 

Compagnie.  2nd  ed.   1887. 

COLENBRANDER,  H.  T.  Koloniale  Geschiedenis.   1925. 
DUBOIS,  J.  P.  L.  Vies  des  £ouverneurs-g£n6raux  de  la  Compagnie  des  Indes  avec 

Pabre'ge*  de  Phistoire  des  dtablissements  hollandais  aux  Indes  orientales.  The 

Hague,  1768. 
GEER,  W.  VAN.    De  opkomst  van  het  Nederlandsch  gezag  over  Geilon;  eerste 

gedeelte.  1895  (no  more  published). 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  615 

HODENPYL,  A.  K.  A.  GYSBERTI.   "De  Gouvcrneurs  van  Koromandel,  Ghr.  van 

Teylingen  (1761-65)  en  Pieter  Haksteen  (1765-71)."   (Bijdragen  voor  Voder- 

landsche  Geschiedenis,  v,  x,  1923.) 
IMHOFF,  VAN.  Considerations  sur  lje*tat  present  de  la  Compagnie  hollandaise  des 

Indes  Orientales.  The  Hague,  1741. 
JONGE,  J,  K.  J.  DE.    De  opkomst  van  het  Nederlandsch  gezag  in  Oost  India. 

1862,  etc. 

KAMPEN,  N.  G.  VAN.  Geschiedenis  der  Nederlanders  buiten  Europa.  1831-3. 
LANNOY,  C.  DE,  and  LINDEN,  H.  VAN  DER.    L'expansion  coloniale  des  peuples 

europe*ens:  Ne*erlande  et  Danemark.  Brussels,  1911. 
MACLEOD,  N.  De  Oost-indische  Compagnie  als  zeemogendheid  in  Azie*.  1602-50. 

2  vols.  and  atlas.  Rijswijk,  1927. 

ES,  M.  W.  C.  Het  muntwezen  in  Nederlandsch-Indie".  Amsterdam,  1851. 
IORELAND,  W.  H.  From  Akbar  to  Aurangzeb.   1923. 
YPELS,  GEORGE.  Hoe  Nederland  Ceilon  verloor    1908. 
"  Papieren  van  D.  BAVY  wegens  het  voorgevallene  te  Bengalen,  1 763."  (Bijdragen  en 

Mededeelingen  van  het  Historisch  Genootschap ,  1879.) 
PIERIS,  P.  E.  The  kingdom  of  Jaffnapatam,  1645.  Colombo,  1920. 

Ceylon,  the  Portuguese  Period,  1505-1650.   1914. 

Ceylon  and  the  Hollanders,  1658-1796.   1918. 

REUS,  G.  C.  KLERK  DE.  "Geschichtlicher  Ueberblick  der  administrativen,  recht- 

lichen  und  fmanziellen  Entwicklung  der  Niederlandisch-Ostindischen  Com- 
pagnie.'*    (Verhandelingen    van   het   Bataviaasch    Genootschap    van   kunsten   en 

Wetenschappen^  dl.  XLVII,  1894.) 

"De  expeditie  naar  Bengale  in  1759."  (De  Indische  Gids,  1889  and  1890.) 

"De  vermeestering  van  Chinsoera  in  1781  en  1795."   (Verhandelingen  van  het 

Bataviaasch  Genootschap  van  kunsten  en  Wetenschappen,  ell.  xxxvin.) 
SOURATTE,  RADICALE.  "Beschrijving,  anno  1758,  door  den  beambte  der  Oost- 

Indische  Compagnie  D.  van  Rheeden."    (Bijdragen  en  Mededeelingen  van  het 

Historisch  Genootschap,  1883.) 

STELLWAGEN.  "Gustaaf  Willem  baron  van  Imhoff."  (De  Indische  Gids,  1889.) 
TERPSTRA,  H.   De  vestiging  van  de  Nederlanders  aan  de  kust  van  Koromandel. 

1911. 
"De  Nederlanders  in  Voor-Indie,  bij  de  stichting  van  het  fort  Geldria  te 

Paliacatta."   (De  Indische  Gids9  1915.) 

De  opkomst  der  Wester-kwartieren  van  de  Oost-indische  Compagnie.   1918. 

TJASSENS,  J.  Zeepolitie  der  Vereenigte  Nederlanden.  2nd  ed.  The  Hague,  1670. 
VETH,  P.    "Hendrik  Adriaan  van  Reede  tot  Drakestein."  (De  Indische  Gids,  1887, 

vols.  m  and  iv.) 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  FRENCH  FACTORIES  IN  INDIA 
A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

Les  Archives  anciennes  du  Ministere  des  Colonies  (conserv£es,  en  ce  qui  cpncerne 
Tlnde,  au  Ministere  meme  des  Colonies  et  non  pas  aux  Archives  Nationales) 
contiennent  la  plupart  des  documents  importants  relatifs  a  1'histoire  des  debuts  de 
Tlnde  frangaise  clans  les  volumes  de  la  Correspondance  generate  relatifs  a  ITnde 
fran^aise  pour  les  ann^es  1 666-1 740  (C2  62  a  80)  et  de  son  Supplement  (C2,  ae  s6rie, 
1. 1  as,  1066^1740).  On  trouvera  6galement  des  pieces  se  rattachant  a  Thistoire 
de  I'lnde  soit  dans  les  volumes  de  la  Correspondance  gtnfrale  relatifs  a  TExtr^me- 
Orient  et  au  Siam  (C1 22-25), so^  ^ans  ^e  premier  carton  de  la  m£me  Correspondance 
generate  pour  Madagascar  (C5  i,  1642-1674).  A  signaler  encore  dans  la  collection 
Moreau  de  Saint-M&y  les  copies  de  pieces  contenues  dans  le  registre  F3  238. 


616  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

II  n'existe  pas  de  repertoire  de  la  Gorrespondance  ge'ne'rale  pour  PInde,  non  plus 
que  pour  la  Collection  Moreau  de  Saint-Mery;  mais  la  Bibliographic  de  Madagascar 
<r  Alfred  et  de  Guillaume  Grandidier  (Paris,  Comite  de  Madagascar,  1906, 2  vols.) 
donne  la  liste  des  pieces  contenues  dans  le  carton  i  de  la  se*rie  5  (t.  xi,  pp. 
676-678),  et  Alfred  Tantet,  Inventaire  sommaire  de  la  Correspondance  generate  de  la 
Cochinchine,  1686-1863  (Paris;  Ghallamel,  1905,  in-8)  les  documents  se  rattachant 
aux  rapports  de  PInde  et  de  PIndochine  au  cours  de  la  periode  dpnt  traite  le 
present  chapitre.  Voir  aussi  Weber,  La  Compagnie  des  Indes,  pp.  xxvii-xxxii.  Aux 
Archives  Nationalcs  se  trouve  le  manuscrit  des  Memoires  de  Frangois  Martin,  un 
document  considerable  et  dont  on  ne  saurait  exag^rer  Pimportance  pourl'histoire 
des  tout  premiers  debuts  de  Petablissement  des  Frangais  dans  PInde.  Ce  manuscrit, 
qu'ont  utilise  plusieurs  historiens  et  que  difftrents  erudits  ont  projete  d'editer, 
attend  toujours  sa  publication  integrate.  II  est  intitule  "Memoires  sur  Petablisse- 
ment  des  Colonies  franchises  aux  Indes  Orientales,  dressers  par  Messire  Frangois 
Martin,  Gouverneur  de  la  Ville  et  Fort-Louis  de  Pondichery.  Ges  memoires  con- 
tiennent  Phistoire  de  trente  ans,  depuis  1664  jusqu'en  1696"  (in  folio  de  631 
feuillets) .  La  Collection  des  Outrages  anciens  relatifs  a  Madagascar,  publiee  par  Alfred 
et  Guillaume  Grandidier  et  Henri  Froidevaux  (t.  ix,  pp.  429-633)  contient  le  seul 
fragment  un  peu  etendu  des  Memoires  de  Martin  qui  ait  jusqu'a  present  vu  le  jour. 

Comme  on  vient  de  le  voir,  ces  memoires  ne  vont  pas  plus  loin  que  Pannee  1696; 
ils  ne  depassent  m£me  pas,  en  realite,  et  quoi  qu'en  disc  le  titre,  le  mois  de  fevrier 
1694.  Des  lettres  de  Francois  Martin  conservees  dans  le  carton  K  1374  (Negocia- 
tions,  missions  etrangeres)  et  datees  des  annees  1699-1702,  permettent  de  les 
prolonger  jusqu'au  debut  du  xvine  si^cle,  surtout  si  on  les  rapproche  des  fragments 
de  son  journal  quotidien  envoyes  par  lui  a  la  Gompagnie  pour  les  periodes  du  2 1 
Janvier  1703  (Arch.  anc.  Mre.  Colonies,  C2  66,  fol.  15-49  et  I54~I7I)« 

Aux  Archives  Nationales  sont  deposees  les  Archives  anciennes  du  Ministere  de 
la  Marine,  dont  les  series  &  (Dutches  et  OrdresduRoi)  et  J94  (Campagnes)  contiennent, 
1'une  dans  ses  volumes  11-312  (1670-1740),  Pautre  dans  ses  volumes  3  a  44  (1666- 
1740)  nombre  de  documents  utiles  (cf.  Vfitat  sommaire  des  Archives  de  la  Marine 
anterieures  a  la  Revolution;  Paris,  L.  Baudoin,  1898,  in-8).  II  existe  au  Cabinet  des 
Manuscrits  de  la  Bibliothfcque  Nationale  dans  les  Melanges  Colbert  (vol.  119  et 
suivants),  dans  lefonds  Ariel  (MSS.  Fa.,  nouv.  acquis.,  nos.  8.925-8.930)  et  dans  la 
Collection  Margry  (nos.  9.348-9.351)  differents  documents  de  reelle  valeur  sur 
Phistoire  de  PInde  fran$aise  au  cours  de  la  periode.  A  remarquer  parmi  eux  une 
copie  des  memoires  de  Frangois  Martin  (Collection  Margry ,  nouv.  acq.  fr.,  9.348- 

9-351)- 

Nous  signalons  encore  Pexistence  de  differentes  pieces  interessantes  dans  plusieurs 
volumes  aes  memoires  et  documents  dufonds  Asie  des  Archives  du  Ministere  des 
Affaires  etrangeres  (tomes  2  a  6). 

Dans  PInde  m^me,  il  existe  a  Pondichery  un  dep6t  d'archives  dont,  pour  la 
Societe  de  PHistoire  de  PInde  frangaise,  Pinventaire  a  ete  dresse  par  M.  Alfred 
Martineau  (Inventaire  des  anciennes  archives  de  I'lndefranfaise,  Pondichery,  1914,  in-8 
de  38  pages),  et  des  manuscrits  desquels  M.  Edmond  Gaudart  a  commence  de 
publier  le  catalogue  (Catalogue  des  Manuscrits  des  anciennes  Archives  de  PInde  Franfaise, 
1. 1,  Pondichery,  1690-1789.  Paris-Pondichery,  1922,  in-8  de  xxii-8io-xvi  pages). 

PUBLISHED  DOCUMENTS 

CL&MENT,  PIERRE.    Lettres,  instructions  et  memoires  de  Colbert.    7  vols.   4to. 

Paris,  1862-^2. 
DERNIS.    Recueil  et  collection  des  titres  concernant  la  Compagnie  des  Indes 

Orientales  etablie  au  mois  d'aout  1664.  4  v°ls-  4to»  Paris,  1755-6, 
FROIDEVAUX,  HENRI.   "Memoires  de  Bellanger  de  Lespinay  sur  son  voyage  aux 

Indes  Orientales."  (Bull,  de  la  Socittt  Arch,  du  VendSmois,  1891-5.) 
LA  FARELLE.  Memoires  du  chevalier  de  La  Farelle  sur  la  prise  de  Mahe.  Ed.  by 

Lennel  de  la  Farelle.   1889. 
Memoires  et  correspondance  du  chevalier  et  du  general  de  la  Farelle.  Ed.  by 

Lennel  de  la  Farelle.   1896. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  617 

Publications  of  the  Socie'te'  dc  Phistoire  de  PInde  franchise: 
Deliberations  du  Gonseil  Supe*rieur  de  Pondiche*ry,  1701-39.   3  vols.   Ed.  by 

E.  Gaudart  and  A.  Martineau.   191 1-14. 
Lettres  et  conventions  des  gouverneurs  de  Pondiche'ry  avec  diffe'rents  princes 

hindous.   1666-1793.  Ed.  by  A.  Martineau.  -1914. 
Correspondance  du  Conseil  SupeVieur  de  Pondiche'ry  avec  la  Gompagnie  1 726- 

1738.  Ed.  by  A.  Martineau.  2  yols.   1920,  1921. 
Correspondance  du  Gonseil  Sup6rieur  de  Pondiche'ry  avec  le  Conseil  de 

Chandernagor.  Ed.  by  A.  Martineau,  1728-57.  3  vols.   1915-18. 
Actes  de  1'fitat  Civil.  ¥01.1,1676-1735.   1917. 
Catalogue  des  Manuscrits  des  anciennes  archives.  Ed.  by  E.  Gaudart.  Vol.  i, 

1690-1789.   1922. 

TRAVELS  AND  OTHER  CONTEMPORARY  PUBLICATIONS 

BEAULIEU,  AUGUSTIN  DE.    Expedition  to  the  East  Indies.    (Ap.  Harris,  Voyages, 

vol.  i.) 

IER,  FRANgois.  Travels  in  the  Mogul  Empire.  Ed.  Oxford. 
CARK£.  Voyages  des  Indes  Orientales.  2  vols.    i2mo.  Paris,  1699. 
CHALLES,  DE.  Journal  d'un  voyage  fait  aux  Indcs  Orientales  depuis  le  24  feV.  1690 

jusqu'au  20  aout  1691.  3  vols.   i2mo.   Rouen,  1691.    (Reprinted  ap.  Sottas, 

q.v.  infra.} 
DELLON,  Dr.  Relation  d'un  voyage  des  Indes  Orientales,  1667-77.  S  vols.  I2mo. 

Paris,  1685. 
Du  FRESNE  DE  FRANGHEVILLE.  Histoire  de  la  Compagnie  des  Indes.  410.  Paris, 

1746. 

Journal  du  voyage  des  Grandes  Indcs.  2  vols.   i2mo.  Paris,  1698. 
LABOULLAYE  LE  Gouz.    Voyages  et  observations  oft  sont  de'crites  les  religions, 

gouvernements,  etc.  de. . . Perse,  Arabic,  Grand  Mogul,  etc.  4to.  Paris,  1657. 
LE  BLANC,  VINCENT.  Les  voyages  des  Indes.  Paris,  1648. 
LEGUAT,  FRANgois.  Voyage  1690-8.   Ed.  by  Oliver.   (Hakluyt  Society.)   2  vols. 

1890. 
L'EsTRA,  DE.  Relation  ou  journal  d'un  voyage  fait  aux  Indes  Orientales  1671-8. 

I2mo.  Paris,  1677. 

LUILLIER.  Voyage  aux  Grandes  Indes.   I2mo.  Paris,  1705. 
PYRARD  DE  LAVAL,  FRANgois.  Voyage.  Ed.  by  Gray  and  Bell.  (Hakluyt  Society.) 

3  vols.   1887-9. 

SOUCHU  DE  RENNEFORT.  Histoire  des  Indes  Orientales.  4to.  Paris,  1688. 
J,JFAVERNIER,JEAN-BAPTISTE.  Travels  in  India.  Ed.  by  W.  Crooke.  2  vols.  Oxford, 

1925. 
TH&VENOT,  JEAN  DE.  Voyages  de  M.  de  TheVenot.  1664-84. 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 

BENO!T  DU  REY,  E.  Recherches  sur  la  politique  de  Colbert.  Paris,  1902. 
CASTONNET  DES  FOSSES,  H.  L'Inde  francaise  avant  Dupleix.  Paris,  1887. 
CLEMENT,  P.  Histoire  de  Colbert  et  de  son  administration.  Paris,  1874. 
DELORT,  THEODORE.  "La  premiere  escadre  de  la  France  dans  les  Indes."  Paris, 

1876.  (Revue  Maritime  et  Coloniale,  1875.) 
Du  FRESNE  DE  FRANCHEVILLE.   Histoire  de  la  Compagnie  des  Indes  Orientales. 

Paris,  1746,  in-4. 

GUET,  I.  "Origines  de  1'Inde  Francaise."   (Revue  Maritime,  aout,  1892.) 
<KAEPPELIN,  PAUL.   Les  origines  de  PInde  Francaise;  La  Gompagnie  des  Indes 

Orientales  et  Francois  Martin.  Paris,  1908. 
LANIER,  LUCIEN.   "Relations  de  la  France  et  du  Royaume  de  Siam  de  1662  & 

1703."  (Memoires  de  la  Socttte  des  Sciences  morales. .  .de  Seine-et-Oise,  t.  xm,  1883.) 
MARTINEAU,  A.  Les  origines  de  Mah£  de  Malabar.  Paris,  1916. 


618  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

MARTINEAU,  A,  "  Quatre  ans  de  Thistoire  de  Tlnde,  1 726-1 730."  (Revue  de  VHistoire 

des  colonies  frang wises,  t.  vni,  1919.) 
*'  Benoist  Dumas ;  notes  biographiques."  (Revue  de  VHistoire  des  colonies  Jranf aises, 

t.  DC,  1920.) 

NEYMARCK,  A.  Colbert  et  son  temps.  2  vols.   1877. 

PAULIAT,  L.  Louis  XIV  et  la  Compagnie  des  Indes  Orientales.  Paris,  1886. 
Revue  de  1'Histoire  des  Colonies  franchises.   Paris,  1913,  etc. 
SAINT  YVES  ET  CHAVANON.    "Documents  in&lits  sur  la  Compagnie  des  Indes 

Orientales."   (Rev.  des  quest,  historiques,  octobre,  1903.) 

SOTTAS,  JULES.  Histoire  de  la  Compagnie  royale  des  Indes  Orientales.  Paris,  1905. 
WEBER,  HENRY.  La  Compagnie  frangaise  des  Indes.  Paris,  1904. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY,  1600-1740 
A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

India  Office.  The  Court  Minutes  of  the  East  India  Company.  The  Original 
Correspondence  series  of  letters  from  the  East.  The  Letter  Books,  containing  copies 
of  letters  despatched  thither.  The  early  ships' journals  in  the  Marine  Records.  The 
Factory  Records.  The  Consultations  received  from  the  various  Presidencies.  For 
particulars  see  the  Guide  to  the  India  Office  Records,  1600-1858  (London,  1919). 

Public  Record  Office.  The  series  known  as  C.O.  77;  also  the  Domestic  State  Papers. 

British  Museum.  A  number  of  miscellaneous  MSS.  Cf.  S.  A.  Khan,  Sources  for  the 
history  of  British  India  in  the  XVIIth  century  (Oxford,  1926). 

PUBLISHED  DOCUMENTS 

Calendars  of  State  Papers,  East  Indies,  1513-1634.    By  W.  N.  Sainsbury.    5  vols. 
London,  1862-92.  These  give  abstracts  of  documents  in  the  Public  Record 
Office,  India  Office  (Court  Minutes  and  Original  Correspondence  only),  and 
(to  1616)  British  Museum,  relating  to  all  parts  of  the  East. 
Court  Minutes,  etc.,  of  the  East  India  Company,  1635-79.  By  Miss  E.  B.  Sainsbury,  with 
introductions  and  notes  by  W.  Foster.  8  vols.  Oxford,  1907-29.  (In  progress.) 
The  English  factories  in  India,  1618-69.  By  W.  Foster.    13  vols.   Oxford,  1906-27. 
Down  to  1654  this  series  calendars  the  documents  to  be  found  in  the  India 
Office,  Public  Record  Office,  Indian  Record  Offices,  and  British  Museum; 
from  that  date  it  is  in  narrative  form,  based  on  similar  materials.   A  sup- 
plementary volume  covering  the  period  1600-40  has  been  published  (London, 
1928). 
The  dawn  of  British  trade  to  the  East  Indies.  Ed.  by  Sir  George  Birdwood.  London, 

1886.  This  contains  the  text  of  the  first  volume  of  the  Court  Minutes. 
The  first  Letter  Book  of  the  East  India  Company.   Ed.  by  Sir  George  Birdwood  and 
W.Foster,  London,  1893.  A  printed  version  of  the  Miscellaneous  Court  Book, 
1600-19. 

Letters  received  by  the  East  India  Company  from  its  servants  in  the  East.  Ed.  by  F.  C. 
Danvers  (vol.  i)  and  W,  Foster  (vols.  n-vi).  This  series  gives  the  text  of  the 
first  portion  of  the  Original  Correspondence. 

Selections  from  the. .  .State  Papers  preserved  in  the  Bombay  Secretariat.  Maratha  Series 

(i  vol.).  Home  Series  (2  vols.).  Ed.  by  G.  W.  Forrest.  Bombay,  1885,  1887. 

Press  lists  of  ancient  documents  preserved  in  the  Bombay  Record  Office 9  1646-1760.  4  vols. 

Bombay,  n.d. 

Press  lists  of  ancient  documents  in  Fort  St  George,  1670-1800.  35  vols.  Madras. 
Calendar  of  Madras  records,  1740-44.  By  H.  H.  Dodwell.  Madras, 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  619 

Diary  and  consultation  books,  Fort  St  George,  1681-85.  Ed.  by  A.  T.  Pringle.  5  vols. 

Madras,  1893-5. 

Note  on  and  extracts from  the  Government  records,  Fort  St  George,  1670-77.  Madras,  1871. 
Publications  of  the  Madras  Record  Office.  Ed.  by  H.  H,  Dodwell  and  K.  Krishnaswami 

Ayyanger:  Consultations,  1672-1702;  Despatches  from  England,  1670-1706; 

Despatches  to  England,   1694-1711;  Letters  to  other  places,  1670-1702; 

Letters  from  other  places,  1681-1700;  Sundry  Books,  1677-186.    Madras, 

1910-25.  These  are  printed  verbatim.  There  are  gaps  in  all  the  series,  due  to 

the  loss  of  volumes. 
Papers  relating  to. .  .the  Company  of  Scotland.  Ed.  by  G.  P.  Irish.  Edinburgh, 

1924- 

TRAVELS  AND  OTHER  CONTEMPORARY  PUBLICATIONS 

DERNIER,  F.  Travels  of ,  1 656-68.  Tr.  and  ed.  by  Archibald  Constable,  1 89 1 . 

2nd  ed.  (by  V.  A.  Smith).  Oxford,  1914. 
BRUTON,  W.  Newes  from  the  East  Indies.   1638. 
CHILD,  Sir  JOSIA.  New  discourse  of  trade.   1665. 
COVERTE,  K.  A  true  and  almost  incredible  report. ...    1612. 
DE  LAET,  J.  De  imperio  magni  Mogolis.  Leiden,  1631. 
DELLA  VALLE,  PIETRO.  Travels  of .    Ed  by  E.  Grey.    2  vols.    (Hakluyt 

Society.)    1891. 

DOWNING,  C.  History  of  the  Indian  Wars.  Ed.  by  W.  Foster.   1924. 
Early  annals  of  the  English  in  Bengal.   Ed.  by  C.  R.  Wilson.   3  vols.   Calcutta, 

1895-1917. 

)i(£arly  travels  in  India,  1583-1619.  Ed.  by  W.  Foster.   1921. 
FRYER,  J.  New  account  of  the  East  Indies  and  Persia.  Ed.  by  W.  Crooke.  3  vols. 

(Hakluyt  Society.)    1909-15. 

HAMILTON,  A.  New  account  of  the  East  Indies.  2  vols.  Edinburgh,  1727. 
Hawkins*  voyages,  The.  Ed.  by  C.  R.  Markham.  (Hakluyt  Society.)   1878. 
HEDGES,  WILLIAM.    Diary  of .    Ed.  by  Col.  H.  Yule.    3  vols.    (Hakluyt 

Society.)   1877-89. 
HERBERT,  THOMAS.  Some  yeares  travale.  1634.  Reprinted,  ed.  by  Sir  W.  Foster, 

1929- 
JOURDAIN,  JOHN.  Journal  of ,1608-17.  Ed.  by  W.  Foster.  (Hakluyt  Society.) 

1905- 
LANCASTER,  Sir  JAMES.   Voyages  of .    Ed  by  C.  R.  Markham.    (Hakluyt 

Society.)   1877. 
LOCKYER,  C.  Account  of  the  trade  in  India.   1711. 

MANDELSLO,  J.  A.  VON.  Travels  of .  Tr.  by  J.  Davies.   1662. 

^^^IANUCCI,  NICCOLAO.  Storia  do  Mogor.  Translated  and  ed.  by  W.  Irvine.  4  vols. 

1907-8. 

MASTER,  STREYNSHAM.  Diaries  of .  Ed.  by  Sir  Richard  Temple.  2  vols.  1911. 

MIDDLE-TON,  Sir  HENRY.   Voyage  of .   Ed.  by  Bolton  Corney.    (Hakluyt 

Society.)   1857. 
MUNDY,  PETER.  Travels  of .  Ed.  by  Sir  Richard  Temple.  4  vols.  (Hakluyt 

Society.)    1907-25.   (In  progress.) 
OVINGTON,  Key.  F.  Voyage  to  Surat  in  1689.   1696. 
Purchas  His  Pilgrimes.  4  vols.   1625. 

ROE,  Sir  THOMAS.  Embassy  of ,1615-19.  Ed.  by  W.  Foster.  2  vols.  (Hakluyt 

.      Society.)    1899.  2nd  ed.   1926. 

VTAVERNIER,J.  B.  Travels  of .  Translated  and  ed.  by  V.  Ball.  2  vols.   1889. 

TERRY,  Rev.  E.  Voyage  to  East-India.   1655. 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 

ANDERSON,  Rev.  P.  The  English  in  Western  India.  Bombay,  1854. 

BAL  KRISHNA.   Commercial  relations  between  India  and  England,  1601-1757. 

1924. 
BRUCE,  JOHN.  Annals  of  the  East  India  Company.  3  vols.   1810. 


620  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

PALTON,  Sir  C.  N.  Life  of  Thomas  Pitt.  Cambridge,  1915. 
^(DuFF,  J.  GRANT.  History  of  the  Mahrattas.  Ed.  by  S.  M.  Edwardes.  2  vols.  1921. 
EDWARDES,  S.  M.  The  rise  of  Bombay.  Bombay,  1902. 

Gazetteer  of  the  City  and  Island  of  Bombay.  3  vols.  Bombay,  1909-10. 

XELpmNSTONE,  MouNTSTUART.  The  history  of  India.  Ed  by  E.  B.  Cowell.   1905. 
^/^ENGER,  J.  F.  History  of  the  Tranquebar  Mission.  Tranquebar,  1863. 
HALL,  D.  G.  E.  Early  English  intercourse  with  Burma.   1928. 
HERTZ,  G.  B.  "England  and  the  Ostend  Company."   (E.H.R.  April,  1907.) 
HUISMAN,  M.  La  Belgique  commerciale  sous  1'Empereur  Charles  VI.  Brussels, 

1902. 

HUNTER,  Sir  WILLIAM.  History  of  British  India.  2  vols.   1899,  1900- 
LARSEN,  KAY.  De  Dansk-Ostindiske  Koloniers  Historic.   I.  Trankebar.   II.  De 

Bengalske  Loger  Nikobarerne.  Copenhagen,  1907,  1908. 
LANNOY,  C.  DE,  and  LINDEN,  H.  VAN  DER.  Histoire  de  Pexpansion  coloniale  dd 

peuples    curope*ens.    II.  N6erlande   et  Danemark.    III.  Suede.    Brussels, 

1911,  1921. 

LOVE,  Col.  H.  D.  Vestiges  of  Old  Madras.  4  vols.   1913. 
^LYALL,  Sir  ALFRED.  The  British  dominion  in  India.   1906. 
MACPHERSON,  D.  History  of  the  European  commerce  with  India.   1812. 
MALABARI,  B.  M.  Bombay  in  the  making.   1910. 

BURN,  W.  Oriental  commerce.  2  vols.   1813. 

L,  JAMES.  History  of  British  India.  Ed.  by  H.  H.  Wilson.   10  vols.   1858. 

ELAND,  W.  H.  India  at  the  death  of  Akbar.   1920. 

)(• From  Akbar  to  Aurangzeb.   1923. 

RAWLINSON,  H.  G.  British  beginnings  in  Western  India.  Oxford,  1920. 
RAYNAL,  G.  T.  Histoire. .  .des  dtablissemens  et  du  commerce  des  Europe'ens  dans 

les  deux  Indes.   10  vols.  Geneva,  1782. 
SCHLEGEL,  J.  H.   Sammlung  zur  Danischen  Geschichte.    2  vols.    Copenhagen, 

1771-76. 

SCOTT,  W.  R.  Joint  stock  companies  to  1720.  3  vols.  Cambridge,  1910-12. 
SHAFAAT  AHMAD  KHAN.  The  East  India  trade  in  the  seventeenth  century.   1923. 

Anglo-Portuguese  negotiations  relating  to  Bombay,  1660-77.  [1922.] 

STRACHEY,  R.  and  O.  Keigwin's  rebellion.  Oxford,  1916. 
THOMAS,  P.  J.  Mercantilism  and  the  East  India  trade.   1926. 
WHEELER,  J.  T.  Madras  in  the  olden  time.  3  vols.  Madras,  1861-62.  >/ 

Early  records  of  British  India.  Calcutta,  1878. 

WILSON,  C.  R.  Old  Fort  William  in  Bengal.  2  vols.   1906. 
WRIGHT,  ARNOLD.  Annesley  of  Surat.   1918. 


CHAPTERS  v,  vi,  and  vm 
THE  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  FRENCH 
A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

Among  French  records  for  the  period  of  Dupleix,  the  following  are  the  most 
important: 

Archives  du  Ministere  des  Colonies.  C2  82  a  Z?2  90,  annee  1 747  a  1 756,  lettres  et  actes 
divers. 

Bibliothtquc  Nationale.  Nouvelles  acquisitions;  9192  a  9170:  Lettres  de  Dupleix 
aux  officiers  de  Parme'e  du  Carnatic  et  du  Deccan;  lettres  de  Bussy  et  de  divers 
officiers  £  Dupleix;  correspondance  de  Dupleix  avec  divers;  lettres  de  Moracin; 
comptes  de  Dupleix. 

9356:  Correspondance  de  Dupleix  avec  la  Compagnie  et  avec  Bussy. 

9358:  Journal  de  Panne'e  conduite  par  Bussy  dans  le  Deccan  (1751-1755). 

9360  et  9361 :  Correspondance  de  Bussy  et  de  Duval  de  Leyrit. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  621 

Archives  de  Seine-et-Oise.  E  3746  a  3756  bis:  Lettres  de  Dupleix  £  1'armee  du  Sud 
(3746) ;  a  Tarmac  de  Trichinapoly  (3747) ;  a  Bussy  (3748) ;  a  Law  et  a  Brenier 
(3750) ;  aux  officiers  de  Coblon,  Chingleput  et  Valdaour  (3751) ;  au  gouverneur  de 
Madras  (37512) ;  aux  syndics  et  directeurs  de  la  Compagnie  (3753) ;  a  Farmed  de 
Golconde  (3754)  5  aux  commandants  de  Karikal  et  Masulipatam  (3755  et  3756) ; 
livre  de  compte  pour  1754  (3756  bis). 

For  the  period  of  Lally : 

The  d'Argenson  papers  at  the  Bibliothfcque  de  TArsenal ;  documents  relating  to 
the  trial  of  Lally  in  the  Archives  Nationales;  the  Collection  Ariel  in  the  Biblio- 
th&que  Nationale;  the  archives  of  the  Ministere  de  la  Marine. 

The  Pondicherry  records  contain  little  or  nothing  relating  to  this  vexed  period. 
The  important  papers  were  probably  taken  to  Europe  in  connection  with  the  suits 
of  Dupleix  and  the  trial  of  Lally,  and  must  have  suffered  further  dispersion  by  the 
capture  and  destruction  of  Pondicherry. 

The  Madras  records  (preserved  at  the  Madras  Record  Office  and  the  India 
Office  for  the  most  part  in  duplicate) :  especially  the  Madras  Public  Consultations 
for  the  whole  period.  Fort  St  David,  1 747-52  (while  it  was  the  Presidency  head- 
quarters) ;  the  proceedings  of  the  Madras  Select  Committee  (usually  known  as  the 
Military  Consultations).  At  the  India  Office  is  also  a  collection  "The  French  in 
India  ",  see  Foster,  Guide,  p.  96.  Consult  also  Dodwell,  Handbook  to  the  Madras  Records. 

Important  papers  relating  to  the  conduct  of  the  squadron  and  of  the  king's  forces 
in  India  will  be  found  in  the  Public  Record  Office,  especially  Admiralty  papers, 
i,  160-161,  and  War  Office  papers. 

The  Orme  Collection  (at  the  India  Office)  is  particularly  important.  It  was 
formed  by  Orme  for  the  purpose  of  his  history  and  has  been  admirably  catalogued 
by  the  late  Mr  S.  C.  Hill.  There  is  also  a  large  collection  of  Clive  MSS  (in  the 
possession  of  Lord  Powis)  which  was  calendared  by  Mr  Rushbrook  Williams, 
though  his  calendar  still  awaits  publication. 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

D'AcHE,  Despatches  of.  Ap.  Moufle  d'Angerville,  La  vie  prive'e  de  Louis  XV,  Paris, 

1781. 
ANANDA  RANGA  PILLAI.    Private  diary.    Ed.  by  Price  and  Dodwell.    12  vols. 

Madras,  1904-28. 
DODWELL,  H.  H.  Calendar  of  the  Madras  records,  1740-44.  Madras,  1917. 

Calendar  of  the  Madras  despatches,  1744-1755.  Madras,  1920. 

HILL,  S.  C.  Catalogue  of  the  Orme  MSS.   1916. 
Lettres  £difiantes  et  curieuses.  Ed.  by  Aime'-Martin.  Vol.  n.   1839. 
LOVE,  Col.  HENRY  DAVISON.  Vestiges  of  old  Madras.  3  vols.   1913. 
NAZELLE,  Marquis  DE.  Dupleix  et  la  defense  de  Pondich£ry.    1908. 
Records  of  Fort  St  George  (sm.  fol.  Madras) : 
French  Correspondence  1750,  1751,  1752.   1914-16. 
Journal  of  the  siege  of  Madras.   1915. 
Madras  military  consultations,  1752-1756.   1910-13. 
Country  correspondence,  1740-58.   1908-15. 

Socie'te'  de  1'histoire  de  PInde  franchise.  Correspondance  du  conseil  supeVieur  de 
Pondiche>y  et  de  la  Compagnie.  Vol.  m,  1739-1742.  1922.  Vol.  iv,  1744- 
1749.  1924.  Vol.  v,  1755-1759-  1928. 

Correspondance  du  conseil  sup^rieur  de  Pondiche*ry  avec  le  conseil  de 

Chandernagor.  Vol.  n,  1 738-1 747.   1916.  Vol.  m,  1747-1757.   1918-19. 

PondicheVy  en  1746.   1911. 

Actes  de  T6tat  civil.  Vol.  n,  17*6-1761. 

ViNSON,JuLiEN.  Les  Francais  dans  rlnde.   1894. 

FRENCH  CONTROVERSY  AND  MEMOIRS 

M&noire  pour  La  Bourdonnais  (and  supplement).  410.  Paris,  1750-51. 
M&noire  pour  La  Gatinais.  410.  Paris,  1750. 


622  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

M&noire  pour  la  famille  de  Dupleix.  410.  Paris,  1751. 

Histoire  de  la  derniere  revolution  des  Indes  Orientales,  par  M.  L.  L.  M.    I2mo. 

Paris,  1757.  . 

Relation  du  siege  de  Pondichery.    (Ap.  Collection  historique. .  .pour  servir  a 

Thistoire  de  la  guerre  terminee  (en  1748).)   i2mo.  London,  1758. 
Lettre  de  Godeheu  H.  Dupleix.  4to.  Paris,  1 760. 

Memoire  pour  Dupleix  contre  la  Gompagnie  des  Indes.  4to.  Paris,  1 763. 
Me* moire  pour  la  Compagnie  des  Indes  contre  Dupleix.  4to.  Paris,  1 763. 
Plainte  du  Chevalier  Law.  410.  Paris,  1 763. 
Response  de  Dupleix  a  la  lettre  de  Godeheu.  410.  Paris,  1763. 
Refutation  des  faits  imputes  £  Godeheu.  4to.  Paris,  1 764. 
Memoire  pour  Bussy  expositif  de  ses  cr^ances  sur  la  Gompagnie  des  Indes.   4to. 

Paris,  1764, 
Me* moire  pour  Bussy  au  sujet  du  memoire  que  Lally  vient  de  re*pandre  dans  le 

public.  4to.  Paris,  1766. 

Memoire  pour  Lally  contre  le  Procureur-gene>al.  3  parts.  4to.  Paris,  1 766. 
Lettres  de  d'Ache  a  Lally.  410.  Paris,  1 766. 
Lettres  de  Leyrit  a  Lally.  410.  Paris,  1 766. 
Memoire  pour  d'Ache.  4to.  Paris,  1766. 
Memoire  pour  Bussy  contre  la  Compagnie.  4to.   Paris,  1767. 
Plaidoyer  du  Comte  de  Lally-Tollendal,  curateur  a  la  memoire  du  feu  Comte  de 

Lally,  son  pere.  Rouen,  1 780. 
GENTIL.  Memoires  sur  1'Indoustan.   1822. 

CONTEMPORARY  ENGLISH  TRACTS  AND  TRAVELS 

[MONSON,  WILLIAM.]   A  letter  to  a  Proprietor  of  the  East  India  Company.   8vo. 

123  pp.,  n.d. 
Narrative  of  the  transactions  of  the  British  squadrons  in  the  East  Indies. .  .by  an 

officer  who  served  in  those  squadrons.  8vo.    1751. 

Journal. .  .of  the  Boscawen's  voyage  to  Bombay. .  .by  Philalethes.  8vo.    1750. 
IVES,  E.  Voyage  to  India.   1773. 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 

BIDDULPH,  Col.  JOHN.  Stringer  Lawrence.   1901. 

CAMBRIDGE,  RICHARD  OWEN.  Account  of  the  war  in  India.   1761. 

CORBETT,J.  England  in  the  Seven  Years' war.  2  vols.   1907. 

CRE>IN,  PIERRE.  Mahe  de  la  Bourdonnais.  Paris,  1922. 

CULTRU,  PROSPER.  Dupleix:  ses  plans  politiques:  sa  disgrace.  Paris,  1901. 

PALTON,  C.  Memoir  of  Captain  Dalton.    1806. 
XDODWELL,  H.  H.  Dupleix  and  Clive:  the  beginning  of  empire.   1920. 

Du  TEIL,  J.,  Baron.  Une  famille  militaire  au  i8e  siecle.  Paris,  1896. 

FORDE,  Col.  LIONEL.  Lord  Clive's  right-hand  man.   1910. 

FORREST,  Sir  G.  W.  Life  of  Lord  Clive.  2  vols.   1918. 

GRANT,  C.  History  of  Mauritius.  410.   1801. 

GRANT,  J.  Sketch  of  the  history  of  the  East  India  Company.    1813. 

GUET,  I.  Jan  Begum.  Paris,  1892. 

HAMONT,  TIBULLE.  Dupleix  d'apres  sa  correspondance  inedite.  Paris,  1881, 

LaUy-Tollendal.  Paris,  1887. 

LAGOUR-GAYET,  G.  La  marine  militaire  sous  le  regne  de  Louis  XV.  Paris,  1910. 

LA  FLOTTE.  Essais  historiques  sur  PInde.  Paris,  1769. 

MALCOLM,  Sir  JOHN.  Life  of  Robert  Lord  Clive.  3  vols.   1836. 

MARTINEAU,  ALFRED.  Dupleix  et  1'Inde  franchise.  4  vols.  Paris,  1920-8. 
^URME,  ROBERT.    History  of  the  military  transactions  of  the  British  nation  in 
Indostan.  3  vols.  4to.  4th  ed.   1803. 

RICHMOND,  H.  W.  The  navy  in  the  war  of  1739-48.  3  vols.  Cambridge,  1920, 

WADDINGTON,  R.  La  guerre  des  sept  ans.  4  vols.  Paris,  1899-1907. 
)(\VILKS,  M*  Historical  sketches  of  the  south  of  India.  3  vols.   1810-17* 

WILSON,  Col.  W.  J.  History  of  the  Madras  army.  5  vols.  Madras. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  623 

CHAPTERS  vii  and  ix 

THE  CONQUEST  OF  BENGAL 

A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

The  principal  authority  for  the  period  consists  of  the  Proceedings  of  the  Bengal 
Council  and  Select  Committee,  preserved  in  duplicate  at  the  Imperial  Record 
Office,  Calcutta,  and  at  the  India  Office  Library.  See  Foster,  Guide,  pp.  40-42. 

Important  matter  is  also  contained  in  the  Clive  MSS  and  the  Orme  MSS,  for 
which  cf.  p.  621  supra. 

A  number  of  papers  relating  to  the  period  will  also  be  found  in  the  earlier  portion 
of  the  Hastings  MSS  at  the  British  Museum,  for  which  cf.  p.  625  infra. 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

AITCHISON,  Sir  C.   Collection  of  treaties,  engagements  and  sunnuds  relating  to 

India.   10  vols.  Calcutta,  1892. 

Bengal  Government  Records.  Proceedings  of  the  Select  Committee,  1  758. 
Calendar  of  Persian  Correspondence,  1759-1772.  3  vols.  Calcutta,  1911-19. 
[FORREST,  G.  W.]  Bengal  and  Madras  Papers,  1746-1785.  2  vols.  Fo.   Calcutta. 
HILL,  S.  C.   Abstract  of  the  early  records  of  the  Foreign  Department,  1756-62. 

Fo.  Calcutta,  1901. 

-  Bengal  in  1756-57-  3  vols.   1905. 

-  Catalogue  of  the  Orme  MSS.   Oxford,  1916. 

LAW,  JEAN.   M&noire  sur  quelques  affaires  de  Pempire  mogul.   Ed.  Martineau. 

Paris,  1913. 
LONG,  Rev.  J.    Selections  from  the  unpublished  records  of  the  Government  of 

Bengal,  1748-1767.  Calcutta,  1869. 

Reports  of  the  Select  Committee  of  the  House  of  Commons,  1772-73. 
Reports  of  the  Committee  of  Secrecy  appointed  by  the  House  of  Commons, 

1772-73. 
[VANSITTART,  HENRY.]    Original  papers  relative  to  the  disturbances  in  Bengal, 


-r         -  - 

-  Narratives  of  the  transactions  in  Bengal  from  .  .  .  1  760  to  ...  1  764.    3  vols. 
1766. 

CONTEMPORARY  TRACTS,  ETC. 

A  comparative  view  of  the  Dutch,  French  and  English  East  India  Companies* 

1770. 
Address  from.  .  .Holwell.  .  .to.  .  .Scrafton  in  reply  to  his.  .  .Observations  on  Mr. 

Vansittart's  narrative.    1767. 
A  defence  of  the  United  merchants  of  England.  .  .against  the  complaints  of  the 

Dutch  East  India  Company.  410.    1762* 
An  authentic  account  of  the  proceedings  of.  .  .  Holland  and  West  Friesland  on  the 

complaints  laid  before  them  by  Sir  Joseph  Yorke.  410.   1  762. 
BOLTS,  WILLIAM.  Considerations  on  Indian  affairs.  3  vols.  410.   1  772-5. 
[CAILLAUD,  JOHN.}  Narrative  of  what  happened  in  Bengal  in  the  year  1760.  n,d. 
GARACGIOLI,  C.  Life  of  Robert,  Lord  Glive.  4  vols.   [1777.] 
Debates  in  the  Asiatic  Assembly.   1  767. 
HOLWELL,  J.  Z.  India  Tracts.  2nd  ed.  4to.   1764. 
IVES,  E.  Voyage  to  India.    1773. 
Letter  from  certain  gentlemen  of  Council  at  Bengal.  .  .containing  reasons  against 

the  revolution  in  favour  of  Meir  Cossim  Aly  Chan.  Sm.  4to.   1764, 
Proceedings  of  the  court-martial  on  Sir  Robert  Fletcher,  n.d. 


624  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

SCRAFTON,  LUKE.  Reflections  on  the  government  of  Indostan.   1763. 

History  of  the  administration  of  the  leader  in  the  Indian  direction.  Sm,  4to. 

[1764.] 

STRACHEY,  H.  Narrative  of  the  Mutiny  of  the  officers  in  Bengal.   1773. 
VERELST,  HARRY.  Rise,  progress  and  present  state  of  the  English  Government  in 

Bengal.  4to.   1772. 
[WATTS,  WILLIAM.]  Memoirs  of  the  revolution  in  Bengal  in  the  year  1757.   1760. 


B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 

GENERAL 

AUBER,  PETER.  Rise  and  Progress  of  the  British  power  in  India.  2  vols.   1837. 

Bengal  Past  and  Present.  Calcutta,  1907-  . 

BEVERIDGE,  HENRY.  A  comprehensive  history  of  India  civil,  military,  and  social. 
3  vols.   1867. 

BURGESS,  Dr  JAMES.  The  chronology  of  modern  India.   1913. 

CURZON  OF  KEDLESTON,  The  Marquis.  British  Government  in  India.  2  vols.  1925. 
ALBERT,  Sir  COURTENAY.  The  Government  of  India.    1915. 

^Imperial  Gazetteer  of  India.   Vol.  i.   Descriptive.   Oxford,  1907.   Vol.  n.   His- 
torical.   1908.    Vol.  m.    Economic.    1908.    Vol.  iv.    Administrative.    1907. 
Atlas. 
X^ Y ALL,  Sir  ALFRED.  Rise  and  expansion  of  the  British  dominion  in  India.   1910. 

MARSHMAN,  JOHN  CLARK.  History  of  India  from  the  earliest  period  to  the  "lose  of 

.       Lord  Dalhousie's  administration.  3  vols.    1867.  ^    £ 

XMILL,  JAMES.   History  of  British  India.   5th  ed.  With  notes  and  continuation  by 

-     H.  H.Wilson.   10  vols.   1858. 
XMUIR,  RAMSAY.  Making  of  British  India.  Manchester,  1915. 

MUKHERJI,  P.  Indian  constitutional  documents.  2  vols.  2nd  ed.  Calcutta,  1918. 

ROBERTS,  P.  E.  India.  2  vols.  Oxford,  1916-20. 
XSTRACHEY,  Sir  JOHN.  India.   1888. 

THORNTON,  EDWARD.  History  of  the  British  Empire  in  India.  6  vols.   1841. 

SPECIAL 

BROOME,  A.  Rise  and  progress  of  the  Bengal  army.  Calcutta,  1 850. 
XDODWELL,  H.  H.  Dupleix  and  Clive.   1920. 

FORREST,  Sir  G.  W.  Life  of  Lord  Clive.  2  vols.   1918. 

GENTIL.  Memoires  sur  1'Indoustan.   1822. 

GHOSE,  N.  N.  Memoirs  of. .  .Nubkissen.   1901. 

HALLWARD,  N.  L.  William  Bolts.   1920. 

HILL,  S.  C.  Major-General  Claud  Martin.   1901. 

Three  Frenchmen  in  Bengal.   1903. 

Major  Randfurlie  Knox  Dilawar  Jang  Bahadur.    1917. 

HYDE,  H.  B.  The  Parish  of  Bengal.   1899. 

The  parochial  annals  of  Bengal.   1901 . 

KLERK  DE  REUS,  G.  C.  "De  expeditie  naar  Bengale."  (De  Indische  Gids,  1889.) 
.MALCOLM,  Sir  JOHN.  Life  of  Robert  Lord  Clive.  3  vols.   1836. 
JVMALLESON,  Col.  G.  B.  Lord  Clive.   1907. 
j(  ORMB,  ROBERT.  Military  transactions  of  the  British  nation  in  Indostan.  3  vols. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  625 

CHAPTERS  x-xni  and  xvi-xvn 

WARREN  HASTINGS  AND  BENGAL,  1772-85 

A.  ORIGINAL  SOURCES 

MANUSCRIPT 

In  the  India  Office  is  a  great  mass  of  records  dealing  with  the  Hastings  period. 
Foster's  Guide  (especially  pp.  42-7)  should  be  consulted.  In  the  Home  Miscel- 
laneous Series,  vols.  212-221  deal  with  Hastings'  administration,  and  vols.  228- 
234  with  the  Impeachment.  The  following  volumes  in  this  series  also  deal  with 
the  period:  115,  118,  119,  123,  139,  140,  162,  172-4,  227,  372,  555,  683.  Among 
other  records  for  the  period  1772-1785  are  the  Court  Minutes  (i.e.  of  the  Court 
of  Directors),  1 5  vols. ;  the  General  Court  Minutes  (i.e.  of  the  Court  of  Proprietors), 
4  vols.;  Letters  Received  from  Bengal,  13  vols.;  Despatches  to  Bengal,  8  vols.; 
Bengal  Public  Consultations,  77  vols. ;  Bengal  Secret  and  Military  Consultations, 
76  vols. ;  Bengal  Revenue  Consultations,  93  vols. ;  Bengal  Foreign  Consultations, 
6  vols.;  Calcutta  Committee  of  Revenue  Proceedings,  61  vols. 

Duplicates  of  almost  all  the  consultation  volumes,  similarly  authenticated,  are 
to  be  found  in  the  Imperial  Record  Office,  Calcutta. 

At  the  Public  Record  Office  are  preserved  the  original  correspondence  of  the 
Secretary  of  State  (C.O.  77-24,  25,  and  82,  83),  but  a  great  mass  of  further  corre- 
spondence of  the  Secretary  of  State  occurs  in  the  Home  Miscellaneous  Series  at 
the  India  Office  (145-189).  A  great  quantity  of  Lord  North's  East  India  Corre- 
spondence will  be  found  in  the  Treasury  Papers  (T49~i  to  9).  Besides  these  there 
also  occur  in  the  Additional  MSS  three  volumes  of  Robinson's  correspondence 
with  George  III  (37833-5) ;  a  volume  of  Clavering-Francis  letters  (34287) ;  and  the 
Impey  papers  (16259-74).  The  Hastings  MSS  form  Additional  MSS  28973-29236. 

The  private  papers  of  Francis  are  lodged  at  the  India  Office.  A  volume  of 
Clavering-Francis  correspondence  forms  Add.  MS  34287. 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

ATTCHISON,  Sir  C.  See  p.  623  supra. 

BOND,  E.  A.  Speeches  of  the  Managers  and  Counsel  in  the  Trial  of  Warren 
Hastings.  4  vols.  1859-61. 

Calendar  of  Persian  Correspondence,  1772-5.  Calcutta,  1925. 

Debates  of  the  House  of  Lords  on  the  evidence  delivered  in  the  trial  of  Warren 
Hastings  Esquire;  Proceedings  of  the  East  India  Company  in  consequence  of 
his  acquittal  and  testimonials  of  the  British  and  native  inhabitants  of  India. . . . 

*797- 

DODWELL,  H.  H.   Letters  of  Warren  Hastings  to  Sir  John  Macpherson.    1927. 
^ELLIOT,  Sir  HENRY,  and  DOWSON,  JOHN.  The  history  of  India  as  told  by  its  own 

historians.  Vol.  vra. 

Hansard's  Parliamentary  History.  Vol.  vm  and  following.   1812. 
History  of  the  Trial  of  Warren  Hastings,  Esq.   1 796. 
FORREST,  G.  W.  (Sir).  Selections  from  the  Letters,  Despatches,  and  other  State 

Papers  preserved  in  the  Foreign  Department  of  the  Government  of  India, 

1772-85.  3  vols.  Fol.  Calcutta,  1890. 
Selections  from  the  State  Papers  of  the  Governors-General  of  India.  Warren 

Hastings.  2  vols.  Oxford,  1910. 

GRIER,  SYDNEY  C.  The  letters  of  Warren  Hastings  to  his  wife.  Edinburgh,  1905. 
Journals  of  the  House  of  Commons. 
Journals  of  the  House  of  Lords. 

Minutes  of  the  evidence  taken  at  the  trial  of  Warren  Hastings.   1 1  vols.   1788-94. 
NANDAKUMAR.  The  trial  of  Maha  Raja  Nundocomar,  Bahader,  for  forgery.  Sm. 

4to.   1776. 

CHIV  4<> 


626  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

NANDAKUMAR.  The  trial  of  Joseph  Fowke,  Francis  Fowke,  Maha  Rajah  Nundocomar 
and  Roy  Rada  Churn,  for  a  conspiracy  against  Warren  Hastings  Esq.  1 776. 

Reports  (i-ix)  of  the  Select  Committee  on  the  Administration  of  Justice  in  Bengal, 
Behar  and  Orissa.  1782-3. 

SAIYID  GHULAM  HUSAIN  KHAN.  Siyar-al-mutakhkherin.  Translated  by  Mustafa. 
4  vols.  Calcutta  [  1 902] . 

TRACTS  AND  OTHER  CONTEMPORARY  WRITINGS 

Answer  of  Philip  Francis,  Esq.,  to  the  charges  exhibited  against  him,  General 
Clavering,  and  Colonel  Monson  by  Sir  Elijah  Impey,  Kt.  n.d. 

Appeal  from  the  hasty  to  the  deliberative  judgment  of  the  people  of  England. 
8vo.  1787. 

BROOME,  RALPH.  A  comparative  review  of  the  administration  of  Mr  Hastings  and 
Mr  Dundas.  n.d. 

An  elucidation  of  the  articles  of  impeachment. .  .against  Warren  Hastings. 

CLTVE,  Lord  ROBERT.  Lord  Clive's  Speech  in  the  House  of  Commons,  soth  March, 
1772,  on  the  motion  made  for  leave  to  bring  in  a  bill,  for  the  better  regulation 
of  the  affairs  of  the  East  India  Company,  and  of  their  Servants  hi  India,  and 
for  the  due  Administration  of  Justice  in  Bengal.  London,  n.d. 

Examination  of  public  measures  proposed  in  1 782  both  in  the  House  of  Commons 
and  at  the  India  House,  as  far  as  they  concern  W.  Hastings,  Esq.  1 782. 

Five  letters  from  a  free  merchant  in  Bengal  to  Warren  Hastings.    1783. 

FOWKE,  FRANCIS.  Extracts  from  records  at  the  East  India  House  of  proceedings 
relative  to .  1782. 

HAMILTON,  C.  An  historical  relation  of  the  origin,  progress,  and  final  dissolution 
of  the  government  of  the  Rphilla  Afghans.  1 787. 

HASTINGS,  WARREN.  A  narrative  of  the  insurrection  which  happened  in  the 
Zemeendary  of  Banaris  in  the  month  of  August  1781,  and  of  the  transactions 
of  the  Governor-General  in  that  district;  with  an  appendix  of  authentic  papers 
and  affidavits.  [1782.] 

Memoirs  relative  to  the  state  of  India.   1 786^ 

Review  of  the  state  of  Bengal.    1 786. 

HICKEY,  WILLIAM.  Memoirs,  edited  by  Alfred  Spencer.  4  vols.   1913-25. 

HODGES,  WILLIAM.  Travels  in  India,  during  the  years  1780,  1781,  1782,  and  1783. 
London,  1793. 

Letters  of  Albanicus  to  the  people  of  England  on  the  partiality  and  injustice  of  the 
charges  brought  against  Warren  Hastings.  1 786. 

Letters  of  Detector  on  the  reports  of  the  Select  Committees.   1782. 

Letters  from  Simpkin  the  Second. .  .containing  a  humble  description  of  the  trial 
of  Warren  Hastings.  1 789. 

Letter  to  Governor  Johnstone  on  Indian  affairs.   1 783. 

MACKINTOSH,  WILLIAM.  Travels  in  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa.  2  vols.   1782. 

MACKRABIE,  A.  Narrative  of  Nandkumer's  execution.  (Ap.  Annual  Reg.  1788, 
Hist.  Part,  p.  157.) 

MACPHERSON,  J.  The  history  and  management  of  the  East  India  Company.   1779. 

[Mora,  JOHN.]  Transactions  in  India  1756-1783.   1786. 

MORRISON,  JOHN.  The  advantages  of  an  alliance  with  the  Great  Mogul.   1 774. 

PRICE,  JOSEPH.  Some  observations  and  remarks  on  a  late  publication  entitled 
"Travels  in  Europe,  Asia  and  Africa".  1782. 

Vindication  of  General  Richard  Smith.    1 783. 

Proceedings  at  the  India  House  relativexto  W.  Hastings  from  May  39th  to  No- 
vember ist,  1782.  1782. 

PULTENEY,  W.  The  effects  to  be  expected  from  the  East  India  Bill  upon  the 
constitution'of  Great  Britain.  1 783. 

SCOTT,  Major  JOHN.  The  conduct  of  H.M.'s  ministers  considered  as  it  affected  the 
East  India  Company  and  Mr  Hastings.  1 784. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  627 

SHERIDAN,  R.  B.  A  narrative  statement  of  the  2  bills  for  the  better  government  of 
the  British  possessions  in  India  brought  into  Parliament  by  Mr.  Fox  and  Mr. 
Pitt,  with  explanatory  observations.  1 788. 

Short  account  of  the  resignation  of  Warren  Hastings,  Governor-General  of  Bengal, 
in  the  year  1775.  1781. 

THOMPSON,  HENRY  FREDERICK.  Intrigues  of  a  Nabob.   1780. 

TIERNEY,  G.  The  real  situation  of  the  East  India  Company.   1787. 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 
For  general  works  see  the  list  at  p.  624  supra. 

BEVERTOOE,  H.  The  trial  of  Nanda  Kumar.    1886. 
BUSTEED,  H.  E.   Echoes  of  old  Calcutta.  Calcutta,  1908. 
GLEIG,  G.  R.  Memoirs  of  Warren  Hastings.  3  vols.    1841. 
HASTINGS,  G.  W.  Vindication  of  Warren  Hastings.  8vo.  Oxford,  1909. 
IMPEY,  ELIJAH  BARWELL.  Memoirs  of  Sir  Elijah  Impey.   1847. 
LAWSON,  Sir  CHARLES.   Private  life  of  Warren  Hastings.   191 1. 
AYALL,  Sir  ALFRED.  Life  of  Hastings.   1908. 
MACPHERSON,  W.  C.   Soldiering  in  India,  1764-87.    1928. 
MANNERS,  Lady  VICTORIA,  and  WILLIAMSON,  Dr  G.  C.    Life  and  work  of  John 

Zoffany.  4to.    1920. 

MARKHAM,  CLEMENTS  R.  Major  James  Rennell.   1895. 

[MiNTO,  Lord.]   Life  and  letters  of  Sir  Gilbert  Elliott,  1751-1806.  3  vols.   1874. 
MONCKTON-JoNEs,  M.  E.  Hastings  in  Bengal,  1772-1774.  8vo.  Oxford,  1918. 
PARKES,  JOSEPH,  and  MERIVALE,  HERMAN.  Memoirs  of  Sir  Philip  Francis.  2  vols. 

1867. 
ROBERTS,  P.  E.    *e  Warren  Hastings  and  his  accusers."    (Journal  of  Indian  History, 

vol.  in,  part  i,  March,  1924.) 

STANHOPE,  Lord.  Life  and  correspondence  of  William  Pitt.  4  vols.  8vo.   1861. 
STEPHEN,  Sir  JAMES  FITZJAMES.  Nuncomar  and  Impey.   2  vols.    1885. 
STRACHEY,  Sir  JOHN.  Hastings  and  the  Rohilla  War.    1892. 

*    CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  FIRST  CONFLICT  OF  THE  COMPANY  WITH  THE 
MARATHAS,  1761-82 

A.  ORIGINAL  SOURCES 

MANUSCRIPT 

The  English  records  consist  principally  of  the  Bombay  Public  and  Secret,  and 
Political  Consultations  (see  Foster,  Guide,  pp.  84-5,  and  A.  F.  Kindersley,  Handbook 
of  the  Bombay  Government  Records,  pp.  20-21  and  41-42).  But  the  student  should  also 
consult  the  Bengal  records  of  the  period  and  the  Hastings  MSS  (see  p.  625  supra). 

The  surviving  Maratha  papers  consist  of  the  Poona  Daftar,  of  which  no  index  or 
catalogue  has  yet  been  prepared;  and  the  family  papers  of  the  principal  chiefs, 
which  still  await  examination. 

Much  regarding  the  first  Maratha  War  occurs  in  the  Officios  dos  Governadores,  in 
the  Archivo  Ultramarino  at  Lisbon;  and  the  correspondence  of  the  Goa  Government 
with  its  English  and  Maratha  neighbours  has  been  incorporated  in  the  series 
Livros  dos  Reis  visinhos  in  the  Goa  archives. 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

BRIGGS,J.  « Early  life  of  Nana  Farnevis."  (Proc.  Royal  Asiatic  Soc.  1829.) 
FORREST,  Sir  G.  W.  Selections  from  the  letters,  despatches  and  state  papers  pre- 
served in  the  Bombay  Secretariat.    Home  Series.    Bombay,  1887.    Maratha 
Series.  Bombay,  1885. 

40-2 


628  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

PARASNIS,  D.  B.  Itihas  Sangraha.  7  vols.  Bombay. 

PARASNIS,  D.  B.  and  MAWJEE,  P.  V.  Treaties,  agreements  and  sanads. 

RAJWADE,  V.  K.  Marthyanchya  Itihasanchi  Sadhanen.  22  vols. 

TRACTS  AND  OTHER  CONTEMPORARY  WRITINGS 

FORBES,  James.   Oriental  Memoirs,  a  narrative  of  1 7  years'  residence  in  India. 

and  ed.  revised  by  his  daughter,  the  Countess  de  Montalembert.  2  vols.  1834. 
Historical  account  of  the  settlement  and  possession  of  Bombay  by  the  English 

E.I.C.  and  of  the  rise  and  progress  of  the  war  with  the  Mahratta  nation.  1 78 1 . 
MOODIE,  JOHN.  History  of  the  military  operations  in  Hindustan  from . . .  1 744  to 

the  conclusion  of  peace. .  .in  1784.  2  vols.   1788. 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 

For  general  works  see  the  list  at  p.  624  supra. 

BAINES,  T.  A.  History  of  Gujarat — Maratha  period  (1760-1819).    (Ap.  Gazetteer 
of  the  Bombay  Presidency,  vol.  i,  part  i,  Bombay,  1896.) 

Bombay  Gazetteer,  Materials. 

DOUGLAS,  JAMES.  Bombay  and  Western  India.  2  vols.    1893. 

EDWARDES,  S.  M.  The  rise  of  Bombay. 

Gazetteer  of  Bombay  city  and  island.  Vol.  n.  Bombay,  1909. 

X  DUFF,  JAMES  GRANT.  History  of  the  Mahrattas.  3  vols.   1826. 

KHARE,V.  V.  Adhikar  Yoga. 

tf  KINCAID,  C.  A.  and  PARASNIS,  D.  B.    History  of  the  Maratha  people.    3  vols. 
1918-25. 

WARING,  E.  S.  A  history  of  the  Mahrattas.   1810. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  CARNATIC,  1761-84 

A.  ORIGINAL  SOURCES 

MANUSCRIPT 

The  principal  source  is  the  series  of  records  of  the  governor  and  council  of 
Madras,  preserved  for  the  most  part  in  duplicate  at  the  India  Office  and  at  the 
Madras  Record  Office.  These  consist  mainly  of  two  series  of  consultations,  Public 
and  Military.  (See  Foster,  Guide,  pp.  75-76,  and  Dodwell,  Report  on  the  Madras 
Records,  pp.  20  sqq.) 

The  Madras  Record  Office  contains  a  special  group  of  volumes  (Military 
Sundries,  nos.  60-62)  containing  the  reports,  etc.,  of  the  commissioners  who  con- 
cluded the  Treaty  01  Mangalore. 

Papers  relating  to  the  conduct  of  the  naval  commander  at  Madras  will  be  found 
divided  between  the  Public  Record  Office  and  the  India  Office.  The  chief  items  at 
the  former  are  C.O.  77.82  and  T  49.1,  2,  and  25;  and  at  the  latter  Home  Miscel- 
laneous £9-1 14. 

Among  the  Additional  MSS  at  the  British  Museum  is  a  largepart  of  the 
Macartney  papers,  especially  his  private  correspondence  (2245^-62),  The  Bodleian 
Library  contains  a  number  of  MSS  supplementing  this  last  item  (Bodley  MSS, 
English  History  C  66-114).  Macartney's  correspondence  with  the  Chairs  forms 
Home  Miscellaneous  246-7  at  the  India  Office. 

A  considerable  quantity  of  the  Persian  papers  of  the  Nawab  of  the  Carnatic  is 
at  the  Madras  Record  Office. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  629 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

FORREST,  Sir  G.  W.  See  p.  625  supra. 

GHULAM  MUHAMMAD.  Lives  of  Haidar  'All  and  Tipu  Sultan.    1855. 

HUSAIN  *ALI  KHAN  KIRMANI.  History  of  Hyder  Naik.  Translated  by  Miles.   1842. 

LOVE,  Col.  H.  D.  Vestiges  of  old  Madras.  3  vols.  and  index.   1913. 

The  Palk  MSS.   (Royal  Hist.  MSS  Com.)   1922. 

Reports  (i-vi)  of  the  committee  of  secrecy  on  the  causes  of  the  war  in  the  Garnatic. 
1781-2. 

TRACTS  AND  OTHER  CONTEMPORARY  WRITINGS 

Answer  to  the  charges  exhibited  against  Sir  Thomas  Rumbold . . .  by  himself. 

[1781.] 
BENFIELD,  PAUL.  Report  of  the  Committee  of  Correspondence.   1780. 

Heads  of  objections.   1 780. 

The  case  of  Mr.  Paul  Benfield.    1 781 . 

Opinion  of  W.  Grant. . .  relative  to  Mr.  Benfield  5s  claims.   1 781 . 

Trial  for  an  action  for  £37,000.   1782. 

Letter  to  the  creditors'  of  Boyd,  Benfield  and  Co.   1800. 

Case  of  Paul  Benfield  Esq.    1803. 

BOYD,  HUGH.  Miscellaneous  works.  Ed.  by  Lawrence  Campbell.  2  vols.   1800. 
BRISTOW,  JAMES.  Ten  years'  captivity  with  Hyder  and  Tippoo.    1 793. 
BURKE,  EDMUND.   Speech  on  the  Nabob  of  Arcot's  debts,  with  an  appendix  con- 
taining several  documents.    1 788. 

CAMPBELL,  DONALD.  Journey  overland  to  India.  410.   1 796. 
CAMPBELL,  Col.  JOHN.  Account  of  the  gallant  defence  made  at  Mangalore.   1786. 
CURTIS,  CHARLES.  Account  of  the  diseases  of  India  as  they  appeared  in  the  English 

fleet  at  Madras,  1782-83.   Edinburgh,  1807. 
Defence  of  Lord  Pigot.   1776. 
Defences  of  George  Stratton,  Esq.,  and  the  majority  of  Council  at  Madras  in 

answer  to  the  accusations  brought  against  them  for  the  supposed  murder  of 

Lord  Pigot.   1778. 
Enquiry  into  the  policy  of  making  conquests  for  the  Mahometans  in  India  by 

British  arms.  London,  1779. 

Essay  towards  illustrating  the  late  conduct  of. .  .Sir  Hector  Munro.    1782. 
FULLARTON,  WILLIAM.   A  view  of  the  English  interests  in  India;  and  an  account 

of  the  military  operations  in  the  southern  parts  of  the  peninsula,  during  the 

campaigns  of  1702,  1783,  and  1784.    1787. 
King  of  Tanjore's  memorial  to  the  Court  of  Directors.    1776. 
LE  COUTEUR,  Capt.  JOHN  (rooth  Foot).  Letters  from  India  containing  an  account 

of  the  military  transactions  on  the  coast  of  Malabar.   1 790. 
[MAISTRE  DE  LA  TOUR.]  Histoire  d'Ayder-ali  Khan.   1 783. 
Mangalore,  Treaty  of.    Dallas-Huddlestone  controversy.    See  Asiatic  Journal, 

vols.  v-vn. 
Memoir  of  the  public  character  and  services  of  William  Collins  Jackson,  late  senior 

merchant  on  the  Madras  establishment.   1812. 

Memoirs  of  the  war  in  Asia,    ist  ed.  2  vols.  1788;  2nd  ed.  i  vol.  1789. 
Mr.  Floyer's  case  in  the  late  disputes  at  Madras.  410.    1 778. 
Narrative  of  the  late  revolution  of  the  government  of  Madras.   1 776  and  1 778. 
OAKES,  HENRY.  Narrative  of  the  treatment  of  the  English  prisoners  at  Bednur.  1 785. 
Observations  on  the  proceedings  in  Council  at  Madras.  4to.   [i  778.] 
Original  letters  from  Warren  Hastings,  Esq.,  Sir  Eyre  Coote,  K.B.,  and  Richard 

Barwell,  Esq.,  to  Sir  Thomas  Rumbold,  Bart.,  and  Lord  Macartney,  K.B.  1 787. 
Original  papers. .  .and  proceedings  before  the  coroner's  inquest  upon  the  death  of 

Lord  Pigot.   1778. 

Original  papers  relative  to  Tanjore.  4to.   1777. 
Remarks  on  the  most  important  military  operations  of  the  English  forces  on  the 

western  side  of  the  peninsula  of  Hindoostan  in  1 783  and  1 784. . .  by  a  British 

officer.   1788. 


630  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Restoration  of  the  King  of  Tanjore  considered,   [i  776.] 

ROBSON,  F.  The  life  of  Hyder  Ali.   1786. 

Rous,  G.  The  restoration  of  the  King  of  Tanjore  considered.  3  parts.   1777. 

SCURRY,  JAMES.  Ten  years'  captivity  by  Hyder  and  Tippjoo.   1 824. 

[STANHOPE,  PHILIP  DORMER.]  Genuine  memoirs  of  Asiaticus.   1785. 

State  of  the  facts  relating  to  Tanjore.   [1776.] 

STUART,  ANDREW.  Letter  to  the  directors  of  the  East  India  Company  from 

respecting  the  conduct  of  Brigadier-General  James  Stuart  at  Madras.  4to.  1778. 

Letters  to  the  Rt.  Hon.  Lord  Mansfield.  Dublin,  1775. 

[STUART,  Major-General  JAMES.]  Correspondence  during  the  indisposition  of  the 

commander-in-chief.  410.   n.d. 
[SULIVAN,  R.  J.]  Analysis  of  the  political  history  of  India.  410.   1779. 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 

For  general  works  see  the  list  at  p.  624  supra. 

BARROW,  J.  Some  account  of  the  public  life  and  a  selection  from  the  unpublished 

writings  of  the  Earl  of  Macnartney.  2  vols.   1807. 
BIDDULPH,  Col.  JOHN.  The  XIX  and  their  times.   1899. 
BILGRAMI,  S.  H.  and  WILMOT,  G.  Historical  and  descriptive  sketch  of  the  Nizam's 

dominions.  2  vols.   1883-4. 

BowRiNG,  LEWIN  B.  Haidar  Ali  and  Tipu  Sultan.  Oxford,  1899. 
DODWELL,H.H.  "Warren  Hastings  and  the  assignment  of  the  Carnatic."  (E.H.R. 

LX>  375  sqq.) 

G£NIN,  E.  Talents  militaires  d'Aider-aly,  sa  lutte  contre  les  Anglais,  1780-82. 
HILL,  S.  C.  Yusuf  Khan.   1914. 

LAGOUR-GAYET,  G.  La  marine  militaire  sous  le  regne  de  Louis  XVI.   1905. 
LINDSAY,  Lord.  Lives  of  the  Lindsays.  3  vols.   1849.  (Vol.  m  contains  narratives 

of  R.,  James,  and  John  Lindsay.) 

MAHAN,  A.  T.  The  influence  of  sea-power  upon  history,  1660-1788.   1889. 
OAKELEY,  HERBERT.  Some  account  of  Sir  Charles  Oakeley.   1829. 
PAGE,  J.  Schwartz  of  Tanjore.   1 92 1 . 

PEARSON,  HUGH.  Life. .  .of  Christian  Frederick  Swartz.  2  vols.   1834. 
RICHMOND,  Vice-Admiral  Sir  H.  W.  "The  Hughes-Suffren  Campaigns."  (Mariner's 

Mirror,  xm,  219  sqq.  1927.) 

ROBINS,  HELEN  H.  Our  first  ambassador  to  China.   1908. 
Roux,  J.  S.  Le  Bailli  de  Suffren  dans  1'Inde.   1862. 
RUMBOLD,  E.  A.  Vindication  of  Sir  Thomas  Rumbold.    1868. 

STAUNTON,  Sir  G.  L.  Memoirs  of  the  life  and  family  of  the  late .  Havant,  1823. 

WILKS,  MARK.  Historical  Sketches  of  the  South  of  India.   3  vols.   1810-17. 
WILSON,  Col.  W.  J.  History  of  the  Madras  army.  5  vols.  Madras. 
WRIGHT,  ARNOLD,  and  SCLATER,  W.  L.  Sterne  s  Eliza.   1922. 
WYLLY,  Col.  H.  C.  Life  of  Coote.   1922. 


CHAPTER  xvni 

LEGISLATION  AND  GOVERNMENTS,  1786-1818 
A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

The  principal  surviving  record  series  of  the  Board  of  Control  at  the  India  Office 
are  summarised  in  Foster,  Guide,  pp.  33~6. 

Castlereagh's  correspondence  when  President  of  the  Board  forms  vols.  502  sqq. 
of  the  Home  Miscellaneous  Series.  The  Dundas  papers,  which  would  have  been 
invaluable  for  this  subject,  have  been  dispersed;  but  some  letters  occur  in  the 
Home  Miscellaneous  Series  731  a. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  631 

An  interesting  reference  to  the  relations  between  the  Board  and  the  Company 
will  be  found  in  Additional  MS  33108  at  the  British  Museum,  where  the  Wellesley 
and  Liverpool  papers  may  also  be  consulted. 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

Debates  at  the  India  House  on  the  Company's  new  charter.   1793- 
Parliamentary  Papers.  Papers  relating  to  the  renewal  of  the  Company's  charter 
in  1813  occur  in  vols.  vi  and  vn,  session  1812,  and  vin-x,  session  1812-13. 
The  evidence  given  before  the  Select  Committee  in  1831-2  also  relates  to  the 
earlier  period  (vols.  vm-xn,  session  1831-2).  Correspondence  relating  to  the 
constitution  of  the  Indian  Governments  (session  1833,  vol.  xxv,  115,  185). 
Ross,  CHARLES.    Correspondence  of  Charles,  first  Marquis  Cornwallis.    3  vols. 

1859- 
WELLESLEY,  Marquess.  Despatches.  5  vols.   1836. 

TRACTS  AND  OTHER  CONTEMPORARY  PUBLICATIONS 

ANDERSON,  GEORGE.    . .  .Variations. .  .in  the  affairs  of  the  East  India  Company 

since. .  .1784.   1792. 

[BRUCE,  J.]  Historical  view  of  plans  for  the  government  of  India.   1 793. 
Considerations  of  an  attempt  of  the  East  India  Company  to  become  manufacturers 

in  Great  Britain.    1 796. 
Considerations  on  the  danger. .  .of  laying  open  the  trade  with  India  and  China. 

1813. 
ELPHINSTONE,  MOUNTSTUART.  Opinions  of. .  .upon  some  of  the  leading  questions 

connected  with  the  government  of  British  India  examined  and  compared  with 

those  of  the  late  Sir  T.  Munro  and  Sir  J.  Malcolm.   1831. 
GRANT,  ROBERT.  The  Expediency  maintained  of  continuing  the  system  by  which 

the  trade  and  government  of  India  are  now  regulated.    1813. 
Hasty  sketch  of  a  debate  at  the  East  India  House  on  the  subject  of  the  private 

trade.   1801. 
LAUDERDALE,  Earl  of.  An  inquiry  into  the  practical  merits  of  the  system  of  the 

government  of  India.   Edinburgh,  1809. 
/MALCOLM,  Sir  JOHN.  The  government  of  India.   1833. 
Memorandum  of  the  relative  importance  of  the  West  and  East  Indies  to  Great 

Britain.   1823. 
RICKARDS,  R.  India  or  facts  submitted  to  illustrate  the  character  and  condition  of 

the  native  inhabitants,  n.d. 

RUSSELL,  F.  A  short  history  of  the  East  India  Company.   1793. 
[ScoiT- WARING,  Major  T.]   Observations  on  the  present  state  of  the  East  India 

Company.   1807. 
TUCKER,  H.  ST  G.  Review  of  the  financial  situation  of  the  East  India  Company. 

1822. 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 
For  general  works  see  the  list  at  p.  624  supra. 

AUBER,  PETER.  Analysis  of  the  constitution  of  the  East  India  Company.   1826. 
FOSTER,  Sir  W.   "The  India  Board."  (Trans,  of  the  Royal  Hist.  Soc.  1916.) 
KAYE,  J.  W.  Life  and  correspondence  of  Henry  St  George  Tucker.   1854. 
MACPHERSON,  DAVID.  Annals  of  commerce.  4  vols.   1805. 

European  commerce  with  India.   1812. 

MORRIS,  HENRY.  Life  of  Charles  Grant. 
SBTON,  Sir  MALCOLM.  The  India  Office. 


632  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

CHAPTER  XIX 

THE  EXCLUSION  OF  THE  FRENCH,  1784-1815 

A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

The  chief  English  records  are  the  Bengal  Political,  Foreign,  Military  and  Secret 
Consultations  for  the  period  (Foster,  Guide >  pp.  50  sag.).  But  besides  these  a  good 
deal  of  matter  ready  collected  occurs  in  the  series  The  French  in  India  (idem,  p.  96) 
and  in  the  later  part  of  the  Factory  Records:  Persia  and  the  Persian  Gulf  (idem, 

P-  99)- 

At  the  Public  Record  Office  the  series  F.O.  60  contains  the  papers  relating  to 
the  early  Persian  missions. 

At  Paris  the  archives  of  the  Ministries  of  the  Colonies  and  of  Marine  are  especi- 
ally important. 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

AITCHKON.  Treaties.  See  p.  623  supra. 

Fortescue  MSS.   (Hist.  MSS  Com.)    1894-    . 

GARDANE,  Comte  ALFRED  DE.    Mission  du  General  Gardane  en  Perse  sous  le 

premier  empire.   1865. 
GAUDART,  E.  Catalogue  dies  manuscrits  des  anciennes  archives  de  PInde  frangaise. 

2  vols.  Pondichery,  1922-4. 

LAW,  JEAN,  fitat  politique  de  1  Inde  en  1777.  Pondichery,  1913. 
NAPOLEON  I.   Correspondance.   (Especially  vol.  xv.) 

TRACTS,  TRAVELS,  AND  OTHER  CONTEMPORARY  WRITINGS 

BALDWIN,  GEORGE.  Political  recollections  relative  to  Egypt.   1801. 

BRITTANICUS.  Letter  to  Samuel  Whitbread. ...    1810. 

CAPPER,  J.    Observations  on  the  passage  to  India  through  Egypt,  by  Baghdad, 

etc.   1785. 

COSSIGNY,  CHARPENTIER.  Voyage  au  Bengale.   1 789. 
FORSTER,  GEORGE.  Journey  from  Bengal  to  England  through  the  northern  parts 

of  India....    2  vols.   1808. 
FRANCKLIN,  Col.  W.  Observations  made  on  a  tour  from  Bengal  to  Persia,  1786-87. 

1790. 

GRANDPRE,  L.  DE.  Voyage  dans  PInde  et  au  Bengale,  1789-90.  2  vols.   1801. 
HANWAY,  JONAS.   Historical  account  of  the  British  trade  over  the  Caspian  Sea. 

2  vols.  4to.   1754. 
[HOPKINS,  D.]    The  dangers  to  British  India  from  the  French  and  missionary 

establishments.   1808. 
MORELLET,  Abbe*  ANDRE.  Me'moire  sur  la  situation  actuelle  de  la  Compagnie  des 

Indes.   1769. 
PLAISTED,  BARTHOLOMEW.  A  journey  from  Calcutta  in  Bengal  by  sea  to  Busserah: 

from  thence  across  the  great  desert  to  Aleppo. ...    1 757. 
SONNERAT.  Voyage  to  the  East  Indies,  1774-81.  Translated.  Calcutta,  1788. 
TAYLOR,  Major  J.  Travels  from  England  to  India,  with  instructions  for  travellers 

and  an  account  of  the  expenses  of  travelling.  Maps.  2  vols.   1799. 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 

For  general  works  see  the  list  at  p.  624  supra. 

BARBE,  SMILE.  Le  nabab  Rene*  Madec.  1894. 

BOIONE,  Comte  DE.  M&noire  sur  Ja  carriere  militaire  et  politique  de  M.  Je  General 
Comte  de  Boigne.  Chambery,  1830. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  633 

BRETTE.  La  colonie  de  1'Isle  de  France  en  1790.  n.d. 

BRYDGES,  Sir  HARFORD  JONES.  Account  of  the  transactions  of  H.M.'s  mission  to 

the  Court  of  Persia  in  the  years  1807-1 1.  2  vols.   1834. 
CHARLES-ROUX,  FRANgois.  Autour  d'une  route:  L'Angleterre,  1'isthme  de  Suez, 

et  1'figypte  au  i8e  stecle.   1922. 

Les  origines  de  Pexpedition  d'figypte.    1910. 

L'Angleterre  et  I'exp&lition  fran?aise  en  figypte.  Cairo,  2  vols.   1925. 

"Un  projet  franc,  ais  de  commerce  avec  1  Inde  par  Suez  sous  le  rdgne  de 

Louis  XVI."   (Rev.  de  I'hist.  des  cols.fr.  1925,  pp.  41 1  and  551.) 

Les  £chelles  de  Syrie  et  de  Palestine  au  XVII le  siecle.   [1927.] 

CHEVALIER,  E.  Histoire  de  la  marine  fran9aise  sous  le  consulat  et  Pempire.   1886. 

DAUBIGNY,  E.  T.  Choiseul  et  la  France  outremer.   1892. 

BOURDON,  Chevalier  DE.  "Voyage  dans  PInde  par  les  deserts  (1787)."  (Rev.  Hist. 

de  rinde  Franfaise,  i,  171.) 
DRIAULT,  SDOUARD.  La  politique  orientale  de  Napoleon:  1806-1809.  Sebastiani 

et  Gardane.    1904. 
GALLOIS,  NAPOLEON.    Les  corsaires  franc.ais  sous  la  re"publique  et  Pempire.    Le 

Mans.  2  vols.   1847. 

HOSKINS,  H.  L.  British  routes  to  India.  New  York,  1928. 
>/KAYE,J.  W.  The  life  of  Sir  John  Malcolm.  2  vols.   1856. 
LA  GRAVIERE,  JURIEN  DE.    Guerres  maritimes  sous  la  r^publique  et  Pempire. 

2  vols.   1860. 
LARGHEY,  L.    Correspondance  intime  de  Parmee  d'figypte  intercepted  par  la 

croisiere  anglaise.   Introduction  et  notes  par  L.  Larchey.    I2mo.    1866. 
MAILLARD,  L.  Notes  sur  Pisle  de  la  Reunion.    1862. 
MASSON,  PAUL.  Histoire  du  commerce  fran^ais  dans  le  Levant  au  XVI lie  siecle. 

1896. 

O,  Lady.  Lord  Minto  in  India.    1880. 
Comte  DE.   Memoires  relatifs  &  1'expedition  partie  de  Bengale  pour  aller 

combattre  en  figypte  Tarm^e  d'Orient.   1826. 
PEARCE,    ROBERT    KOUILLERE.     Memoirs    and    correspondence    of. .  .Richard 

Marquess  Wellesley.  3  vols.    1846. 

PINGAUD,  L.  Choiseul-Gouffier,  la  France  en  Orient  au  XVIIIe  siecle.    1887. 
PRENTOUT,  H.  L'ile  de  France  sous  Decaen.    1901. 
ROSE,  J.  HOLLAND.  Life  of  Pitt.   1911. 

Life  of  Napoleon.    1 90 1 . 

SURCOUF,  ROBERT.  Un  corsaire  malouin,  Robert  Surcouf.  n.d. 
Sir  P.  M.  History  of  Persia.  2  vols.   1922. 
S,  W.  M.  The  Marquess  Wellesley.    1850. 

CHAPTER  XX 

TIPU  SULTAN,  1785-1802 

A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

Documents  relating  to  Tipu's  administration  seem  almost  entirely  to  have  dis- 
appeared (but  see  infra  s.v.  Printed  Documents).  Our  main  authorities  consist  there- 
fore in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Bengal  and  Madras  Councils  for  the  period  (Foster, 
Guide,  p.  50,  and  Dodwell,  Report  on  the  Madras  Records 9  pp.  xii-xiii  and  33). 

Essential  private  collections  are  the  Cornwallis  MSS  at  the  Public  Record  Office 
and  the  Wellesley  MSS  at  the  British  Museum. 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

AITCHISON.  Treaties.  See  p.  623  supra. 

GURWOOD,  Lt-Col.  J.  Dispatches  of  the...  Duke  of  Wellington.   13  vols.  1834-9. 
KJRKPATRICK,  Col  W.  Select  letters  of  Tippoo  Sultan.  London,  1811. 
Mysore  State  Papers.  Mysore, 


634  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Ross,  CHARLES.  Correspondence  of  Charles  ist  Marquis  Cornwallis.  jjvols.  1859. 
Soci&e*  de  Phistoire  de  TInde  Fran$aise.  Catalogue  des  manuscrits  des  anciennes 

archives.  >VoL  i.  Pondichery,  1690-1789.  1922.  Vol.  n.  Pondichery,  1789- 

1815.   1924. 
STEWART,  CHARLES.  Tippoo's  oriental  library,  and  memoirs  of  Hyder  and  Tippoo. 

1809. 
WELLESLEY,   Marquess.     Despatches,    minutes    and   correspondence.     Ed.    by 

Montgomery  Martin.  5  vols.   1836. 
The  Wellesley  Papers.  2  vols.   1914. 

CONTEMPORARY  WRITINGS  AND  OTHER  PUBLICATIONS 

ALLAN,  Capt.  A.  Views  in  the  Mysore  country.  (20  large  aquatint  views.)  Oblong 

fol.   1794. 
Account  of  the  Campaign  in  Mysore,  1799.   Ed.  by  Nares  Chandra  Sinha. 

Calcutta,  [1913]- 

BEATSON,  ALEXANDER.  View  of  the  war  with  Tippoo  Sultan.  410.   1800. 
CAMPBELL,  Sir  ARCHIBALD.  Letters  from  the  late  Sir  A.  C.  to  the  Rajah  of  Travan- 

core,  5th,  lyth  and  3Oth  April,  and  i2th  August,  1788.   1792. 

Letter  to  Major  Bannerman,  I2th  August,  1788.    1792. 

DIROM,  Major.  Narrative  of  the  campaign  in  India  which  terminated  the  war  with 

Tippoo  Sultan  in  1792.    1794. 

ELERS,  GEORGE.  Memoirs.  Ed.  by  Ld.  Monson  and  G.  L.  Gower.   1903. 
Historical  and  political  view  of  the  Deccan.    1791. 
HOLLINGBERRY,  W.  History  of  Nizam  Alee  Khaun.  Calcutta.   1805. 
MACKENZIE,  Lt.  RODERICK.  Sketch  of  the  war  with  Tippoo  Sultan  (1789-1792). 

2  vols.  4to.  Calcutta,  1794. 
MICHAUD,  JOSEPH  FRANgois.   Histoire  des  progres  et  de  la  chute  de  Pempire  de 

Mysore,  sous  les  regnes  d'Hyder-Aly  et  Tippoo-Saib.   2  vols.    1801. 
MOLEVILLE,  BERTRAND  DE.  M&noires  (for  M.  Leger,  Tipu's  envoy  in  1791). 
MOOR,  EDWARD.    Narrative  of  the  operations  of  Captain  Little's  detachment. 

4to.   1794. 
[MuNRO,  INNES.]    Narrative  of  the  military  operations. .  .against  the  combined 

forces  of  the  French,  Dutch  and  Hyder  Ally  (1780-84).  4tp.    1789. 
Narrative  of  the  operations  of  the  British  army  in  India  April-July  1791.   4to. 

1792. 
Narrative  sketches  of  the  conquest  of  Mysore  effected  by  the  British  troops  and 

their  allies.   1800. 
RENNELL,  Major  JAMES.  Marches  of  the  British  armies. .  .during  the  campaigns  of 

1790  and  1791.   1792. 
SALMOND,  JAMES.  Review  of  the  origin,  progress  and  result  of  the  decisive  war  with 

Tippoo.   1800. 

TIPU  SULTAN.  Negotiations  with  the  French.   1799. 
WELSH,  Col.  JAMES.  Military  reminiscences.  2nded.  2  vols.   1830. 
WOOD,  MARK.  A  review  of  the  origin,  progress  and  result  of  the  late  decisive  war  in 

Mysore,  in  a  letter  from  an  officer  in  India.  London,  1800. 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 
For  general  works  see  the  list  at  p.  624  supra. 

BIDDULPH,  Col.  JOHN.  The  XIX  and  their  times.   1899. 

[HooK,  THEODORE.]  Life  of  Sir  David  Baird.  2  vols.   1832. 

LUSHINOTON,  S.  R.  Life  and  service  of  General  Lord  Harris  in  America,  the  West 

Indies,  and  India.    1840. 

TANTET,  V.  L'Ambassade  de  Tippou  Saheb  a  Paris  en  1788.   1899. 
TEIGNMOUTH,  Lord.    Memoirs  01  the  life  and  correspondence  of  John  Lord 

Teignmouth.  2  vols.   i%3- 

WEJON,  Capt.  W.  H.  Life  of  Sir  David  Baird.  1012. 

>Vftua,MAML.  Historical  sketches  of  the  south  01  India,  *vo\&.  i&io-vj, 

WILSON,  Col.  W.J.  History  of  the  Madras  army.  5  vols.  Madras. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  635 

CHAPTER  XXI 

THE  GARNATIC,  1785-1801 

A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

The  principal  source  of  information  is  the  series  of  Madras  Military  and  Secret 
Consultations  for  the  period,  but  especially  for  the  years  1795  and  1801,  at  the 
India  Office  and  the  Madras  Record  Office.  In  the  Home  Miscellaneous  Series  at 
the  India  Office  vols.  271-84  are  especially  concerned  with  Tanjore  and  285-328 
with  the  Nawab  of  Arcot. 

The  CorawaUis  MSS  at  the  Public  Record  Office  and  the  Wellesley  MSS  at  the 
British  Museum  should  also  be  consulted. 

The  Persian  records  of  the  Nawabs  of  Arcot  are  preserved  at  the  Madras  Record 
Office. 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

ATTCHISON.  Treaties.  See  p.  623  supra. 

Parliamentary  Papers.  1801-2,  vol.  v;  1802-3,  V°L  a>  1806,  vol.  n;  1806-7, 

vol.  vm, 

Ross.  Cornwallis  Correspondence.  See  p.  634  supra. 
Wellesley  Despatches.  See  p.  634  supra. 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 
For  general  works  see  the  list  at  p.  624  supra. 

PEARGE.  Life  of  Wellesley.  See  p.  633  supra. 
SAUNDERS,  BAILEY.  Life  and  letters  of  James  Macpherson.   1894. 
TEIGNMOUTH.  Life  of  Shore.  See  p.  634  supra. 
•MYiLKS.  Historical  sketches  of  Southern  India.  See  p.  634  supra. 
WRAXALL,  NATHANIEL.  Memoirs.  4  vols.   1836. 


OUDH,  1785-1801 
A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

The  principal  source  of  information  is  the  Political  and  Secret  Proceedings  of  the 
Bengal  Council  for  the  period  (at  the  India  Office  and  the  Imperial  Record  Office, 
Calcutta). 

In  the  Home  Miscellaneous  Series  at  the  India  Office  vols.  5  7  7-^3  are  specially 
concerned  with  Oudh.  Vols.  447-8  of  the  same  series  contains  Shore's  corre- 
spondence with  the  resident  at  Lucknow. 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

ABU  TALIB.  History  of  Asafu'Daulah,  Translated  by  W.  Hocy.  Allahabad,  1885. 

AJTCHJSON.  Treaties.  See  p.  623  supra. 

Parliamentary  Papers.   1806,  vols.  xv-xvn. 

Ross.  Cornwallis  Correspondence.  See  p.  634  supra. 

Wellesley  Despatches.  See  p.  634  supra. 


636  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 

For  general  works  see  the  list  at  p.  GzAsupra. 

See  also  the  list  under  this  head  for  "The  Final  Struggle  with  the  Marathas", 
p.  637  infra. 

CHAPTER  XXII 

THE  FINAL  STRUGGLE  WITH  THE  MARATHAS,  1784-1818 
A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

The  principal  materials  comprise  the  Proceedings  of  the  Bengal  and  Bombay 
Councils  for  the  period  at  the  India  Office,  the  Imperial  Record  Office,  Calcutta, 
and  the  Secretariat,  Bombay.  See  Foster,  Guide;  Kindersley,  Handbook  of  the  Bombay 
Government  records,  and  Handbook  to  the  records  of  the  Government  of  India. 

The  Home  Miscellaneous  Series  at  the  India  Office  contains,  among  other  items 
of  importance,  letters  from  Duncan  to  Wellesley  (vols.  470-8),  correspondence 
relating  to  the  Marathas  (vols.  616-27),  and  Nepal  (vols.  643-56). 

See  also  the  Cornwallis  MSS  at  the  Public  Record  Office  and  the  Wellesley  MSS 
at  the  British  Museum. 

For  the  Maratha  records  see  p.  627  supra. 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

AITCHISON.  Treaties.  See  p.  623  supra. 

FORREST,  Sir  G.  W.   Selections  from  the  minutes  ...  of  Mountstuart  Elphinstone. 

1884. 
-  Selections  from  the  letters,  despatches,  and  other  papers  ^*eserved  in  the 

Bombay  Secretariat.  Maratha  Series,  Bombay.   1885. 
GUPTE,  B.  A.  Historical  records  of  Baroda.  Calcutta. 
GURWOOD,  Lt.-Col.  J.  The  dispatches  of.  ..the  Duke  of  Wellington.    13  vols. 


HASTINGS,  Marquess  of.  Private  diary.  2  vols.   1858. 

JENKINS,  RICHARD.  Report  on  the  territories  of  Nagpore.  Calcutta,  1827. 

KHARE,  V.  V.  Aitihasik  Lekha  Sangraha.    12  vols.   Poona.    (Marathi.) 

Papers  relating  to  the  Nepaul  War  (printed  by  the  East  India  Company).   [See 

also  Parliamentary  Papers,  1817,  vol.  XL] 
PARASNIS,  D.  B.  Itihas  Sangraha.  7  vols.    Bombay.   (Marathi.) 
PARASNIS,  D.  B.  and  MAWJEE,  P.  V.  Treaties,  agreements  and  sanads.  Bombay. 

(Marathi.) 
Parliamentary  Papers.    1803-4,  vo^  x11;  1805,  vol.  x;   1806,  vol.  xvi;   1818, 

vol.  xi  ;  1819,  vol.  xvm. 

Ross,  C.  Correspondence  of.  .  .Marquis  Cornwallis.  3  vols.   1859. 
SETON-KARR,  W.  S.    Selections  from  the  Calcutta  Gazettes  1784-1823.    5  vols. 

1864-9. 

WELLESLEY,  Marquess.  Despatches.  Ed.  by  Montgomery  Martin.  5  vols.   1836. 
-  The  Wellesley  Papers.  2  vols.   1914. 


PUBLICATIONS 

Asiatic  Annual  Register.    1  800-  1  1  . 
Asiatic  Journal.   28  vols.    1816-29. 
Selections  from  the  Asiatic  Journal.  2  vols.  Madras,  1875 
BLACKER,  V.  Memoir  of  the  operations  of  the  British  army  in  India  during  the 
Mahratta  War  of  1817,  1818,  and  1819.  2  vols.  410. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  637 

Brief  remarks  on  the  Mahratta  War  and  on  the  rise  and  progress  of  the  French 

establishments  in  Hindoostan  under  Generals  du  Boigne  and  Perron.   1804. 
BROUOHTON,  THOMAS  DUER.  Letters  written  in  a  Mahratta  camp  during  the  year 

1809.   1892. 

BUSAWUN  LAL.  Memoirs  of  Ameer  Khan.  Tr.  H.  T.  Prinsep.  Calcutta,  1832. 
CAMPBELL,  L.  D.   Letter. .  .on  the  articles  of  charge  against  Marquis  Weuesley 

which  have  been  laid  before  the  House  of  Commons.  8vo.  1808. 
DIROM,  Major.   Campaign  in  India  in  1792.    1793. 
>(DuFF,  J.  GRANT.  History  of  the  Mahrattas.   1826. 
TSast  India  Military  Calendar.  Vol.  in.   1826. 
FORBES,  J.  Oriental  memoirs.  2nd  ed.   1834. 
FRANCKUN,  W.  History  of  the  reign  of  Shah  Aulum.  4to.   1798. 

Military  Memoirs  of  Mr  George  Thomas.    1805. 

HEBER,  REGINALD.  Narrative  of  a  journey  through  the  upper  provinces  of  India. 

2nd  ed.  3  vols.   1828. 

^MALCOLM,  Sir  JOHN.  The  political  history  of  India  from  1784  to  1823.   1826. 
^ —  Memoir  of  Central  India.  2  vols.   3rd  ed.    1832. 
Notes  relative  to  the  late  transactions  in  the  Mahratta  empire.  Calcutta,  1803. 
Origin  of  the  Pindarries  preceded  by  historical  notices  on  the  rise  of  the  different 

Mahratta  states  by  an  officer  in  the  service  of  the  Hon.  East  India  Company. 

Calcutta,  1819. 
PRINSEP,  HENRY  T.   History  of  the  political  and  military  transactions  in  India 

during  the  administration  of  the  Marquess  of  Hastings,  1813-1823.    2  vols. 

1825. 

Memoirs  of. . .  Ameer  Khan.  See  Busawun  Lai. 

SCOTT-WARING,  T.  History  of  the  Mahrattas.   1810. 

SMITH,  L.  F.    Sketch  of  the  rise,  progress  and  termination  of  the  regular  corps 

formed. .  .by  Europeans  in  the  service  of  native  princes  of  India.  Calcutta, 

1805. 

THORN,  Major  WILLIAM.  Memoir  of  the  War  in  India.    1818. 
VALENTIA,  Viscount.  Voyages  and  travels  to  India.  3  vols.    1 809. 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 
For  general  works  see  the  list  at  p.  624  supra. 

BLAKISTON,  Lieut.  JOHN.  Twelve  years'  military  service  in  three  quarters  of  the 
Globe.  2  vols.   1829. 

Bombay  Presidency  Gazetteers.  Bombay,  1877-94. 

COLEBROOKE,  Sir  H.  T.  Life  of  Elphinstone.  2  vols.   1884. 

COMPTON,  HERBERT.   European  military  adventurers  of  Hindustan,  1784-1803. 
1892. 

FORTESCUE,  Sir  JOHN  W.  History  of  the  British  Army.  Vol.  XL   1923. 

FRASER,  JAMES.  Military  memoir  of  Colonel  James  Skinner.   1 85 1 . 

GLEIO,  G.  R.  Life  of  Sir  Thomas  Munro.  3  vols.   1830. 

HOPE,J.  The  house  of  Scindea.   1863. 
BUTTON,  W.  H.  The  Marquess  Wellesley.   1897. 

KAYE,  Sir  JOHN.  Lives  of  Indian  officers.  2  vok   1889. 

KAYE,J.  W.  Life  of  Sir  John  Malcolm.  2  vols.   1856. 

Life  and  correspondence  of  CharJes  Lord  Metcalfe.  2  vols.  Rev.  ed.    1858. 

Selections  from  the  papers  of  Lord  Metcalfe.  1855. 

KEENE,  H.  G.  Hindustan  under  free  lances.   1770-1820.   1907. 

KELKAR,  N.  C.  Maratha  ani  Ingraj.   (Marathi.) 

KHARE,  V.  V.  Nana  Phadnavis.   (Marathi.) 

LUARD,  Lt.-Col.  C.  E.   Central  India  State  Gazetteer.   Calcutta  and  Lucknow, 

1907-8. 

Mahratta  and  Pindari  War.  Compiled  for  the  General  Staff,  India.  Simla,  1910. 
NATU.  Mahadaji  Sindhia.   (Marathi.) 
PARASNB,  D.  B.  Satara. 


638  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

PARABNIS,  D.  B.  Sangli  State. 

PEARCE,    ROBERT   ROUILLERE.     Memoirs   and   correspondence   of. .  .Richard 

Marquess  Wellesley.  3  vols.   1846. 
PEARSE,  Col.  HUGH.  The  Hearseys,  1768-1893.  8vo.   1905. 

Life  and  military  services  of  Viscount  Lake.   1907. 

PESTER,  JOHN.]  War  and  sport  in  India,  1802-6.  n.d. 

[PRICE,  Major.f  Memoirs  of  the  early  life  and  service  of  a  field  officer  on  the  retired 

list  of  the  Indian  army.   1839. 
T^IGNMOUTH,  Lord.    Memoirs  of  the  life  and  correspondence  of  John  Lord 

Teignmouth.  2  vols.   1843. 
[WALLACE,  R.  G.]  Fifteen  years  in  India  or  sketches  of  a  soldier's  life. .  .from  the 

journal  of  an  officer  in  H.M.S.   1822. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

MARATHA  ADMINISTRATION 
A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 
For  the  Maratha  records  see  p.  627  supra. 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

ELPHINSTONE,  M.   Report  on  the  territories  lately  conquered  from  the  Paishwa. 

Calcutta,  1822. 

JENKINS,  R.  Report  on  the  territories  of  the  Raja  of  Nagpur.  Calcutta,  1827. 
MAWJEE,  P.  V.  and  PARASNIS,  D.  B.  Sanadpatra  Nivadapatra. 
Revenue  and  Judicial  Papers.   Published  by  the  East  India  Company.   Vols.  m 

and  iv.   1826. 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 

ATRE.  Ganv  Gada.  (Marathi.J 

Iniquities  of  the  Inam  Commission  in  the  Presidency  of  Bombay  compiled  from  the 

published  selections  from  Government  Records  and  other  sources  exposed  for 

the  information  of  Enamdars.   1859. 
RANADE,  M.  G.  Introduction  to  the  Peshwas*  Diaries.    „ 
SEN,  S.  N.  Administrative  System  of  the  Marathas.  2nd  ed.  Calcutta,  1925. 
SYKES,  Lt.-Col.  Statistics  of  the  four  Collectorates  of  Dukhan  under  the  British 

Government.   1838. 

"On  the  Land  Tenures  of  the  Dekkan."  (J.R.A.S.  1835,  pp.  205-33.) 

"Land  Tenures  of  Dukhun."  {J.R.A.S.  1836,  pp.  350-76.) 

TONE,  W.  H.  Illustrations  of  some  institutions  of  the  Mahratta  people.  Calcutta, 

1818. 

CHAPTER  XXIV 

THE  CONQUEST  OF  CEYLON,  1795-1815 

A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

At  the  India  Office  is  a  group  of  57  volumes  covering  the  period  of  the  Company*! 
administration  (see  Foster,  Guide,  pp.  92-3). 

The  Public  Record  Office  has  an  extensive  series  of  records  C.O.  54-9,  be- 
ginning with  1794. 

At  the  Record  Office,  Colombo,  exists  a  great  quantity  of  administrative  papers. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  639 

At  the  Record  Office,  Madras,  are  volumes  relating  to  the  embassies  of  Pybus 
and  Andrews  (see  Dodwell,  Report,  pp.  22  and  34). 
The  Wellesley  MSS  (especially  Add.  MSS,  13864-7)  at  the  British  Museum. 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

BOYD,  HUGH.  Miscellaneous  Works.  Vol.  n.   1800. 
Gleghorn  Papers.  Ed.  by  the  Rev.  W.  Neil.   1927. 
PYBUS,  JOHN.  Mission  to  the  King  of  Kandy  in  1762.    1862. 
The  Uva  Rebellion  1817-18.  (Reprinted  from  the  Ceylon  Government  Gazette.) 
Colombo,  1889. 

CONTEMPORARY  PUBLICATIONS 

CORDINER,  JAMES.  A  description  of  Ceylon,  containing  an  account  of  the  country, 
inhabitants,  and  natural  productions;  with  narratives  of  a  tour  round  the 
island  in  1800,  the  campaign  in  Candy  in  1803,  and  a  journey  to  Ramisseram 
in  1804.  2  vols.  1807. 

DAVY,  JOHN.  An  account  of  the  interior  of  Ceylon,  and  of  its  inhabitants;  with 
travels  in  that  island.  1 82 1 . 

D'OYLY,  Sir  JOHN.  "A  sketch  of  the  constitution  of  the  Kandyan  kingdom." 
(Trans.  Royal  Asiatic  Soc.  vol.  m,  1832.) 

Narrative  of  events  that  have  recently  occurred  in  the  island  of  Ceylon.    1815. 

PERCTVAL,  Captain  ROBERT.  An  account  of  the  island  of  Ceylon,  containing  its 
history,  geography,  natural  history,  with  the  manners  and  customs  of  its 
various  inhabitants;  to  which  is  added,  the  Journal  of  an  embassy  to  the 
Court  of  Candy.  London,  1805. 

PHILALETHES.  A  history  of  Ceylon. .  .to  the  year  1815.  4to.   1817. 

TURNOUR,  GEORGE.  An  epitome  of  the  history  of  Ceylon.   1836. 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 

BENNETT,  JOHN  WHTTCHURCH.  Ceylon,  and  its  capabilities.   1843. 

CAMPBELL,  Lieut. -Col.  JAMES.  Excursions,  adventures,  and  field-sports  in  Ceylon; 

its  commercial  and  military  importance,  and  numerous  advantages  to  the 

British  emigrant.   2  vols.   1043. 
Ceylon :  a  general  description  of  the  island :  historical,  physical,  statistical,  by  an 

officer,  late  of  the  Ceylon  Rifles.  2  vols. 
KNIGHTON,  W.  History  erf  Ceylon.   1845. 
MARSHALL,  HENRY.   CeyTon:  a  general  sketch.    1846. 
PRTOHAM,  CHARLES.  An  historical,  political  and  statistical  account  of  Ceylon  and 

its  dependencies.   2  vols.    1849. 
TENNENT,  Sir  JAMES  EMERSON.  Ceylon.  3rd  ed.  2  vols.   1859. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

THE  REVENUE  ADMINISTRATION  OF  BENGAL, 

1765-86 

A,  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

The  principal  series  are:  Proceedings  of  the  Committee  of  Circuit;  Proceeding 
of  the  Committee  of  Revenue,  1772-1774;  Proceedings  of  the  Committee  of 
Revenue,    1774-1781    (Governor-General's    Proceedings);   Public  Proceedings, 
1772-1779  (Home  Department);  Proceedings  of  the  Committee  of  Revenue,  1781- 
1786;  Report  of  Messrs  Anderson,  Croftcs  and  Bogle,  dated  March  1781  (Govern- 


640  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

mcnt  of  Bengal  Records,  Revenue  Department),  and  Reports  of  Mr  John  David 
Patterson  on  the  Office  of  Kanungo  dated  23  April  1781,  and  18  May  1787, 
respectively  (Government  of  Beneal  Records,  Revenue  Department).  The  text 
used  is  that  of  the  Imperial,  ana  the  Government  of  Bengal,  records.  See  the 
Hand-book  to  the  records  of  the  Government  of  India,  and  the  Catalogue  of  the  English 
records  of  the  Government  of  Bengal.  For  the  series  at  the  India  Office  see  Foster, 
Guide,  pp.  50-3. 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

Bengal  Dt.  Records.  Chittagong.  Vol.  i.   1760-1773.   1923. 

Midnapur.  3  vols.   1911-25. 

Rangpur.  Vol.  r.  1770-1779.  Vol.  n.  1779-1782  Received.  Vol.  m.  1783- 

1785  Received.  Vol.  rv.  1779-1785  Sent. 

Syfhet.  4  vols. 

Bengal  Government  Records.  Press  List,  Series  i.  Vol.  n.  Committee  of  Circuit, 
1772-1773.  Vol.  iv.  Revenue  Proceedings,  1775.  Vol.  v.  Revenue  Pro- 
ceedings, 1776.  Supplement,  1771-1775. 

Press  List,  Series  n.  Vol.  I.  Intermediate  Rev.  Authorities,  1765-1773. 

Vol.  n.  Intermediate  Rev.  Authorities,  1769-1774. 

Press  List,  Series  in.  Vol.  I.  Controlling  Correspondence  of  Commerce, 

1771-1773.  Vol.  n.  Board  of  Trade,  1774-1776. 

1.  Resident's  Letter  Bks,  1769-70.  n.  Controlling  Council,  1770.  m-vm. 

Controlling  Council,  1771.  viiA.  Controlling  Council,  1771.  ix.  Controlling 
Council,  1772.  x,  xi,  xn.  Controlling  Council,  1772-1774. 

Copy-Book  of  the  Supervisor  of  Rajshahi  at  Nator.  Letters  issued  30  Dec. 

1769-15  Sept.  1772.  1925. 

COLEBROOKE,  Sir  J.  E.  Digest  of  the  laws  and  regulations.    1807. 

FRANCIS,  P.  Original  minutes  of  the  Governor-General  and  Council  of  Fort 
William  on  the  settlement  and  collection  of  the  revenues  of  Bengal.  1782. 

HALHED,  NATHANIEL  BRASSEY.  A  code  of  Gentoo  laws.   1781. 

HARRINGTON.  Analysis  of  the  Bengal  Regulations.  3  vols.   1805. 

LONG,  J.  Selections  from  the  unpublished  records  of  Government,  1748-67, 
Calcutta,  1869. 

Proceedings  of  the  Governor  and  Council  of  Fort  William  respecting  the  administra- 
tion of  justice  amongst  the  natives  in  Bengal.  4to.  1774. 

SMYTH,  D.  C.  Original  Bengalese  Zumindaree  Accounts.  Calcutta,  1823. 

CONTEMPORARY  PUBLICATIONS 

AMIR  HAIDAR  BILGRAMI.  Dissertation  concerning  the  revenues.  Persian  text,  and 

trans,  by  F.  Gladwin.   1796. 

BOLTS,  WILLIAM.  Considerations  on  Indian  affairs.  3  vols.   1772-5. 
Plan  for  the  Government  of  the  Provinces  of  Bengal,  addressed  to  the  Directors 

of  the  E.I.C.  1772. 

SCRAFTON,  L.  Observations  on  Mr.  Vansittart's  Narrative,  n.d. 
VANSITTART,  H.  Narrative  of  the  transactions  in  Bengal.  3  vols.  London,  1766. 
VERELST,  H.  View  of  the  rise ...  of  the  English  Government  in  Bengal.   1 772. 

B,  SECONDARY  WORKS 
For  general  works  see  the  list  at  p.  624  supra. 

ASCOLI,  F.  D.  Early  revenue  history  of  Bengal  and  the  fifth  report.   1917. 
BADEN-POWELL,  B.  H.  Land-systems  of  British  India.  3  vols.   1892. 
COTTON,  HENRY.  Memorandum  on  the  revenue  history  of  Chittagong.   1880. 
FIRMINGER,  Rev.  W.  K.   Introduction  to  his  edition  of  the  fifth  report  from  the 

Select  Committee  of  the  House  of  Commons.  3  vols.  Calcutta,  1917. 
GLEIG,  G,  R.  Memoirs  of  Warren  Hastings.  3  vols.   1841. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  641 

RAMSBOTHAM,  R.  B.  Studies  in  the  Land  Revenue  History  of  Bengal  1769-1787. 

1926. 

RAY,  S.  G.  Land  revenue  administration  in  India. 

THOMPSON,  W.  H.  Final  settlement  of  Tippera  and  Noakhali.  Calcutta,  1922. 
WILSON,  H.  H.  Glossary  of  judicial  and  revenue  terms.    1855. 
Zemindary  Settlement  of  Bengal.  2  vols.  Calcutta,  1879. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE  BENGAL  ADMINISTRATIVE  SYSTEM,  1786-1818 
A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

India  Office  Records.  Despatches  to  Bengal,  vols.  15-94.  (Index:  vols.  3~io.) 
Letters  received  from  Bengal,  vols.  25-91.  Home  Miscellaneous  Series, 
especially  volumes  359,  372,  380-4.  Bengal,  Revenue  Consultations,  passim. 


Bengal,  Judicial  Consultations,  passim. 
lic  Rec 


Public  Record  Office.  Cornwallis  Correspondence,  bundles  8-59.  Chatham 
Papers,  bundles  125,  362. 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

Bengal,  Fort  St  George  and  Bombay  Regulations  1813  to  1824. 

Bengal  Dt.  Records.    Dinajpur.    Vol   i,  1787-1789.    1914.    Vol.  u,  1786-1788. 

1924. 
COLEBROOKE,  Sir  J.  E.  Digest  of  the  Regulations.  .  .of.  .  .Bengal.  3  vols.  Calcutta, 

1807. 
Fifth  Report...  1812.    Parl.  Papers  1812.    vn,  i.    (Ed.  by  W.  K.  Firminger. 

3  vols.  Calcutta,  1917.) 

HARRINGTON,  J.  H.  Analysis  of  the  Bengal  Regulations.  3  vols.   1805. 
Minutes  of  evidence  taken  before  the  Select  Committee  on  the  Affairs  of  the  East 

India  Company.   Vol.  ra,  Revenue.    Parl.  Papers  1831-2.  xi,  i.   Vol.  rv, 

Judicial.  Parl.  Papers  1831-2.  xn,  i. 
Papers  relating  to  the  administration  of  justice  hi  Bengal.    Parl.  Papers  1819. 

xm,  479. 

Regulations  for  Bengal,  Behar  and  Orissa,  1793-1794.   1795. 
Ross,  C.  Correspondence  of.  .  .Marquess  Cornwallis.  3  vols.   London,  1859. 
Second  Report  from  the  Select  Committee  on  the  Affairs  of  the  East  India  Com- 

pany.  1810.  Parl.  Papers  1810.  v,  13. 
Selection  of  Papers  from  the  records  at  the  East  India  House.   4  vols.   London, 

1820-6. 
Wellesley  Despatches.  5  vols.   1836. 

CONTEMPORARY  PUBLICATIONS 

[GALLOWAY,  Sir  ARCHIBALD.]  Observations  on  the  law  and  constitution  of  India, 
on  the  nature  of  landed  tenures,  and  on  the  system  of  revenue  and  finance,  as 
established  by  the  Moohummadan  law  ana  Moghul  government,  with  an 
enquiry  into  the  revenue  and  judicial  administration  and  regulations  of  police 
at  present  existing  in  Bengal.  1825. 

[GREVILLE,  J.]  British  India  analyzed.  3  vols.   1795. 

History  of  the  Adawlat  System  in  Bengal.   1820. 

RousB-BouGHTON,  C.  W.  Dissertation  concerning  the  landed  property  of  Bengal. 


cmv  41 


642  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 

Ascou,  F.  D.  Early  revenue  history  of  Bengal  and  the  fifth  report.   1917. 

ASPINALL,  A.    The  administrative  and  judicial  reforms  of  Lord  Cornwallis  in 
Bengal.  (An  unpublished  thesis.) 

BADEN-POWELL,  B.  H.  Land  systems  of  British  India.  3  vols.   1892. 

BRADLEY-BIRT,  F.  B.  Sylhet  Thackeray.   IQII. 

HUNTER,  Sir  WILLIAM  WILSON.    Bengal  MS  Records. .  .letters  in  the  Board  of 
Revenue,  Calcutta,  1782-1807.  4  vols.   1894. 

Annals  of  rural  Bengal.   1897. 

X&AYE,  Sir  J.  W.  Administration  of  the  East  India  Company.   1853. 

MiNTO,  Lady.  Lord  Minto  in  India.   1880. 

MORRIS,  HENRY.  Life  of  Charles  Grant.   1904. 

PRINSEP,  H.  T.  Political  and  military  transactions  in  India  during  the  administra- 
tion of  the  Marquess  of  Hastings.  2  vols.    1825. 

RAY,  S.  C.  Land  revenue  administration  in  India. 

TEIONMOUTH,  Lord.  Memoirs  of  Lord  Teignmouth.  2  vols.   1843. 

Memoirs  of  the  life,  writings  and  correspondence  of  Sir  William  Jones.  2  vols. 

1835- 

TWINING,  THOMAS.  Travels  in  India  a  hundred  years  ago.   1893. 
WALPOLE,  Sir  S.  History  of  England.  Vol.  vi.   1898. 
WILSON,  H.  H.  Glossary  of  judicial  and  revenue  terms.   1855. 
Zemindary  Settlement  of  Bengal.  2  vols.  Calcutta,  1879. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

THE  MADRAS  DISTRICT  SYSTEM  AND  LAND 
REVENUE  TO  1818 

A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

The  main  sources  of  information  are  the  Revenue  Consultations  of  the  Madras 
Council  from  1774;  the  records  of  the  Board  of  Assigned  Revenue  1781-85;  and 
the  records  of  the  Board  of  Revenue  from  1786.  See  Foster,  Guide  *  pj>.  76-^7,  and 
the  Madras  Catalogue  of  records  in  the  Revenue  department.  Copies  of  the  judicial  and 
revenue  minutes  of  Sir  Thomas  Munro  are  at  the  British  Museum  (Add.  MSS, 
22077-9).  For  the  records  of  the  Nawab  of  the  Carnatic  see  p.  635  supra. 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

ARBUTHNOT,  Sir  A.  J.  Sir  Thomas  Munro:  selections  from  his  minutes.  2nd  ed. 

Madras,  1886. 

Baramahal  Records.  7  vols.  Fo.  Madras,  1907-20. 
Fifth  Report...  1812.    Parl.  Papers,  1812,  vol.  vn.    (Ed.  by  W.  K.  Firminger. 

3  vols.  Calcutta,  1917.) 
General  Reports  of  the  Madras  Board  of  Revenue.  (Printed  for  official  use  but  not 

published.) 

HUDDLESTONE.  Papers  on  mirassi  tenures. 
IRWIN,  EYLES.  A  collection  of  letters  chiefly  between  the  Madras  Government  and 

Eyles  Irwin,  1781-85.  Madras,  1888. 

Minutes  of  evidence  taken  before  the  Select  Committee  on  the  affairs  of  the  East 
2JIndia  Company.    Parl.  Papers,  1831-2,  xi-xn  (especially  the  evidence  of 

A.  D.  Campbell  and  Hodgson). 
Mysorean  Revenue  Regulations.   1792. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  643 

Papers  relating  to  the  village  panchayat  and  other  judicial  systems  of  administra- 
tion. Fo.  Madras,  1916. 

Poligar  Peshkash.  Parl.  Papers,  1808,  xra. 

RAMASAWMY  NAIDOO,  B.  Memoir  on  the  internal  revenue  system  of  the  Madras 
Presidency.  (Selection  from  the  records  of  the  South  Arcot  district.)  Gud- 
dalore,  1870. 

Regulations  of  the  Presidency  of  Fort  St  George. 

Reports  of  the  Committee  of  Circuit  (printed  for  official  use  but  not  published). 

Second  Report  from  the  Select  Committee  on  the  affairs  of  the  East  India  Com* 
pany.  1810.  Parl.  Papers,  1810,  v. 

Selection  of  papers  from  the  records  at  the  India  House.  4  vols.   1820-6. 

CONTEMPORARY  PUBLICATIONS 

BUCHANAN,  F.  Journey  through  Mysore  and  southern  India.  3  vols.   1807. 
<0u  Bore,  Abbe\  Hindu  manners  and  customs.    1816.   (Reprinted  1897,  etc.) 
FULLARTON,  Col.  View  of  the  British  interests  in  southern  India.   1787. 
HEYNE,  BENJAMIN.  Tracts,  historical  and  statistical,  on  India;  with  journals  of 

several  tours  through  various  parts  of  the  peninsula.    1814. 
SULIVAN,  JOHN.    Observations  respecting  the  Circar  of  Masulipatam.    Sm.  4*0. 

1780. 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 
For  general  works  see  the  list  at  p.  624  supra. 

BADEN-POWELL,  B.  H.  Land  systems  of  British  India.  3  vols.   1892. 

dBRADSHAW,  JOHN.  Sir  Thomas  Munro.  Oxford,  1906. 

BRIGOS,  Gen.  JOHN.  Land-tax  in  India.   1830. 

District  Gazetteers  of  the  Madras  Presidency.  25  vols.  Madras. 

GLEIO,  G.  R.  Life  and  correspondence  of  Sir  Thomas  Munro.  3  vols.    1830. 

PEARSON,  HUGH.   Memoirs  of  the  life  and  correspondence  of  Christian  Frederick 

Swartz.  2  vols.   1834. 

RAY,  S.  C.  Land  revenue  administration  in  India. 
'SRINTVASA  RAGHAVA  AIYANGAR.     Forty  years'  progress  of  the  Presidency  of 

Madras.  Madras,  1892. 
SUNDARARAJA  AIYANGAR,  S.   Land  tenures  in  the  Madras  Presidency.   Madras, 

1916. 

"WILKS,  MARK.  Historical  sketches  of  the  south  of  India.  3  vols.  1810-17. 
WILSON,  H.  H.  Glossary  of  judicial  and  revenue  terms.   1855. 


CHAPTER  XXVHI 

AFGHANISTAN,  RUSSIA  AND  PERSIA 

A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

The  chief  authorities  are  the  Political  Proceedings  of  the  Government  of  India, 
at  the  India  Office  and  the  Imperial  Record  Office,  and  the  Foreign  Office  series 
Russia  and  Persia,  at  the  Public  Record  Office.  Of  these  the  Government  of  India 
papers  are  not,  while  the  Foreign  Office  papers  are,  generally,  accessible  to  the 
student.  Besides  these  there  are  three  private  collections  of  great  importance: 

(i)  The  Ellenborough  Papers  at  the  Record  Office.  This  vast  mass  of  docu- 
ments has  now  been  arranged  as  follows:  Files  1-36  miscellaneous  loose  letters  and 
papers;  files  37-69,  letters  to  Lord  Ellenborough  from  April,  1841,  to  July,  1844, 
from  various  men  of  note  such  as  the  Prince  Consort,  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  Sir 

41-2 


644  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Robert  Peel,  and  the  various  higher  officials  in  India,  e.g.  Sir  G.  Napier,  Major- 
General  Pollock,  Major-General  Nott,  the  Commander-in-Chief,  and  Major 
Sleeman;  files  70-73,  miscellaneous  papers,  civil,  European,  military,  political; 
files  74-106,  letters  from  Lord  Ellenboroueh  to  various  important  Indian  officials 
and  to  the  Secret  Committee  and  Court  oF  Directors;  files  107-1 10,  miscellaneous 
letters,  civil,  European,  military  and  political.  Some  of  these  letters  have  been 
printed,  others  have  not. 

(2)  The  Broughton  Papers  at  the  British  Museum.  This  collection  of  the  corre- 
spondence and  papers  of  John  Cam  Hpbhouse,  first  Baron  Broughton,  fills  29 
volumes,  and  was  bequeathed  to  the  British  Museum  at  his  death  hi  1869  with  the 
condition  that  it  was  to  be  sealed  up  till  the  year  1900.    It  forms  Add.  MSS 
36455-83.  The  important  volumes  are  36467-72,  his  general  correspondence 
relating  to  the  time  when  he  was  at  the  Board  of  Control;  36473-4,  April,  1835- 
May,  1841,  correspondence  with  Lord  Heytesbury  and  then  mainly  with  Lord 
Auckland.  There  are  enclosures  relating  to  Central  Asia,  Afghanistan. 

(3)  The  Auckland  Papers  at  the  British  Museum.  This  collection  of  thirty 
volumes  of  letters,  books,  and  minute  books  forms  Add.  MSS  37689-718.  Of  these 
numbers  37689-707  consist  of  confidential  letters  to  various  eminent  men;  they 
run  from  13  March,  1836  to  16  February,  1842.  At  folio  174  in  37707  is  a  letter  (a 
little  out  of  its  right  date)  from  Lord  Auckland  to  Lord  Ellenborough  giving  an 
account  of  recent  events  in  Afghanistan.  37708  contains  copies  of  a  few  letters  from 
Lord  Auckland  to  Sir  Charles  Metcalfe  and  others  running  from  24  September, 
1836,  to  3  April,  1837.   37709-13.   Five  volumes  of  minutes  and  memoranda  by 
Lord  Auckland,  from  n  April,  1836,  to  30  December,  1840. 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

Afghan  War.  Parl.  Papers,  1839,  XL,  29,  139,  159,  207,  217,  241,  269,  317; 

L,  89;  1840,  xxxvii,  137;  1842,  XLV,  125;  1843,  xxxvii,  i,  3,  13,  17;  1859 

(Session  2),  xxv,  7  (Burnes's  correspondence). 

COLCHESTER,  Lord.  Indian  administration  of  Lord  Ellenborough.   1874. 
LAW,  Sir  ALGERNON.  India  under  Lord  Ellenborough.   1926. 

CONTEMPORARY  PUBLICATIONS 

ABBOT,  Capt.  J.  Journey  from  Heraut  to  Khiva,  Moscow  and  St.  Petersburg. 

2  vols.   1843.  3rd  ea.   1884. 
ATKINSON,  JAMES.  Expedition  into  Afghanistan  1839-40.   1842. 

Sketches  in  Afghanistan.  Fol.   1842. 

BARR,  Lieut.  WILLIAM.  Journal  of  a  march  from  Delhi  to ...  Cabul  with  the  mission 

of  Sir  C.  M.  Wade.   1844. 

Bengal  Civilian.  Lord  Auckland  and  Lord  Ellenborough.   1845. 
Bengal  Officer.  Recollections  of  the  first  campaign  west  of  the  Indus.   1845. 
BRYDGES,  Sir  HARFORD  JONES.  Account  of  H.M.'s  mission  to  the  Court  of  Persia  in 

the  years  1807-11.   1834. 
BUIST,  GEORGE.    Outline  of  the  operations  of  the  British  troops  in  Scinde  and 

Afghanistan  1838-41.  Bombay,  1843. 
BURNES,  ALEXANDER.  Travels  into  Bokhara,  etc.  3  vols.   1834. 

Cabool:  being  a  personal  narrative.   1842. 

CONOLLY,  ARTHUR.  Journey  to  the  north  of  India  overland  from  England.  2  vols. 

1834. 

GUMMING,  Lieutenant  JAMES  SLATOR.  (HLM.'s  9th.)  Six  years'  diary.  1847. 
awn  on  stone  by  W.  L.  Walton.  Fol.   1846. 


Defence  of  Jellalabad. .  .Drawn  < 

DSNNIE,  WILLIAM  H.    Personal  narrative  of  the  campaigns  in 

Dublin,  1843. 

ELPHINSTONE,  MOUNTSTUART.  Account  of  the  kingdom  of  Caboul.  410.  1815. 
fitude  diplomatique  sur  la  guerre  de  Crimee.   1878. 
EVANS,  Lt-Col.  DE  LACY.  The  designs  of  Russia.   1828. 
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the  Revue  des  deux  Mondcs  (1840-3),  the  Asiatic  Journal,  the  Calcutta  Review,  and  the 
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BELLEW,  H.  W.  Afghanistan  and  the  Afghans.   1879. 

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LAYARD,  Sir  HENRY.  Autobiography  and  letters.  2  vols.   1903. 

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CHAPTER  XXIX 

THE  CONQUEST  OF  SIND 

A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS. 

MANUSCRIPT 

The  principal  source  of  information  consists  of  the  Political  Proceedings  of  the 
Government  of  Bengal  to  1834,  and  thereafter  of  the  Government  of  India.  These 
are  not  fully  accessible  to  the  student;  but  this  disadvantage  is  partially  made  good 
by  the  Ellenborough  MSS  at  the  Public  Record  Office  (see  note  at  p.  643  supra). 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

COLCHESTER,  Lord.  Indian  administration  of  Lord  Ellenborough.   1874. 
JACOB,  Gen.  JOHN.  Record-book  of  the  Scinde  Irregular  Horse.   1853-56. 
Jagirs  in  Sind.  Bombay  Records,  new  series,  no.  66.   1862. 
LAW,  Sir  ALGERNON.  India  under  Lord  Ellenborough.   1926. 
Memoirs  on  Shikarpur,  etc.  Bombay  Records,  new  series,  no.  17.   1855. 
Parl.  Papers,  1839,  XL,  139;  1840,  xxxvn,  129;  1843,  xxxrx,  1,9,45;  i844,xxxvi, 
51 1 ;  1846,  xxxi,  375;  1847,  x"i  395»  4s*1 ;  l852,  xxxvi,  255. 

CONTEMPORARY  PUBLICATIONS 

Affairs  of  Scinde.    1844. 

BRYDOES,  Sir  HARFORD  JONES.  The  Ameers  of  Scinde.  1843. 

BUIST,  GEORGE.  Correction  of  a  few  of  the  errors  contained  in  Sir  W.  Napier's  Life 

of. .  .Sir  Charles  Napier.   185^. 
BURNES,  JAMES.   Narrative  of  a  visit  to  the  Court  of  Sinde  at  Hyderabad  on  the 

Indus,  illustrated  with  plates  and  a  rnap  (pp.  xviii,  168).    qrd  ed.  with  A 

sketch  of  the  history  of  Cutch  (pp.  xviii  and  74).   Edinburgh  and  London, 

1839. 

BURTON,  R.  Sindh  the  Unhappy  Valley.  2  vols.   1851. 
[EASTWICK,  Capt.  EDWARD.]  Dry  leaves  from  young  Egypt.   1851. 
EDWARDS,  Lt.  WILLIAM.  Sketches  in  Scinde.  Fol.   1846. 
NAPIER,  RICHARD.  Remarks  on  Lt.-Col.  Outram's  work  entitled  "Our  conquest 

of  Sinde,  a  commentary  ".   1 847. 
NAPIER,  Sir  WILLIAM.  The  conquest  of  Scinde.   1845. 

Sir  Charles  Napier's  administration  of  Scinde.   1851. 

Life  of  Sir  Charles  Napier.  4  vols.   1857. 

OUTRAM,  Sir  JAMES.  Conquest  of  Scinde,  a  commentary.  Edinburgh,  1846. 

Memoir  of  the  public  sendees  rendered  by  Lt.-Col.  Outram,  C.B.   1053. 

POSTANS,  T.  Personal  observations  on  Sindh.    1843. 

POTTINGER;  Sir  HENRY.  Travels  in  Beloochistan  and  Scinde.  4to.   1816. 

Scinde  policy:  a  few  comments  on  Major-Gen.  W.  F.  P.  Napier's  defence  of  Lord 

EUenborough's  Government,  smded.   1845. 
SULLIVAN,  J.  and  EASTWICK,  Captain  W.  Speeches  at  the  special  court  held  at  the 

East  India  House  on  the  case  of  the  Amirs  of  Sinde.   1844. 
WILTON,  J.  H.  Scenes  in  a  soldier's  life. .  .in  Scinde  etc.  1839-43.  ^vo-  Montreal, 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 
For  general  works  see  the  list  at  p.  624  supra. 

BUTLER,  Sir  W.  F.  Sir  C.  J.  Napier.   1894. 

GOLDSMID,  Sir  F.  J.  James  Outram.  2  vols.   1881. 

HOLMES,  T.  RICE.  Sir  Charles  Napier.   1925. 

HUGHES,  A.  W.  A  Gazetteer  of  the  Province  of  Sind.  2nd  ed.   1876. 

MACDOUGALL,  Col.  Sir  Charles  James  Napier.   1860. 

MORIARTY,  G.  P.  Seep.  646  supra. 

YOUNG,  Col.  KEITH.  Scinae  in  the  forties.   1912. 


648  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

CHAPTER  XXIX 

THE  CONQUEST  OF  THE  PANJAB 
A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

The  principal  source  of  information  consists  of  the  Political  Proceedings  of  the 
Government  of  India,  not  fully  accessible  to  the  student.  The  Broughtpn  MSS  at 
the  British  Museum  include  Add.  MSS  364.75, 
May,  i846-February,  1848,  covering  the  first 
with  Lord  Dalhousie,  January,  i  SdB-March, 
and  including  much  of  interest;  30478,  correspondence  with  Indian  officials,  e.g. 
Sir  Charles  Napier,  from  1846-1852;  36479-80,  correspondence  with  the  India 
House  1846-52. 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

BAIRD,  J.  G.  Private  letters  of  the  Marquess  of  Dalhousie.  1910. 

HARDINGE,  Viscount  HENRY,  G.G.B.  The  war  in  India.  Despatches  of  the  Right 

Honourable  Lt.-Gen.  Viscount  Hardinge,  G.G.B. ,  Governor-General  of  India; 

the  Right  Honourable  General  Lord  Gough,  G.G.B.,  Commander-in-Chief; 

Major-Gen.  Sir  Harry  Smith,  Bart.,  G.C.B.,  and  other  documents:  comprising 

the  engagements  of  Moodkee,  Ferozeshah,  Aliwal,  and  Sobraon.   With  a 

map  of  the  country,  and  seven  plans  of  the  positions  of  the  army.  London, 

1846. 
Panjab  Government  Records,    i.    Delhi  Residency  and  Agency   1807-1857. 

n.    Ludhiana  Agency  1808-1815.    m.    Lahore  Pol.  Diaries  1847-48.    iv. 

Lahore  Pol.  Diaries  1846-49.   v.   Lahore  Pol.  Diaries  1847-49.  vi.  Lahore 

Pol.  Diaries  1847-49.  yn.   Mutiny  Correspondence.   2  parts,  vra.  Mutiny 

Reports.   2  parts.  DC.  Birch's  Note-book  1818-21. 
Parl.  Papers,  1839,  XL,  29;  1846,  xxxi,  161,  215;  1847,  XLI,  173,  177;  1849,  XLI, 

i,  683. 
SITA  RAM  KOHU.  Catalogue  of  the  Khalsa  Durbar  Records.  Vol.  i  (Sikh  Army). 

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ARNOLD,  EDWIN.  The  Marquis  of  Dalhousie's  administration.  2  vols.   1862. 
BUIST,  GEORGE.  Annals  of  India  for  the  year  1848.  Bombay,  1849. 
COLBY,  JAMES.  Journal  of  the  Sutlej  campaign  1845-46.   1856. 
X  COURT,  Major  H.  History  of  the  Sikhs.  Lahore,  1888. 
yCuNNiNGHAM,  JOSEPH  DAVEY.   History  of  the  Sikhs.   Ed.  by  H.  L.  O.  Garrett. 

Oxford,  1918. 
DUNLOP,  Dr  J.   Mooltan  during  and  after  the  siege.   21  large  tinted  lithographs 

with  descriptive  text.  4to.   1849. 

Economist.  The  annexation  of  the  Punjab.   (Repr.  Lahore,  1897.) 
^EDWARDES,  Sir  H.  B.  A  year  on  the  Punjab  frontier.   1851. 
History  of  the  campaign  on  the  Sutlej  and  the  war  in  the  Punjaub.   1846. 
History  of  the  Punjab.  2  vols.   1846. 

HUGEL,  Baron  CHARLES.  Travels  in  Kashmir  and  the  Panjab.   1845. 
JACQUEMONT,  VICTOR.  Letters  from  India.  2  vols.   1834. 
journal  of  a  subaltern.   1850. 
^LAWRENCE,  Sir  HENRY.  Adventures  of  an  officer  in  the  service  of  Runjeet  Singh. 

*        2  VOU.     1845. 

Essays  military  and  political.   1859. 

Leaves  from  the  journal  of.  a  subaltern  during  the  campaign  in  the  Punjab. 

Edinburgh,  1851. 
MCGREGOR,  W.  L.  History  of  the  Sikhs.  2  vols.  1846. 


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*    London,  1812* 

XMOHAN  LAL,  MUNSHI.  Travels  in  the  Panjab,  Afghanistan,  and  Turkistan.  to 

Balk,  Bokhara,  and  Herat;  and  a  visit  to  Great  Britain  and  Germany.   1016* 

MOORGROFT,  W.    Travels  in  the  Himalayan  provinces  of  Hindostan  and  the 

Punjab.  2  vols.   1841. 
ORLJCH,  LEOPOLD  VON.   Travels  in  India,  including  Sinde  and  the  Punjab. 

Translated  from  the  German  by  H.  Evans  Lloyd.  2  vols. 

JXJSBORNE,  the  Hon.  WILLIAM  GODOLPHIN.  The  Court  and  Camp  of  Runjeet  Sing. 
^       1840. 

PRINSEP,  H.  T.  Origin  of  the  Sikh  power.   1834.  2nd  ed.  2  vols.  71842. 
SHAHAMAT  ALL  Hist.  Account  of  the  Sikhs  and  Afghans  in  connexion  with  India 
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^TEINBACH,  Lieut-Colonel.  The  Punjaub,  being  a  brief  account  of  the  country  of 
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THACKWELL,  E.  Narrative  of  the  2nd  Sikh  War.  2nd  ed.   1851. 
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B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 
For  general  works  see  the  list  at  p.  624  supra. 

ARCHER,  J.  H.  LAWRENCE.  Commentaries  on  the  Punjab  campaign,  1848-49.  1878, 
BROADFOOT,  Major  W.  Career  of  Major  George  Broadfoot  in  Afghanistan  and  the 

Panjab.   1888. 

BURTON,  R.  G.  The  first  and  second  Sikh  Wars.  Simla,  1911. 
COTTON,  J.J.  Life  of  General  Avitabile.  Calcutta,  1906. 
P^EDWARDES,  Sir  H.  B.,  and  MERIVALE,  HERMAN.    Life  of  Sir  Henry  Lawrence. 

2  vols.   1872. 

EDWARDES,  Lady.  Memorials  of  the  life  of  Sir  H.  B.  Edwardes.   1886. 
FIELD,  D,  The  religion  of  the  Sikhs.   1914. 
GARDNER,  ALEXANDER.  Memoirs.  Ed.  Pearse.   1898. 
GIBBON,  FREDRICK  P.  The  Lawrences  in  the  Punjab.   1908. 
^uk>UGH,  Gen.  Sir  CHARLES  and  INNES,  ARTHUR  I).  The  Sikhs  and  the  Sikh  Wars: 

the  rise,  conquest  and  annexation  of  the  Punjab  State.   1897. 
GRIFFIN,  LEPEL  H.  The  Rajas  of  the  Punjab,  being  the  history  of  the  principal 

States  in  the  Punjab,  and  their  political  relations  with  the  British  Government. 

1873. 

GRIFFIN,  LEPEL  H.  and  MASSEY,  F.  C.  Chiefs  and  families  of  note  in  the  Punjab. 
^      3  vols.  Lahore,  1909. 

•  Ranjit  Singh.  Oxford,  1911. 


DINGE,  Viscount.  Viscount  Hardinge.  Oxford,  1891. 
S,  J.  J.  McL.  Sir  Henry  Lawrence.  Oxford,  1898. 
LATIF,  SAYYTO  MUHAMMAD.  History  of  the  Panjab,  from  the  remotest  antiquity  to 

the  present  time.  Calcutta,  1801. 

P&JEK-WARNER,  Sir  WILLIAM.  Life  of  the  Marquis  of  Dalhousie.  2  vols.   1904, 
tfftlACAULiFFE,  M.  The  Sikh  religion.   1909. 
RAIT,  R.  S.  Life  of. .  .Sir  Frederick  Haines.  191 1. 

SITA  RAM  KOHLI.  "The  army  of  Ranjit  Singh."   (Journ.  Indian  Hist.  Feb.  and 
,     Sept.  1922.) 

(SMITH,  R.  BOSWORTH.  Life  of  Lord  Lawrence.  6th  ed.  2  vols.   1885. 
SMYTH,  Major  G*  CARMICHAEL.  A  history  of  the  reigning  family  of  Lahore,  with 
some  account  of  the  Jummoo  Rajahs,  the  Seik  soldiers  and  their  Sirdars:  with 
notes  on  Malcolm,  Prinsep,  Lawrence,  Steinbach,  McGregor  and  the  Cal- 
cutta Review.  Calcutta,  1847. 


THORBURN,  S.  S.  The  Punjab  in  peace  and  war.   1904. 

WYLLY,  Col.  H.  C.  Military  memoirs  of  Lt.-Gcn.  Sir  Joseph  Thackwell.   1908. 


650  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

CHAPTER  XXX 

BURMA,  1782-1852 
A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

Bengal  Secret  and  Political  Consultations,  years  1812,  1813,  1823,  India  Office 
copies. 

Government  of  India,  Foreign  Dept.,  Secret  and  Political  Consultations  of  1829-52, 
including  correspondence  on  the  Ava  residency,  proposed  retrocession  of 
Tenassenm,  journeys  to  the  jade  mines,  Assam  frontier,  journals  of  Major 
Burney  and  other  officers  in  charge  of  the  residency,  events  leading  up  to  the 
1852  war,  etc. 

ARAKAN.  Some  one  hundred  and  ninety  volumes  of  correspondence,  1823-52,  in 
the  office  of  the  Commissioner  of  Arakan,  Akyab.  The  only  reprint  is  Precis 
of  the  Old  Records  (1823-4)  of  Historical  Interest  in  the  Office  of  the  Commissioner  of 
Arakan,  publ.  Superintendent,  Government  printing,  Rangoon,  1922. 

TENASSERIM.  Some  ninety  volumes  of  correspondence,  1825-52,  in  the  office  of  the 
Commissioner  of  Tenasserim,  Moulmein.  The  only  reprints  are  by  Mr  J.  S. 
Furnivall,  I.C.S.,  Correspondence  for  the  years  1825-26  to  1842-43  in  the  office  of 
the  Commissioner,  Tenasserim  Division,  publ.  Superintendent,  Government 
printing,  Rangoon,  1915,  and  Selected  Correspondence  of  Letters  issued  from  and 
received  in  the  omce  of  the  Commissioner,  Tenasserim  Division,  for  the  years  1825-26  to 
1842-43,  publ.  ibid.  1916. 

Eighty  autograph  letters  of  Lord  Dalhousie  to  Sir  Arthur  Phayre  1852-6,  in 
possession  of  the  University  of  Rangoon. 

Letters  of  Thomas  Spears,  Government  Correspondent  at  the  Court  of  Ava,  to 
Captain  Arthur  Phayre,  Commissioner  of  Pegu,  1854-60,  in  the  Imperial 
Record  Dept.,  Calcutta. 

Journal  of  Sir  Arthur  Phayre  1852-9,  two  vols.,  in  possession  of  the  University  of 
Rangoon. 

RICHARDSON,  DAVID.  Journals,  Burma.  1829-35.  British  Museum,  Add.  MS, 
30354. 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

BAIRD,  J.  G.  A.  Private  letters  of  the  Marquess  of  Dalhousie.    1910. 
CRAWFURD,  J.  Journal  of  an  embassy  from  the  Governor  General  of  India  to  the 

Court  of  Ava  (1826).  2  vols.   1834. 
KONBAUNGSET  YAZAwiN.   Mandalay.    1905.    (The  standard  vernacular  Burmese 

chronicle  from  1752.) 
McLEOD,  W.  C.  Journal  of  a  mission  from  Moulmein  to  the  Frontiers  of  China, 

1836-37.   i8bQ. 

Papers  relating  to  the  first  Burma  War  1 8 1 2-24.  Parl.  Papers,  Session  1 825,  xxrv,  9 1 . 
Papers  relating  to  the  second  Burma  War.  Parl.  Papers,  Session  1852,  xxxvi,  139; 

1852-3,  LXDC,  351. 
Papers  relating  to  the  route  of  Captain  W.  C.  McLeod  from  Moulmein  to  the 

frontier  of  China  and  to  the  route  of  Dr  Richardson  on  his  fourth  mission  to 

the  Shan  provinces  of  Burma,  or  extracts  from  the  same.    Parl.  Papers, 

Session  1868-9,  XLVI,  281  sqq. 
PEMBERTON,  R.  B.    Report  on  the  Eastern  Frontier  of  British  India... with  a 

supplement  by  Dr  Bayfield  on  the  British  Political  Relations  with  Ava. 

Calcutta,  1835. 
Report  on  the  Progress  of  Arakan  under  British  rule  from  1826  to  1869.  Rangoon, 

SYMES,  M.  Account  of  an  embassy  to  the  kingdom  of  Ava.  410.   1800. 
WILSON,  H.  H.  Documents  illustrative  of  the  Burmese  War.   1827. 
YULE,  HENRY.  Mission  to  the  Court  of  Ava  in  1855.  1858. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  651 

CONTEMPORARY  PUBLICATIONS 

ALEXANDER,  Major-General  Sir  J.  E.  Travels  from  India  to  England  comprising 

a  visit  to  the  Burman  Empire.  410.   1827. 

BUCHANAN,  FRANCOS.    Religion  and  literature  of  the  Burmas.   Ap.  Asiatic  Re- 
searches, 1835. 
[BUTLER,  Major  JOHN.]    Sketch  of  the  services  of  the  Madras  European  Regt. 

during  the  Burmese  War  by  an  officer  of  the  corps.   1839. 
BUTLER,  J.  Travels  and  adventures  in  the  Province  of  Assam  during  a  residence 

of  fourteen  years.   1855. 

Cox,  H.  Journal  of  a  residence  in  the  Burman  Empire.   1821. 
DOVETON,  F.  B.  Reminiscences  of  the  Burmese  War  in  1824-5-6.    1852. 
GOUOER,  H.   Personal  narrative  of  two  years'  imprisonment  in  Burmah.    1860, 
GRIERSON,  T.  Select  views  of  the  seat  of  war.  Oblong  fol.  Calcutta,  1825. 
HAVELOCK,  H.  Memoir  of  the  three  campaigns  of  Major-General  Sir  Archibald 

Campbell's  army  in  Ava.  Serampore,  1828. 
JUDSON,  Mrs.  An  account  of  the  American  Baptist  Mission  to  the  Burman  Empire. 

1823. 
LAURIE,  Col.  W.  F.  B.  The  second  Burmese  War.   1853. 

Pegu,  being  a  narrative  of  events  during  the  second  Burmese  War.    1854. 

Our  Burmese  wars  and  relations  with  Burma.   1885. 

MARRYAT,  Captain  F.  Olla  Podrida.   1840. 

MARSHALL,  J.  Narrative  of  the  naval  operations  in  Ava,  during  the  Burmese  War, 

in  the  years  1824,  1825,  and  1826.    1830. 

Maulmain  Chronicle,  The.  Jan.  1849  to  April  1850  (and  other  volumes). 
MOORE,  Lt.  JOSEPH.    Eighteen  coloured  views  taken  at  or  near  Rangoon,    Fol. 

1825-6. 

ROBERTSON,  T.  C.  Political  Incidents  of  the  first  Burmese  War.   1853. 
SNODGRASS,  Major  JOHN  JAMES.  The  Burmese  War.   1827. 
[TRANT,  Capt.  THOMAS  A.]  Two  years  in  Ava  1824-26.  8vo.   1827. 
WHITE,  Capt.  W.  A  political  history  of  the  extraordinary  events  which  led  to  the 

Burmese  War.   1827. 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 

British  Burma  Gazetteer.  2  vols.  Rangoon,  1879-80. 
<GAIT,  E.  A.  A  History  of  Assam.  Calcutta,  1906.  New  ed.   1927. 
HALL,  D.  G.  E.  Early  English  Intercourse  with  Burma.    192$. 
/LEE-WARNER,  Sir  WILLIAM.  The  Life  of  the  Marquis  of  Dalhousie.  2  vols.    1904. 
^STEBBINO,  E.  P.  The  Forests  of  India.  3  vols.    1922. 

WAYLAND,  F.  A  Memoir  of  the  Life  and  Labours  of  the  Rev.  Adoniram  Judson, 
D.D.  2  vols.  Boston  and  London,  1853. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

THE  INDIAN  STATES,  1818-57 
A.  ORIGINAL  MATERIALS 

MANUSCRIPT 

The  principal  source  of  information — the  proceedings  of  the  Government  of 
India — is  not  generally  accessible.  In  some  degree  this  is  made  good  by  the  large 
number  of  Parliamentary  Papers,  see  Printed  Documents,  infra;  and  a  good  deal  of 
matter  occurs  in  the  Home  Miscellaneous  series,  see  Hill's  India  Office  Records,  Home 
Miscellaneous  Series,  passim. 

The  chief  private  collections  in  which  information  may  be  sought  are  those 
described  at  p.  643  supra. 


652  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

PRINTED  DOCUMENTS 

AITCHIBON.  Treaties.  See  p.  623  supra. 

BAIRD,  J.  G.  A.  Private  letters  of  the  Marquess  of  Dalhousie.   xgio. 

COLCHESTER,  Lord.  Indian  administration  of  Lord  Ellenborough.   1874. 

HASTINGS,  Marquess  of.  Private  journal.   2  vols.   1858. 

JENKINS,  RICHARD.  Report  2  7th  July  1826  on  the  territories  of  the  Raja  of  Nagpore. 

4to.  Calcutta,  1827. 

LAW,  Sir  ALGERNON.  India  under  Lord  Ellenborough.   1926. 
LOGAN,  W.   Collection  of  treaties. .  .relating  to  British  affairs  in  Malabar.   Sm. 

fol.  Calicut,  1879. 

Mysore  Commissioner.  Selections  from  the  records.  Bangalore,  1864. 
Papers  respecting  a  reform  in  the  administration  of  the  Nawab  Wazir  1808-15. 

1824.   (Printed  by  the  East  India  Company.) 
Parliamentary  Papers.   Native  States.   General.    1831-2,  xiv;  1844,  xxxvi,  143, 

165,  167;  1849,  xxxix,  135;  1850,  XLI,  395. 

Annexations.  1056,  XLV,  101;  1857-8,  XLH,  151;  1859  (Session  2),  xxv,  i. 
Baroda.    Memorial  of  Crishna  Rao  Withul,    1847-8,   XLvm,    137.     Corre- 
spondence, 1850,  XLI,  41.  Outram's  removal,  1852,  xxxvn,  parts  i  and  H. 
Corrupt  practices,    1852-3,  LXX-LXXHI.    Guarantee  to  subjects  of  the 
Guicowar,  1852-3,  LXIX,  255.  Letters  regarding  succession,  1856,  XLV,  161. 
Hyderabad.  Cession  of  territory,  1854,  XLVII,  263. 
Jhansi.  Annexation,  1854-5,  XL,  45. 

Nagpur.  Annexation,  1854,  XLVIII,  317.   Correspondence,  1856,  XLV,  37. 
Oudh.  Bankers'  claims,  1834,  xu**  53>  101.  Succession,  1837-8,  XLI,  381, 41 1 ; 
1839,  xxxix,  191.   Loans  from  the  king,  and  papers  of  1855-6,  XLV,  341, 
659.  Annexation,  1857  (Session  i),  xi,  109. 

Satara.  Commission  of  enquiry,  etc.,  1836,  1043,  xxxvni,  i,  109;  Correspon- 
dence, 1839-44,  1844,  xxxvi,  345.  Correspondence,  1845,  xxxrv,  433. 
Proceedings,  1846,  xxxi,  347,  351,  373.  Correspondence,  1838-47,  1847, 
XLI,  291,  315,  327,  339.  Correspondence,  1846-48,  1847-8,  XLvra,  321, 379, 
423.  Correspondence,  1849,  xxxix,  137.  Correspondence,  1850,  XLI,  189, 
203.  Correspondence,  1851,  XLI,  735,  741.  Proceedings,  1852-3,  LXIX,  535, 
Sindhia.  Correspondence,  1805-20, 1844,  xxxvi,  455.  Correspondence,  1843-4, 

xxxvi,  165. 
Pecuniary  transactions  of  Messrs  Palmer  and  Co.  with  the  Nizam.  Printed  by  the 

East  India  Company.   1824. 
PLOWDEN,  TREVOR  CHICHELE.  Precis  of  correspondence  relating  to  the  affairs  of 


Mysore  1799-1878.  Calcutta,  1878. 
WILKS,  M.  Administrati 


tion  of  Mysore.  Calcutta,  1805. 

CONTEMPORARY  PUBLICATIONS 

ARNOLD,  Sir  EDWIN.  The  Marquis  of  Dalhousie's  administration  of  British  India. 

2  vols.  8vo.   1862. 
BOILEAU,  Lt.  A.  H.  E.  Personal  narrative  of  a  tour  through  the  western  states  of 

Rajwara  in  1835.  4to.  Calcutta,  1837. 
BRIGGS,  H.  G.  The  Nizam.  2  vols.   1861. 
ERASER,  HASTINGS.  Our  faithful  ally  the  Nizam.   1865. 
Historical  sketch  of  the  princes  of  India. .  .by  an  officer  in  the  service  of  the 

H.E.I.C.  Edinburgh,  1833. 

HOUGH,  Major  WILLIAM.  History  of  the  Bhopal  principality.  Calcutta.  1845. 
JACKSON,  Sir  CHARLES.  A  vindication  of  the  Marquis  of  Dalhousie's  Indian  ad- 
^        ministration.   1865. 
JONES,  B.  S.  Papers  relating  to  the  progress  of  the  British  power  in  India  and  the 

system  of  subsidiary  alliances.  n.d. 

KNIGHTON,  WILLIAM.  Private  life  of  an  eastern  king.  Ed.  Smith.   1921. 
Mm  HASAN  *ALI,  Mrs.  The  Mussalxnanns  of  India.  Reprinted  1917. 
PATTON,  ROBERT.  The  principles  of  Asiatic  monarchies.  1801. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  653 

SLEEMAN,  Sir  WILLIAM  H.  Journey  through  the  kingdom  of  Chide  in  the  years 

1849-50.  2  vols.   1858. 
SUTHERLAND,  JOHN.    Sketches  of  the  relations  subsisting  between  the  British 

Government  in  India  and  the  different  native  states.   1837. 

B.  SECONDARY  WORKS 

BILGRAMI,  S.  H.  and  WILLMOT,  C.  Historical  and  descriptive  sketch  of  the  Nizam's 

dominions.  2  vols.    1883-4. 

COLEBROOKE,  Sir  H.  T.  Life  of  Elphinstone.  2  vols.   1884. 
DALY,  Major  H.  Memoirs  of  General  Sir  Henry  Dermot  Daly.    1905. 
ERASER,  Col.  HASTINGS.   Memoir  and  correspondence  of  General  James  Stuart 

X   Fraser.   1885. 

^HARDINGB,  Viscount.  Viscount  Hardinge.  Oxford,  1900. 
HOPE,  J.  The  house  of  Scindea.   1863. 
KAYE,J.W.  Life. .  .of  Charles,  Lord  Metcalfe.  2  vols.   1858. 
~*    i-WARNER,  Sir  WILLIAM.   Life  of  the  Marquis  of  Dalhousie.   2  vols.    1904. 
•  The  Native  States  of  India.    1910. 
o,  Capt.  C.  E.  Central  India.   (Imp.  Gaz.  Prov.  Ser.   1908.) 


I&IALGOLM,  Sir  JOHN.  Memoir  of  Central  India.  3rd  ed.   1832. 

MALLESON,  G.  B.  An  Historical  Sketch  of  the  Native  States  of  India  in  Subsidiary 
Alliance  with  the  British  Government.  1875. 

MEHTA,  M.  S.  Lord  Hastings  and  the  Indian  States.   (Unpublished  thesis.) 

MIRZA  MEHDY  KHAN.  Hyderabad  State.  (Imp.  Gaz.  Prov.  Ser.  Calcutta,  1909.) 

PRINSEP,  H.  T.  Political  and  military  transactions  in  India  under  the  administra- 
tion of  the  Marquess  of  Hastings.  2  vols.  1825. 

RICE,  B.  L.  Mysore  and  Coorg.   (Imp.  Gaz.  Prov.  Ser.   1908.) 

SHAHAMET  ALL  History  of  Bahawalpur.   1848. 

TAYLOR,  MEADOWS.  Story  of  my  life.  Ed.  Bruce.   1920. 

TUPPER,  CHARLES  LEWIS.  Our  Indian  Protectorate.  1893. 

CHAPTER  XXXII 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  SOVEREIGNTY  IN 
BRITISH  INDIA 

In  general  the  reader  should  consult  the  previous  bibliographies. 

Home  Miscellaneous  Series  336  contains  a  collection  of  papers  relative  to  the 
Moghul  Emperor  1781-1812. 

Parliamentary  Papers,  1805,  x>  75 7>  contains  papers  relating  to  Wellesley's 
settlement;  and  1859,  session  I,  xvm,  III,  and  session  II,  xxv,  331,  contain  papers 
relating  to  the  trial  of  the  King  of  Delhi. 

The  Punjab  Government  Records,  vol.  i  (Lahore,  1911)  contains  very  valuable 
selections  from  the  records  of  the  Delhi  Residency  1807-57. 

CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 

1497-8    Vasco  da  Gama's  first  voyage. 

1500        CabraPs  voyage;  factory  established  at  Cochin. 

1 502  Bull  of  Alexander  VI. 

1503  War  between  the  Zamorin  and  Raja  of  Cochin. 
Albuquerque's  first  voyage. 

1504  Duarte  Pacheco's  defence  of  Cochin. 

1505  Francisco  d* Almeida  viceroy. 
Cochin  the  Portuguese  headquarters. 

1506  Albuquerque's  second  voyage:  first  siege  of  Ormuz. 

1508  Lourcnco  d'Almcida  defeated  by  the  Egyptian  squadron  off  Chaul. 

1509  Francisco  d'Almeida  defeats  the  Egyptian  squadron  off  Diu. 


654  CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 

1509  Albuquerque  governor  of  India. 

1510  Goa  occupied. 

1511  Malacca  taken  by  Albuquerque. 
1513        Albuquerque's  attempt  on  Aden. 

1515  Albuquerque  establishes  Portuguese  suzerainty  over  Ormuz. 
Death  of  Albuquerque. 

1516  Soares'  attempt  on  Aden. 
1518        Expedition  to  Ceylon. 

1520  Diogo  Lopes'  expedition  to  the  Red  Sea. 

1521  De  Bzito  besieged  in  Colombo. 
1524       Vasco  da  Gama  dies  at  Cochin. 

1529  Nuno  da  Cunha  governor  of  India. 

1530  Goa  becomes  the  Portuguese  headquarters. 
1534       Bassein  ceded  to  the  Portuguese. 

The  Portuguese  permitted  to  build  a  fort  at  Diu. 

1537  Bahadur  Shah's  quarrel  with  the  Portuguese  and  death. 
See  of  Goa  established. 

1538  The  Turkish  squadron  attacks  Diu. 
Garcia  de  Noronha  viceroy. 

1540  Portuguese  treaty  with  the  Zamorin. 

1541  Portuguese  expedition  to  Suakin. 
Francis  Xavier  arrives  in  India. 

!545  J°2o  de  Castro  viceroy. 
1546        Second  siege  of  Diu. 

1548  Death  ofjoao  de  Castro. 

1550  Alfonso  de  Noronha  viceroy. 
1552        Francis  Xavier  dies. 

1554  Pedro  de  Mascarenhas  viceroy. 

1555  Portuguese  war  in  Ceylon. 
*557  Goa  made  a  metropolitan  see. 

1559  Daman  occupied  by  the  Portuguese. 

1560  Goa  made  an  archbishopric. 
1562  Siege  of  Daman. 

1564  Portuguese  war  in  Malabar. 

1569  Luiz  d'Atayde  reduces  Honawar. 
Camoens  returns  from  Goa  to  Lisbon. 

1570  Defence  of  Chaul. 

1571  Dom  Antonio  de  Noronha  viceroy. 

1578  King  Sebastian  killed  in  Morocco. 

1579  Linschoten  reaches  Goa. 

1586  Portuguese  war  with  Raja  Sinha. 

1590  Capture  of  the  Madre  de  Dios. 

X595  Houtman's  voyage. 

i  boo  Charter  to  the  London  East  India  Company. 

1602  Formation  of  the  United  Dutch  East  India  Company. 
Spilbergen  in  Ceylon. 

1603  Mildenhall  at  Agra. 

1605  Death  of  Akbar  and  accession  of  Jahangir. 

1606  Dutch  blockade  of  Goa. 
1609  Hawkins  at  Agra. 

Dutch  factory  at  Pulicat. 

161 1  Middleton  at  Surat. 

1612  Best  at  Surat. 

Danish  East  India  Company  founded. 

1615  Roe  at  the  Moghul  Court. 

1616  The  Danes  at  Tranquebar. 
1619  Anglo-Dutch  treaty. 

1622  The  Portuguese  expelled  from  Ormuz. 

1623  The  massacre  of  Amboyna. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE  655 

1625  Dutch  factory  at  Chinsura. 

1629  Death  of  Jahangir  and  accession  of  Shah  Jahan. 

1634  Fannan  permitting  English  trade  in  Bengal. 

1635  Courteen's  Association  formed. 

1638  Dutch  attack  Portuguese  hi  Ceylon. 

1639  Fort  St  George  founded. 

1644  Temporary  peace  between  the  Dutch  and  Portuguese  in  the  East. 

1651  English  factory  at  Hugli  founded. 

1654  Treaty  of  Westminster. 

1657-8  Moghul  war  of  succession;  Aurangzib  emperor. 

1660  Portuguese  completely  driven  from  Ceylon. 

1 66 1  Charles  IPs  charter  to  the  East  India  Company. 
Cession  of  Bombay  to  the  English. 

1663  Publication  of  peace  between  the  Dutch  and  Portuguese. 

1664  Sivaji  plunders  Surat. 

Colbert  founds  the  Compagnie  des  Indes. 

1665  Humphrey  Cooke  obtains  possession  of  Bombay. 
1 667        Treaty  of  Breda. 

1670  Sivaji  again  plunders  Surat. 

1671  La  Haye's  expedition. 

1673  The  French  besieged  in  St  Thome. 

1674  Francois  Martin  founds  Pondichery. 

1680  Dedication  of  St  Mary's  Church  in  Fort  St  George. 

1683  Keigwin's  mutiny  at  Bombay. 

1680  English  war  with  the  Moghuls. 

1688  Heath's  expedition  to  Bengal. 

1690  Calcutta  founded. 

1693  Death  of  Job  Charnock. 

The  Dutch  capture  Pondichery. 

1698  Formation  of  the  English  East  India  Company. 

1702  Amalgamation  of  the  English  and  London  East  India  Companies. 

1 707  Death  of  Aurangzib ;  accession  of  Bahadur  Shah. 

1712  Accession  of  Jahandar  Shah. 

1713  Accession  of  Farrukhsiyar. 

1715        Surman's  embassy  to  Farrukhsiyar. 

1719  Murder  of  Farrukhsiyar. 
Accession  of  Muhammad  Shah. 
Law's  Company  formed. 

1720  Baji  Rao  I  Peshwa. 

1722        Ostend  East  India  Company  set  up. 
1 726        Lenoir  governor  of  Pondichery. 

Charter  establishing  courts  of  law  at  the  English  presidencies. 
1 73 1        Dupleix  directeur  of  Chandernagore. 

The  Swedish  East  India  Company  founded. 
1735        Dumas  governor  of  Pondichery. 
1 737        The  Marathas  occupy  Salsette. 

1739  Nadir  Shah's  invasion  of  India. 

1740  The  Marathas  raid  the  Carnatic;  Nawab  Dost  'All  killed. 

1741  Chanda  Sahib  captured  by  the  Marathas. 

1742  Dupleix  governor  of  Pondichery. 

Murder  of  Safdar  'Ali,  Nawab  of  the  Carnatic. 

1743  Nizam-ul-mulk's  expedition  to  the  Carnatic. 

1 744  War  of  the  Austrian  Succession. 
Anwar-ud-din  Nawab  of  the  Carnatic. 

1746        La  Bourdonnais  takes  Madras. 
1748        Boscawen  besieges  Pondichery. 

Death  of  Nizam-ul-mulk. 

Ahmad  Khan  Durani  invades  the  Panjab. 

Accession  of  Ahmad  Shah. 


656  CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 

1 749  Chanda  Sahib  with  French  aid  defeats  and  kills  Anwar-ud-din  at  Ambur. 
Madras  restored  to  the  English. 

1 750  Defeat  and  death  of  Nasir  Jang. 

1 75 1  Bussy  establishes  Salabat  Jang  as  subahdar  of  the  Deccan. 
dive's  seizure  and  defence  of  Arcot. 

1752  Chanda  Sahib  killed  by  the  Tanjorcans  and  Law  surrenders  to  the 

English. 

1753  Cession  of  the  Northern  Sarkars  to  Bussy. 

1754  Conference  of  Sadras. 
Recall  of  Dupleix. 
Accession  of  Alamgir  II. 

Truce  between  the  French  and  the  English. 

1755  Clive  returns  to  India. 
1 750        Capture  of  Gheria. 

Bussy's  defence  of  the  Chahar  Mahal. 
Siraj-ud-daula  captures  Calcutta. 
The  Seven  Years'  War. 

1757  Clive  recovers  Calcutta  and  takes  Chandernagore. 
The  battle  of  Plassey. 

Mir  Ja'far  Nawab  of  Bengal. 

1758  Lally's  expedition. 
Capture  of  Fort  St  David. 
Bussy  recalled  from  the  Deccan. 
Lally  besieges  Madras. 

1759  Forde  captures  Masulipatam. 
'Ali  Gauhar  invades  Bihar. 

The  Dutch  expedition  against  the  English  in  Bengal. 
'Alamgir  II  murdered  by  Ghazi-ud-din. 

1 760  Battle  of  Wandiwash. 
Clive  returns  to  England. 

'Ali  Gauhar  again  in  Bihar,  and  proclaims  himself  Shah  'Alam  II. 

The  Marathas  capture  Delhi. 

Mir  Kasim  made  Nawab  of  Bengal. 

1761  Battle  of  Panipat. 
Capitulation  of  Pondichery. 
Hyder  'Ali  usurpjs  Mysore. 

Nizam  'Ali  imprisons  his  brother  Salabat  Jang. 
1763        War  with  Mir  Kasim;  re-establishment  of  Mir  Ja'far. 
Treaty  of  Paris. 

1765  Clive  returns  to  India  and  obtains  a  grant  of  the  diwanni  of  Bengal. 

1766  The  Bengal  officers' mutiny. 

Nizam  'Ali  grants  the  Northern  Sarkars  to  the  English. 
1767-9    The  first  Mysore  War. 

1 769  Appointment  of  Scrafton,  Forde,  and  Vansittart  as  supervisors. 

1770  Lindsay  at  Madras. 

1771  Shah  'Alam  leaves  Allahabad  for  Delhi. 

1772  Warren  Hastings  governor  of  Fort  William. 
Trial  of  Muhammad  Reza  Khan. 
Madhava  Rao  Peshwa  dies. 

1 773  The  Regulating  Act  passed. 

Taimur  Shah  succeeds  to  Ahmad  Shah  DuranL 
Narayana  Rao  murdered. 

1 774  The  Rohilla  War. 
Bogle's  mission  to  Tibet. 

The  Regulating  Act  comes  into  force.  ^ 

1 775  The  treaty  of  Surat.  1 
The  trial  of  Nandakumar. 

1 776  The  treaty  of  Purandhar. 

Lord  Pigot  arrested  by  a  majority  of  the  Madras  Council. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE  657 

1 776  Death  of  Colonel  Monson. 

1 777  General  Glaverine  dies. 

1778  Sir  Thomas  Rumoold  governor  of  Madras. 
Renewed  war  with  the  Marathas. 
Capture  of  Pondichery. 

1 779  Convention  of  Wadgaon. 
Capture  of  Mahe\ 
Goddard's  expedition. 

1780  Popham's  capture  of  Gwalior. 
Duel  between  Hastings  and  Francis. 
Second  Mysore  War. 

1 78 1  Battle  of  Porto  Novo. 

Lord  Macartney  governor  of  Madras. 

Chait  Singh  deposed. 

Treaty  of  Chunar  with  Asaf-ud-daula. 

1782  The  French  fleet  under  Suffren  arrives  on  the  Coromandel  Coast. 
The  Treaty  of  Salbai. 

Death  of  Hyder 'Ali. 

1783  Arrival  of  Bussy's  expedition  at  Cuddalore. 
Death  of  Sir  Eyre  Coote. 

News  of  peace  with  the  French. 
Fox's  India  Bills. 

1 784  Treaty  of  Mangalore. 
Pitt's  India  Act. 

1 785  Warren  Hastings  resigns. 

1786  Lord  Gornwallis  governor-general. 

1788  Hastings'  trial  begins. 

Ghulam  Kadir  seizes  and  blinds  Shah  'Alam. 

1789  Tijni  attacks  Travancore. 

1790  Third  Mysore  War. 

1793  The  Company's  Charter  renewed. 
The  Permanent  Settlement  of  Bengal. 
Capture  of  Pondichery. 

Sir  John  Shore  governor-general. 

1794  Mahadaji  Sindhia  dies. 

1 795  The  battle  of  Kharda. 

Expedition  against  the  Dutch  in  Ceylon. 
Death  of  Muhammad  'AH  Walajah. 

1796  Baji  Rao  II  Peshwa. 

1797  Zaman  Shah  at  Lahore. 
Death  of  Asaf-ud-daula. 

1798  Wazir  'AH  deposed  and  succeeded  by  Sa'adat  'AH. 
Tipu's  mission  to  Mauritius. 

Lord  Mornington  governor-general. 
Subsidiary  treaty  with  Nizam  'AH. 
*799        Fourth  Mysore  War. 

Marshman  at  Serampore. 
Malcolm's  mission  to  Persia. 

1800  Death  of  Nana  Phadnavis. 

The  College  of  Fort  William  established. 

1801  Baird's  expedition  to  the  Red  Sea. 
The  assumption  of  the  Garnatic. 
Treaty  with  Sa'adat  'AH. 

1802  Symes's  mission  to  Ava. 
^  .  Treaty  of  Bassein. 

1803  War  with  Sindhia. 

Treaties  of  Deogaon  and  Surji  Arjungaon. 

1804  War  with  Holkar. 

1805  Siege  of  Bhartpur. 

CHJV  42 


658  CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 

1805        Lord  Cornwallis  supersedes  Lord  Wellesley  and  dies. 

1807  Lord  Minto  governor-general. 

1808  Missions  to  Persia,  Lahore,  Peshawur  and  Sind. 

1810  Bourbon  and  Mauritius  captured  by  the  English. 

181 1  Java  occupied  by  the  English. 

1813  The  Company's  charter  renewed,  but  its  monopoly  of  the  trade  to  India 

abolished. 
Lord  Moira  (Hastings)  governor-general. 

1814  The  Nepal  War. 

18x7  The  last  Maratha  War. 

1818  Baji  Rao  II  deposed. 

1823  Lord  Amherst  governor-general. 

1824  The  first  Burmese  War. 

Dutch  settlements  in  India  transferred  to  the  English. 

1825  The  voyage  of  the  Enterprise. 
The  second  siege  of  Bhartpur. 

1827        Daulat  Rao  Sindhia  dies. 

1820        Lord  William  Bentinck  governor-general. 

1829  Measures  against  thagi. 
Prohibition  of  sati. 

1830  Mysore  rebellion. 

1832  Treaty  for  the  free  navigation  of  the  Indus. 

1833  The  Company's  charter  renewed  but  its  trade  abolished. 

1834  The  annexation  of  Coorg. 

Macaulay  appointed  Law  member  of  council. 
Province  of  Agra  formed. 

1836  Lord  Auckland  governor-general. 

1837  Barnes's  mission  to  Kabul. 
Siege  of  Herat. 

1838  The  Tripartite  Treaty. 

1839  Shah  Shuja  enthroned  at  Kandahar. 
Death  of  Ranjit  Singh. 

1840  Dost  Muhammad  surrenders. 

1841  The  revolt  at  Kabul;  murders  of  Burnes  and  later  of  Macnaghten. 

1842  Massacre  of  the  Kabul  brigade. 
Lord  Ellenborough  governor-general. 
Withdrawal  from  Afghanistan. 

1843  Conquest  of  Sind. 
Battle  of  Maharajpur. 

1844  Lord  Ellenborough  recalled;  Sir  Henry  Hardinge  governor-general. 

1845  Danish  settlements  transferred  to  the  English. 
First  Sikh  War. 

1846  Battle  of  Sobraon  and  peace  with  the  Sikhs. 

1848  Lord  Dalhousie  governor-general. 
Annexation  of  Satara. 

Second  Sikh  War. 

1849  Battle  of  Gujrat  and  annexation  of  the  Panjab. 

1852  Second  Burmese  War. 

1853  Railway  opened  from  Bombay  to  Thana. 
Cession  of  Berar. 

Annexation  of  Nagpur. 

The  Company's  charter  renewed. 

1854  The  Ganges  Canal  opened. 

1855  Treaty  with  Dost  Muhammad. 

1856  Annexation  of  Oudh. 

Lord  Canning  governor-general. 
War  with  Persia. 

1857  The  Sepoy  Mutiny. 

1858  Assumption  of  government  of  India  by  the  crown. 


INDEX 


Aba  Selukar,  368 
Abbas  Mirza,  484, 
Abbasid  Empire,  6 
Abbott,  Captain,  503 
Abdali,  tribe,  483 
Abdul  Ghiyas  Khan,  543 
Abdul  Karim  Khan,  see  Sidis,  the 
Abdul  Rahim,  see  Sidis,  the 
Abercromby,  Sir  John,  332 
Abercromby,  Sir  Ralph,  328,  336 
Abreu,  — ,  566 
Abul  Fazl,  23 
Abwabs,  409 

Accountant-general,  the,  416 
Ach6,  Gomte  d',  159,  160,  163 
Achin,  41,  62,  92;  threatens  Malacca,  19, 
85;  trade,  32,  33,  39,  49;  English  at, 

Adam's  Bridge,  48 
Adams,  Major  Thomas,  1 73,  1 74 
Adas,  battle  of,  258 

Aden,  2,  9,  n,  12,  13,  40;  English  at,  77 
Adigar,  404,  405,  407 
Adil  Khan,  see  Bijapur 
Adlercron,  Colonel,  144,  145,  157 
Admiralty  Courts,  102 
Adoni,  334 

Adoption,  581-3;  sanads,  586 
Adrianople,  15;  Treaty  of,  489 
Adyar  river,  action  on,  122 
*Afghans,  invade  India,  146, 249, 350;  rela- 
tions with  the  English,  483  sqq.t  543~6; 

relations  with  Sind,  522,  524,  528;  in 

the  second  Sikh  War,  555,  556 
Afrasiab  Khan,  602 
Africa,  17,  74 
Afzal  Khan,  505 

Agnew,  Patrick  Alexander  Vans,  554 
Agra,  40,  66,  77,  84,  324,  364,  366,  579, 

580;  English  factory  at,  78,  79,  81,  91, 

92,  i  oo;  taken  by  Lake,  374 
Ahalya  Bai,  252, 368, 369,  376;  her  opinion 

of  Raghoba,  258 
Ahmad  II  of  Gujarat,  19 
Ahmadabad,  22,  40,  84,  92,  267,   270; 

English  factory,  81;  district,  368,  376, 

379*  382 

Ahmad  Mirza,  515 
Ahmadnagar,  kingdom,  3,  20,  21 ;  city  of, 

135»  262,  370,  374 

Ahmad  Shah  Abdali,  214,  249,  483,  484 
Aislabie,  W.,  102  n. 
Aix-la-Chapelle,  Treaty  of,  124,  591 
Aiyaz  Khan,  286 

Ajit  Singh  Sindhianwala,  546,  547 
Ajmir,  80,  381 
Akalkot,  raja  of,  382 
Akbar,  77,  383, 409,  412;  reduces  Gujarat, 

22,  23;  relations  with  the  Portuguese,  23 


Akbar  II,  605,  606,  608 

Akbar  Khan  Barakzai,  see  Muhammad 
Akbar 

Akram  Khan,  487 

Akshah,  484 

Akunwuny  566 

Akyab,  562-5 

Alagada  Islands,  18 

'Alamgir  II,  169 

'Alampur,  252 

Alaungpaya,  558 

Albuquerque,  Affonso  d',  15;  commen- 
taries, 3;  voyages,  7,  9,  10;  government, 
10  sqq.,  17,  18 

Albuquerque,  Francisco  d',  7 

Alcantara,  24 

Aldworth,  Thomas,  79 

Aleppo,  65,  70 

Alexander  the  Great,  route  to  India,  327, 

33i 

Alexander  I,  331,  489 

Alexander  VI,  Pope,  2,  76 

Alexandria,  i,  2,  9,  327,  328 

'Ali  II,  Sultan  of  Bijapur,  20 

'Ali  Bahadur,  365 

Aligarh,  364,  365,  374 

'Alf  Gauhar,  see  Shah  'Alam  II 

'Ali  Husain,  361,  362 

'Ali  Masjid,  512,  513,  520 

'Ali  Muhammad,  217,  220 

'Ali  Murad,  533~5>  537 

Aliwal,  551 

'Ali  Wardi  Khan,  112,  141,  142,  147,  423 

Allahabad,  city  of,  176,  180,  215,  216,  218, 
251,  253,  309,  354,  528,  596,  597;  district 
of,  380,  597J  Treaty  of,  176,  273,  274, 

Allard,  (General,  542,  544 

Almas  'Ali  Khan,  see  Ilmas  'Ali  Khan 

Almeida,  Francisco  d',  8-10,  24 

Almeida,  Lourenjo  d',  8-10,  25 

Almora,  546 

Altamgha,  409 

Alveiras,  Gonde  d',  44 

Alves,  Captain,  559 

Alwar,  state  of,  374,  577 

Amar  Singh  Thapa,  378 

Amboina,  Massacre  of,  84,  86,  326 

Ambur,  336;  battle  of,  126,  127 

America,  324 

American  Baptist  Mission,  566 

Amherst,  565-9 

Amherst,  Lord,  and  the  Indian  states,  577; 

and  the  emperor,  606 
Amiens,  Treaty  of,  1 15,  329,  403,  596 
Amins,  425 

Amin-ul-iah  Khan,  519 
Amir  Husain,  alias  Mir  Hashim,  9,  10 

42-2 


66o 


INDEX 


Amir  Khan,  376,  380,  381,  383,  573 

Amir  Mirjan,  13 

Amir  Singh,  360, 361 

Amir-ul-umara,  361 

Amrit  Rao,  364,  37? 

Amritsar,  539 

Amsterdam,  28,  58;  chamber  of,  31 ;  Fort, 

see  Caradiva 
Amyatt,  Peter,  173 
An,  562 

An  Pass,  the,  564 
Anand,  258 
Ananda  Razu,  162 
Anandi  Bai,  250,  251,  254,  255,  257 
Anand  Rao,  375,  376,  382,  5751 
Anderson,  Lieutenant,  554 
Anderson,  David,  269-71,  425,  427,  430, 

Anderson,  Sir  George  W.,  508 

Anderson's  Horse,  510 

Andrews,  Robert,  403 

Ange,Jean,  61 

Angelbeck,  van,  401,  402 

Angria,  113,  114,  369.  See  also  Babu  Rao, 

Manaji,  Raghuji 
Anjadiva,  6,  8,  9,  10 
Anjengo,  103 
Antwerp,  28 

Anwar-ud-din  Khan,  119,  121,  124,  126 
Appa  Khande  Rao,  366 
Appa  Sahib,  379-81,  574 
Arabia,  9,  40,  62,  65 

Arakan,  34,  558-60,  562,  565,  568;  ad- 
ministration, 563;  local  battalion,  562, 

564 

Araxes,  the,  489 
Arcot,  Nawab  of,   117-9,    122.    See  also 

Carnatic;  Prince  of,  586;  town  of,  127, 

284,  591;  siege  of,  129,  130 
Argaon,  battle  of,  374 
Arghandab,  502 


Armenia,  486 

Armenians,  the,  143 

Arras,  see  Adas 

Arthasastra,  the,  384,  387,  393,  394 

Arthur,  Sir  George,  530 

Aryankuppam,  130 

Asaf  Khan,  14 

Asaf  Khan  (Itikad  Khan),  40 

Asaf-ud-daula,  222,  299  saq.,  309,  347  sqq.; 

Treaty  of  Faizabad  with,  233 
Ascension,  the,  78 
Ashta  Pradhan,  the,  384 
Ashti,  381,  382 
Asirgarh,  380,  381 
Assada  Association,  the,  91 
Assam,  558,  559,  578 
Assaye,  battle  of,  374 
Astruc,  — ,131 


Auckland,  Lord,  character,  490;  and 
Russia,  483,  489;  and  Afghanistan,  490- 
508,  511,  512,  520;  and  Sind,  523,  524, 
526-8,  538,  544;  and  the  Sikhs,  545, 
549;  and  the  Indian  states,  578,  583; 
recalled,  513 

Aumont,  —  ,  325 

Aungier,  Gerald,  100,  101 

Aurangabad,  134-7 

Aurangzib,  36,  66,  71,  93,  90-101,  105, 
107,  411;  conquers  Golconda,  37,  104, 

590 

Aurore,  T,  325 

Austen,  Sir  Francis  William,  561 
Austen,  Jane,  561 
Austrian  Succession,  War  of,  59,  117-24, 

59° 
Auteuil,  Louis  Gombault  d',  126,  127,  129, 

130 

Ava,  558-62,  567,  568 
Avitabile,  General,  512,  542,  546 
Ayvab  Khan,  488 
'Azim-ud-daula,  361,  362 
Azizpur,  532 
Azores,  the,  24 

Baber,  Edward,  410,  412,  413 

Babti,  395 

Bab-ul-mandab,  Straits  of,  78 

Babur,  14 

Babu  Rao  Angria,  369 

Badami,  334,  365 

Baghdad,  Khalif  of,  608 

Bagyidaw,  559,  560 

Bahadur  Shah  II,  606,  607 

Bahadur  Sultan  of  Gujarat,  14,  15,  22 

Bahawalpur,  483,  484,  499,  531-4,  536,  586  " 

Bahur,  126 

Baillie,  Colonel  William,  283,  284,  348 

Baird,  Sir  David,  328,  341,  346 

Baiza  Bai,  578 


Baj-baj,  145 

Baji  Rao  1,  1  18,  253 


Atar  Singh  Sindhianwala,  546,  547 
Atayde,  Dom  Luiz  d',  20,  si 
Atta  Muhammad,  488 
Attock,  488,  541,  548,  555 


Baji 

Baji  Rao  II,  253,  257,  364,  370,  371,  386, 

388,  390,  J93>  39o;  and  Tipu,  371  ;  and 

the  English,  377,  379  sqq.,  574,  583;  his 

pension,  586,  606 
Baksar  (Buxar),  296,  299;  battle  of,  174, 

251,254,280 

Bala  Hissar,  the,  see  Kabul 
Balaji  Baji  Rao,  118,  135,  137,  138,  157, 

243*  253>  384 

Balaji  Janardhan,  see  Nana  Phadnavis 
Balaji  Vishvanath,  250,  384 
Balasore,  41,  107,  115;  English  factory,  88, 

1  06 

Baldaeus,  Philippus,  53 
Baldeo  Singh  Raja,  577 
Baldwin,  George,  327 
Balkh,  484 

Balochis,  the,  500,  513,  527,  536,  537 
Balochistan,  484,  488,  530 
Balu  Mian,  see  Sidis,  the 
Bamyan,  504,  505,  507 


INDEX 


661 


Banda  Islands,  83,  86,  326 
Bandar  Abbas,  see  Gombroon 
Bandarmalanka,  139] 
Bandula,  559 

Bangalore,  118,  275,  276,  336,  578 
Bangkok,  568 
Bankibazar,  115 
Bankot,  alias  Fort  Victoria,  1 14 
Bannu,  495 

Bantam,  29,  31-5,  39,  40,  49,  62,  67,  68, 
71,  88;  English  factory,  77,  83,  84,  89, 

93>  "I 

Bapu  Gokhale,  381 
Bara  alute,  the,  386 
Bora  balute,  the,  386 
Barakzai  tribe  and  monarchy,  484-8,  490, 

501,  502,  515,  5i9»  541 
Baramahal  district,  337,  467-71,  473,  474, 

476 

Barbosa,  Duarte,  5 
Bardas,  18 

Barker,  Sir  Robert,  216-6,  223,  232 
Barlow,  Sir  George  H.,  320,  343,  375,  378, 

455>  57<>>  577 

Barnett,  Commodore  Curtis,  120,  121 
Baroda,    257,    267,    368,    376.     See    also 

Gaekwad,  the 
Baron,  Francois,  70,  71 
Barrackpore,  115 
Barr6,  Colonel  Isaac,  184,  186 
Barreto,  Antonio  Moniz,  2 1 ,  23 
Barreto,  Francisco,  19 
Barros,  Joao  de,  61 
Barwell,  Richard,  189,  225,  228,  231,  262, 

420-4;  character,  226-7;  retires,  229; 

prosecutes  Nandakumar,  235 
Basalat  Jang,  140,  281,  282,  boo 
Basian,  550 

Basra,  66;  English  factory,  87,  90 
Bassein,  14,  IQ,  23, 1 14,  249,  256,  257,  259, 

260,  264,  268-70;  Treaty  of,  372-5,  379, 

57^ 

Bassein  (Burma),  562 
Bat  chhapai,  396 


Batavia,  35,  37,  38,  40-2,  44-7,  50,  56-60, 

;fo  i     ' 

a  bv  the  English.  328 
Batta, 


3,  84,  91,  101,  154,  402;  founded,  32; 


,328 


Batticoloa,  32,  41-3,  407 

Bayanor  Raja,  74-5 

Bayley,  Wilfiam  Butterworth,  503 

Bazi  jama,  409 

Beaulieu,  Augustin  de,  62 

B*ber,  -,  66 

Becher,  Richard,  207 

Becker,  Hendrik,  54 

Beckford,  Alderman  William,  184 

Bednur,  286 


Belle  PouU,  la,  329 

Belli,  John.  238 

Benaru  hills,  507 

Benares,  270,  351,  360,  516,  553,  598,  602, 


Benares  (continued) 

604;  ceded  to  the  Company,  233;  re- 
forms in,  305-6;  Treaty  of,  215-$,  218, 
219.  See  also  Chait  Singh 

Benasterim,  n,  21 

Benfield,  Paul,  273,  280,  287,  290,  292, 

w  293, 355-7.         „  .     . 

Bengal,  province  of,  32 ;  Dutch  factories  in, 
40,  41,  57;  French  factories  in,  62,  72, 
73;  Danish  factory,  1 14, 1 15;  Ostend  fac- 
tory, 115;  Prussian  trade  in,  1 1 6 ;  English 
factories  in,  80, 88, 89, 91, 92, 103, 105-8, 
1I2>  I53>  Clive  in,  1756-60,  141^.; 
French  designs  on,  135,  139,  147,  323; 
financial  help  from,  i6j>;  diwanni  oi,  see 
Diwanni;  English  position,  1772,  206; 
governor's  allowances,  234;  sovereignty 
m,  591  sqq. 

Bengal,  Government  of— position  of  nawab, 
210;  constitution  under  Regulating  Act, 
189  sqq. i  and  under  the  India  Act,  200, 
3 1 6, 3 1 7 ;  working  under  Regulating  Act, 
225^.;  relations  with  other  presi- 
dencies, 190,  200,  259,  277,  281,  282, 
316,  317;  relations  with  Supreme  Court, 
241  sqq.',  policy  in  first  Maratha  War, 
257-00,  263;  policy  in  Second  Mysore 
War,  284,  285;  relations  with  Mu- 
hammad *Ali,  291,  292;  the  secretariat, 
446 

Benson,  Colonel,  560 

Bentinck,  Lord  William  Cavendish,  321, 
476,  490,  491 ;  and  the  Russian  danger, 
489,  5-3.2;  and  the  Indian  states,  577-9 

Berar,  kingdom  of,  3;  Maratha  state  of, 
136,  250,  252,  254,  270,  367,  368,  376, 
380,  598;  annexation  of,  581,  582; 
Nizam's  province,  586 

Berchem,  Wemmer  van,  34 

Bernagore,  41 

Bertie,  Admiral  Sir  Albemarle,  332 

Best,  Thomas,  79 

Bet,  island  of,  382 

Beveridge,  H.,  quoted,  236,  423,  424 

Bezwada,  137 

Bhag  Singh,  540 

Bhai  Bir  Singh,  547 

Bhanpura,  376 

Bharatpur,  374,  375,  542,  577 

Bhatkal,  90 

Bhawani,  Charan  Mitra,  422 

Bhils,  the,  391,  392 

Bhonsle  family,  the,  249,  254,  260,  608. 
See  also  Appa  Sahib,  Chimnaji,  Janqji, 
Khanduji,  Mudaji,  Parsaji,  Raghuji, 
Sabaji 

Bhopal,  266,  380,  573 

Bhor  Ghat,  the,  269,  270 

Bhung  Bara,  532,  533,  536 

Biana,  92 

Bias,  the,  552 

Bjdar,  kingdom  of,  3 

Bihar,  92,  103,  106,  142,  151-3,  166,  169, 
*74»  183,  219,  377»  423»  449 


662 


INDEX 


Bijaigarh,  299 

Bijapur,  kingdom  of,  3,  9-12,  70,  333;  and 
the  Portuguese,  18,  20 

Bimlipatam,  37 

Binot,  — ,  320 

Birbhum,  416 

Bisdom,  Adriaan,  154 

Bithur,  381 

Black  Hole  of  Calcutta,  113,  144,  156 

Blackman,  President,  94 

Blundell,  E.  A.,  565,  568 

Board  of  Control,  the,  set  uj>,  200;  powers, 
201,  313;  paid,  314;  President,  314;  re- 
lations with  the  Company,  314-6 

Bodawpaya,  558,  559 

Bogambara,  408 

Bogle,  Sir  Archibald,  562,  563,  565 

Bogle,  C.,  425 

Boigne,  Comte  Benoit  de,  363,  366 

Bokhara,  489,  503,  504 

Bolan  Pass,  499,  500,  515,  530 

Bolts,  William,  116,  590 

Bombay,  56, 68,  84,  99, 105, 107,  108, 113, 
157,  261,  40.1,  508,  530,  594;  cession  of, 
86,  87;  presidency  of,  96,  100,  101,  102; 
courts  at,  102,  114;  besieged,  103;  mint, 
112;  fortifications,  1 13;  the  Marine,  114; 
the  Marine  Yard,  275;  docks  at,  114; 
under  the  Regulating  Act,  256,  259,  260, 
277;  form  of  government,  321;  sove- 
reignty at,  589;  relations  with  the 
Marathas,  113,  114,  249  sqq.,  256  sqq., 
263  sqq.;  relations  with  Mysore,  253, 275, 
277,  279,  285,  286;  Lindsay  at,  279 

Bonaparte,  lie,  see  Bourbon,  Isle  of 

Boone,  C.,  102,  113 

Boscawen,  Admiral  Edward,  123,  124,  126 

Boschhouwer,  — ,  42 

Both,  Pieter,  31,32 

Bourbon,  Isle  of,  alias  He  Bonaparte,  74, 
163,  332 

Bourchier,  Richard,  280 

Bourquin,  Louis,  374 

Bouvet,  Lozier  de,  123,  158 

Bowyear,  — ,  558 

Boyd,  Hugh,  401 

Boyd,J.P.,368  ^ 

Braganza,  Dom  Constantino  de,  19,  26 

Brazil,  5,  46,  47,  49,  85 

Bremer,  — ,  130,  131 

Brereton,  Major  Cholmondley,  162 

Brest,  329 

Bristow,  John,  301,  305,  306 

Brito,  Lopo  de,  25 

Brittany,  323 

Broach,  22,  23,  40,  374;  English  factory, 
81,  103;  cession  of  revenues,  257,  260, 
265,  270,  271 

Broadfoot,  Major  George,  5 1  o,  5 1 2, 548-50, 

565*  567*  568 

Broadfoot,  Lieutenant  William,  506 
Broughton,  Lord,  see  Hobhouse,  Sir  John 

Cam 
Browne,  Major  James,  60 1,  602 


Brownrigg,  Sir  R.,  408 

Brydon,  Dr,  510,  511 

Buchanan,  Francis,  345 

Bukkur,  499,  500,  527,  529,  530,  532 

Bundelkhand,  263,  265-7,  363,  374,  398, 

583 

Bundi,  380,  385 
Burdwan,  422,  423,  444;  ceded  to  the 

English,  1 68,  206,  593 
Burgoyne,  General  John,  184-7 
Burgoyne,  General  Sir  John,  293 
Burhanpur,  39, 40, 256, 266;  Treaty  of,  580 
Burke,  Edmund,  203;  on  the  Company, 
182,  186-8,  191,  192,  194;  on  Fox's  bills, 
196,  197,  199;  on  the  Company's  ser- 
vants, 198;  on  the  India  Act,  202;  on  the 
governor-general's     powers,     203;     on 
Nandakumar's  trial,  235;  on  the  Arcot 
debt,  273,  355;  on  presents,  303;  on 
Tanjore,  279;  on  Indian  correspondence, 
319;  on  Shore,  350;  attacks  Hastings, 

205,216,233,247,307^- 
Burke,  William,  279 
Burma,  76,  324,  558^?.;  first  war,  542, 

559,  560,  577;  second  war,  561,  562; 

administration  of,  562  sqq. 
Burnell,  A.  C.,  quoted,  53 
Burnes,  Sir  Alexander,  491-3,  496,  497, 

499,  500,  502,  505,  506,  508,  509,  523, 

526,  527 

Burnes,  Charles,  506 
Burnes,  James,  523 
Burney,  Fanny,  307,  560 
Burney,  Major  Henry,  560,  568 
Burr,  Colonel,  380 
Bussy,  Charles  Castelnau  de,  takes  Jinji, 

127;  in  the  Deccan,  128,  132,  134^., 

145,    '47,    I5i>    *52,    158,    162,    274; 

English  plans  against,  157;  his  recall, 

162,  165;  expedition  of  1782,  287,  324, 

325 

Cabral,  Antonio,  23 

Cabral,  Jorge,  18,  19 

Cabral,  Pedro  Alvarez,  5,  6 

Cachar,  559,  578 

Caillaud,  Colonel  John,  166-9,  274 

Cairo,  I,  2,  ii,  328 

Calcutta  and  Fort  William,  105,  107,  112, 
*49»  '53»  '57,  158,  171*  172,  *74>  *75» 
177,  i79»  210,  230,  415,  453,  511,  514, 
559,  560,  562,  564,  566,  593;  foundation 
of,  1 08 ;  early  history,  113;  courts  at,  1 1 3 ; 
taken  by  Siraj-ud-daula,  139,  141,  142, 
144,  148,  153;  defences,  142,  143;  re- 
covered, 145-7,  205,  590,  592;  customs 
house,  208;  zamindary  lands,  416 

Calcutta  Review,  the,  §38 

Calicut,  trade,  i;  kingdom  of,  3;  Portu- 
guese at,  5-10,  1 8,  20,  21,  25;  Dutch  at, 

<'  33»  49>  51  >  hostile  to  Cochin,  30;  French 

P  at,  74;  town  of,  3,  51,  68,  386 

Call,  Sir  John,  160 

Camac,  Major  Jacob,  270 


INDEX 


663 


Camara,  Jose  da,  264 

Cambay,  10,  19,  22,  23,  40,  257,  376; 
Gulf  of,  78 

Gambaya,  kingdom  of,  see  Gujarat 

Cambridge  Modern  History,  quoted,  538 

Camoens,  Luiz  de,  18 

Campbell,  Sir  Archibald,  320,  356 

Campbell,  Sir  Archibald,  559,  560,  565 

Campbell,  Colonel  John,  288 

Canary  Islands,  330 

Canning,  Captain,  559 

Canning,  Charles  John,  Lord,  583,  585; 
and  the  Moghul,  607 

Canning,  George,  320,  321 

Canton,  494 

Cantoo  Babu,  see  Krishna  Kantu  Nandi 

Cape  Comorin,  68,  72,  383 

Cape  of  Good  Hope,  2,  28,  31,  62,  63,  74, 

^  76,  77,  163,  326,  329 

Cape  Verde,  2 

Capuchins,  the,  62 

Caradiva,  48 

Carnac,  General  John,  in  Bengal,  169, 170, 
174,  176;  in  Bombay,  264,  265 

Carnarvon,  Lord,  310 

Carnatic,  34,  35,  41,  69,  117  sqq.,  273  sqq., 
355  SW>  assignment  of  revenues,  290-2; 
revenue  system,  462  sqq. ;  dependence  on 
the  empire,  591 ;  title  of  nawab  of —  ex- 
tinguished, 586,  591,  606 

Caroline,  the,  privateer,  330 

Caron,  Frangois,  45,  66-71 

Carrier,  John,  180,  413 

Casearius,  Johannes,  53 

Caspian  Sea,  48q 

Castlereagh,  Lord,  315,  320 

Castries,  Marquis  de,  324,  325,  327 

Castro,  Dom  Jo5o  de,  16,  17 

Cawnpore,  374.  575 

Ceded  Districts,  the,  471,  475,  478 

Cedeme,  20 

Central  Asia,  331 

Central  India,  570,  571,  574,  576,  577,  581 

Central  Provinces,  574 

Ceylon,  17,  56,  57,  62,  120;  Portuguese  in, 
8,  24  sqq.;  Dutch  in,  32,  37,  38,  41  sqq., 
5J »  57 »  85,  87;  rebellions  against  the 
Butch,  54;  Treaty  of  1766,  55;  French 
attack,  bi,  66-8;  Portuguese  and  Dutch 
influence,  402;  English  in,  285,  326,  329, 
400  sqq. 

Chahar  Mahal,  the,  138,  145,  152 

Chait  Singh,  2*0,  295*70.,  301,  302,  309; 
Impey's  affidavits,  246,  301;  vote  on, 
3<>7>3°8,3io 

Chale,  21 

Chalias,  the,  51,  54 

Chambal  river,  380,  579, 

Chambers,  Sir  Robert,  230 

Champion,  Colonel  Alexander,  177,  219, 
220,222,232,304 

Chanda  district,  367 

Chanda  Sahib,  117,  118,  126,  130,  133, 
159,  179 


Chandernagore,  73,  137,  139,  142;  taken 

by  Clive,  146,  147,  157,  158;  refortified, 

278 

Chand  Kaur,  546,  547 
Chandragupta  Maurya,  394 
Chandrakant,  558 
Chandu  Lai,  585 
Changama,  battle  of,  276 
Chaonga,  532 
Charak,  550 
Charikar,  507 

Charles  II,  50,  102,  104;  his  charters,  95 
Charnock,  Job,  107,  108 
Charpentier,  Francois,  63,  65 
Charters,  Samuel,  427,  430,  431 
Chatham,  Lord,  184,  187,  593 
Chatter  Singh,  554 
Chattisgarh  district,  367 
Chaugula,  the,  386 
Chaul,  9,  261 ;  siege  of,  20,  21 
Chauth,  118,  394.395*398 
Cheduba  island,  562 
Chenab,  the,  555,  556 
Cherry,  G.  F.,  351 
Chetpattu,  158 
Chet  Singh,  545 
Chevalier,  — ,  323,  324 
Chhapa,  397 
Chicacole,  136,  137 
Chirngmai,  568 
Chikka  Rayalu,  118 
Chilaw,  54,  55 
Child,  Sir  John,  102,  103 
Child,  Sir  fosia,  96,  97,  101,  IO2 
Chilianwala,  battle  of,  555,  556 
Chimnaji  Appa,  256,  371 
Chimnaji  Bhonsle,  268,  269 
China,  1 7, 3 1 , 36, 41 , 76, 90 ;  Portuguese  in, 

13;   English  in,   in;   Danes  in,   115; 

Ostenders  in,   115;  Prussians  in,   no; 

Swedes    in,    115;    Sikhs    attack,    546; 

attacks  Burma,  558 
Chinapatam,  see  Madras 
Chinese  in  Burma,  564,  568 
Chingiz  Khan,  20 
Chingleput,    131,    161,   284;   district,  SM 

Jfagir,  the 

Chinsura,  41,  154,  155 
Chitaldrug,  34 , 
Chitnis,  the,  388 
Chitpavan  sect,  385 
Chhtagong,  town,  107,  108,  562,  564,  566; 

district,  1 68,  206,  558,  593 
Chittur,  475 
Chitu,  ^77,  380 
Chitur  Singh,  372 
Chunar,  296 
Churchill,  205 

Cide  Bofata,  see  Sayf-ul-muluk  Miftah 
Cis-Satlej  Sikhs,  see  Sikhs 
Clarendon,  Lord,  494 
Clarke,  Sir  Alured,  349 
Clavering,  General  Sir  John,  189, 191,  231, 

236,  239,  298,  419,  420,  421,  4«5>  5995 


664 


INDEX 


Clavering,  General  Sir  John  (continued) 
character,  326,  414;  claims  the  chair, 
228;  death,  228 

deghorn,  Hugh,  401,  402 

Clerk,  Sir  George  Russell,  508,  511,  518, 
545,547 

dive,  Edward,  Lord,  321,  339,  341,  343, 
?58,  359 

Ghve,  Robert,  Lord,  112,  117,  140,  234, 
323»  589j  601;  in  the  Carnatic,  129-31, 
154;  takes  Gheria,  1  14;  returns  to  India, 
157;  at  Fort  St  David,  1*4;  his  first 
government,  141  sqq.t  158,  ibb,  168,  170, 
171,  205,  2  1  5,  290  ;  takes  Chandernagore, 
139;  his  jaeir,  153,  175,  206;  cooperates 
against  Lally,  101;  nis  second  govern- 
ment, 174.  sqq.y  409,  593,  596,  597,  599; 
his  views  in  1  765,  251  ;  his  Military  Fund, 
1  80;  attacked  in  parliament,  181,  184, 
185,  187;  on  the  Company,  183,  187, 

dose/  Colonel  Barry,  345,  346,  361 

Coalition,  the,  181 

Cochin,  3,  68;  Portuguese  at,  5-8,  10,  11, 

13,  14,  18,   19,  25,  26;  taken  by  the 

Dutch,  4£-5*»  85;  raja  of,  335;  as  pro- 

tected state,  574 

Cockburn,  Colonel  William,  264,  265 
Coen,  Jan  Pietersoon,  32,  39,  40,  60 
Coimbatore,  288,  336,  337,  343;  revenue 

system  in,  471 
Coinage,  ceases  to  bear  Moghul  super- 

scription, 606 

Colbert,  Jean-Baptiste,  63-8,  71,  74,  75 
Colebrooke,  Henry  Thomas,  431 
Coleroon  river,  125,  129 
Collectors,  see  Revenue 
Colombo,  53,  54,  406, 

guese  in,  25-7,  43,  44, 

the  Dutch,  47,  52,  85;  t 

lish,  401,  402 
Columbus,  Christopher,  x 
Colvin,  Sir  Auckland,  quoted,  490,  498 
Golvin,  John  Russell,  49°-4»  5°3,  504,  5<>8, 

511,565      T     J 
Combermere,  Lord,  577 
Gonflans,  Marquis  de,  162 
Conjeeveram,  130,  162,  283 
Conolly,  Captain  Arthur,  504 
Conolly,  Edward,  505 
Constantinople,  278,  340 
Cooke,  Humphrey,  156 


7,  408;  Portu- 
$, 4»J  taken  by 
ken  by  the  Eng- 


Coote, Sir  Eyre,  152,  163-5,  169,  170,  232; 
commands  in  Bengal,  229,  230;  in  second 
Mysore  War,  269,  284-7,  290,  292,  293 

Cope,  Captain  John,  125,  127 

Coral  companies,  63 

Corbin,  —  ,  568 

Corbin,  the,  61 

Cornwallis,  Lord,  177,  178,  181,  203,  212, 
244,  3«o»  596;  Dundas  on,  195;  appoint- 
ment and  early  career,  434;  separate 
powers,  317;  patronage,  318,  319;  re- 


Cornwallis,  Lord  (continued) 
forms,  430,  433  J0?.,  456,  461;  third 
Mysore  War,  280,  326,  334  sgq.9  366; 
organises  Baramahal,  467;  and  Benares, 
299,  306;  and  Oudh,  306,  347;  and  the 
Carnatic,  356,  357,  359,  360;  and  the 
Sidi,  369;  later  appointment  and  govern- 
ment, 338,  375;  policy  towards  the 
Indian  states,  570,  577,  580,  603;  cha- 
racter, 437 

Coromandel  Coast,  31-41,  49,  55,  57,  69, 
71,  83,  87,  92,  93,  103,  113,  120 

Coster,  — ,  42-4 

Cotton,  Sir  Willoughby,  500,  502,  505, 506 

Gouper,  Sir  George,  584,  585,  587 

Court,  General,  542 

Gourteen,  Sir  William,  90,  91 

Covelong,  131 

Covenanted  servants  of  the  East  India 
Company,  177,  178,  318;  Burke  on,  iojB; 
W.  Hastings  on,  198;  provision  for  trial 
of,  202,  203;  Hastings'  reform  of,  211, 
212;  salaries  under  Hastings,  213;  in- 
eligible as  governor-general,  320;  re- 
forms of  Cornwallis,  433  sqq.;  at  Madras, 
467 

Cox,  Captain,  559 

Craig,  General  Sir  James,  349,  351 

Gricklade,  230 

Croftes,  Charies,  416,  425,  427,  430,  431 

Croissant,  the,  61 

Crommelin,  Richard,  249 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  treaty  with  Portuguese, 
85;  and  the  Dutch  War,  86;  his  charter, 
80,91,94,95,  103,106 

Cuddalore  and  Fort  St  David,  123,  124, 
127,  144;  English  factory,  104,  113,  130; 
Dupleix  attacks,  122;  English  head- 
quarters, 125;  taken  by  Lally,  140,  159; 
occupied  by  Bussy,  287;  battle  of,  287 

Cuddapah,  118,  128,  337 

Cunha,  Nino  da,  13-5 

Cunha,  Tristao  da,  8,  9,  1 1 

Cunningham,  J.  D.,  quoted,  540, 543,  544, 

549 

Curia  Muria  Islands,  7 
Currie,  Sir  Frederick,  554,  555,  583 
Customs  duties,  Maratha,  397;  internal, 

208, 467,  481  Aboard  of,  213 
Cutch,  523,576 
Cuttack,  268,  269,  367,  374 

Daatzerom,  Dutch  at,  37 

Dabo,  battle  of,  537 

Dacca,  172,  226,  445,  453,  558;  English 
factory  at,  106,  148;  customs  house  at, 
208;  provincial  council  of,  422 

Dacoity,  456,  457,  563,  565,  568 

Dacres,  P.  M.,  414, 


Dada    Sahib,   see 

Khasgi-wala 
Dadula,  532 
Dadur,499,5i5 
Daftardar,  the,  388 


iiinath   Rao;   set 


INDEX 


665 


535 


Dalhousie,  Lord,  321;  and  the  Sikhs,  554 
sqq.;  and  Burma,  561,  562;  and  the 
Indian  states,  574,  581-7,  591 ;  and  the 
Moghul  emperor,  606,  607 

Dalip  Singh,  547,  553 

Dallas,  Robert,  309 

Daman  Gaekwad,  257 

Damalcheri  Pass,  1 18 

Daman,  19,  20,  23,  68,  79,  264 

Dambudenia,  406 

Danes,  the,  in  India;  the  East  India  Com- 
pany, 114;  expedition  to  Ceylon,  42; 
breach  with  England,  330 

Danubyu,  559 

Darakhdars,  the,  388 

Darbar  kharch,  388 

Darien,  98 

Darogas,  the,  445,  452,  474,  4&> 

Daulat  Rao  Sindhia,  367,  369,  371,  372, 
578;  and  the  English,  373  sqq.,  380  sqq., 
305,  539,  570,  580 

Daulatabad,  140 

Davie,  Major,  405,  406 

Davy,  Dr,  407 

Daylesford,  203,  312 

Decaen,  — ,  329-32,  604 

Deccan,  the,  101 ;  subahdar  of,  117;  Bussy 
in,  1 34  sqq.,  151.  See  also  Nizam,  the 

Declaratory  Act,  the,  315 

Dehra  Ghazi  Khan,  491,  495 

Dehra  Ismail  Khan,  495 

Delarche,  Henri,  132 

Delft,  the,  33 

Delhi,  sultanat  of,  3;  city  of,  23,  in,  113, 
*35»  153,  169,  180,  216,  306,  324.,  380, 
549,  57i,  573,  577,  607;  occupied  by 
Marathas,  215,  253,  363,  364,  597; 
plundered  by  Rohillas,  365,  366;  taken 
by  the  English,  374,  539,  604,  605;  the 

1 C^. j.1 TN! .    ?    t_1 ^  —  C  -    4-l%«» 


palace,  607;  the  Diwan-i-khas, 

magazine,  607 
della  Valle,  Pictro,  62 
den  Broecke,  Pieter  van,  39,  40 
Dennie,  Brigadier,  501,  505 
Deogaon,  Treaty  of,  374 
der  Haghen,  Admiral  Steven  van,  33 
der  Meyden,  Adriaan  van,  47 
Deslandes,— ,  72,73 
Desmukh,  the,  387,  388,  396 


Despande,  the,  387,  396 
Devenampatnam,  Dutch 

See  also  Cuddalore 
Devikottai,  125 
Dewan,  the,  388 
Dewas,  state  of,  571 
Dhaboi,  267 

Dhar,  fort,  257;  state,  571 
Dharapuram,  287,  343 
Dharmapala,  26,  27 
Dharna,  398 
Dharwar,  336,  397 
Dhian  Singh,  545-7 


at,  33,  37,  42. 


Dhondu  Pant,  alias  Nana  Sahib,  586 

Dias,  Bartholomeu,  5 

Dickinson,  Captain,  562 

Diemen,  Antonie  van,  32,  42 

Dig,  battle  of,  375 

Dindigul,  taken  by  the  English,  287;  ceded, 
337,  467;  revenue  settlement,  474,  475 

Dinghi,  555 

Diu,  10,  13,  14,  23,  25;  first  siege,  15; 
second  siege,  16;  French  visit,  61 

Divy  Island,  126 

Diwanni  of  Bengal,  176, 177, 183, 185, 188, 
206,  409*2?., ,448,  529,  593,  596;  aboli- 
tion of  naib  diwans,  209 

Diwanni  adalats,  415,  418,  421,  425,  440, 

^443,453 
Doddington,  the,  157 
Dominicans,  the,  at  Goa,  2 1 
Dorin,  J.  A.,  584 
Dost 'AH  Khan,  117,  118 
Dost  Muhammad  Khan,  486, . 
496,  498,  499,  501,  503-5,  567,  i 

543-6,555,557       J 
Dow,  Colonel  Alexander,  423 
Downton,  Nicholas,  79 
Drake,  Sir  Francis,  24,  76 
Drake,  Roger,  142,  156,  291 
Drakensteyn,   Adriaan  van   Rheede   tot, 

36-8,  53,  58 

Draper,  Daniel,  263 

Draper,  Lieutenant-colonel  Sir  William, 
i bo,  162 

Du  Bausset,  — ,  132 

Ducarel,  G.  G.,  423,  424 

Du  Chemin,  — ,  285 

Dudpatli,  559 

Dudrenec,  Chevalier,  366,  368 

Duff,  Grant,  quoted,  257,  333 

Dmf,  the,  34 

Du  Mans,  Pere  Raphael,  62 

Dumas,  Benoist,  75,  126 

Dumbara,  406 

Duncan,  Jonathan,  299,  435,  436, , 

Dundas,  Henry,  192,  193,  325, 
348,  356,  361,  434-75  hw  I 
194-6,  355;  and  W.  Hastings,  202,  262, 
307,  308;  as  President  of  the  Board,  314; 
on  foreign  policy,  350;  and  Ceylon,  403; 
on  revenue,  450,  451 

Dundas,  Robert,  458 

Dundia  Wagh,  346 

Dupleix,  Joseph,  323,  343,  558;  and  the 
Dutch,  59;  his  policy,  75,  117,  125,  154, 
600;  on  Bengal,  142;  desires  neutrality, 
1 19,  120;  quarrels  with  La  Bourdonnais, 
12 1 ;  relations  with  Anwar-ud-din,  122, 
591;  attacks  Fort  St  David,  122,  12:3; 
defends  Pondichery,  123,  124;  the 
struggle  in  the  Carnatic,  126  sqq.,  145, 
150,  176 

Durand,  Sir  Henry,  501,  565-7 
Durani  tribe,  the,  483-5,  4&9>  3°i»  5<>5» 

515.  See  also  A 
Durjan  Sal,  577 


666 


INDEX 


Du  Saussay,  — ,131 

Dutch  in  India,  the;  early  voyages,  28  sqq.; 
company  founded,  30;  wars  with  tne 
Portuguese,  31,  82,  83;  organisation  in 
India,  31;  on  the  Coromandel  Coast, 
*3  sqq.;  early  relations  with  the  English, 
82-4,  86,  91;  the  Company's  servants, 
37;  in  Gujarat,  39,  40;  in  Bengal,  40, 41 ; 
in  Ceylon,  41  sqq.;  the  Ten-year  Truce, 
44-6;  renewal  of  war,  47;  peace  with  the 
Portuguese,  50,  85;  organisation  in 
Malabar,  51;  in  Ceylon,  52.^.;  reli- 
gious policy,  53;  relations  with  Kandi, 
54>  55;  sea-power,  56;  third  Anglo- 
Dutch  War,  56;  finance,  57,  60;  defects 
of  organisation,  57  sqq. ;  oppose  the 
French,  59,  61,  67,  72,  104,  153;  oppose 
Clive,  60,  153,  154, 162,  1 06; in  the  War 
of  the  American  Revolution,  285,  283, 
401;  projected  French  alliance,  325;  in 
the  Revolutionary  and  Napoleonic  Wars, 
326,  329,  401  sqq.;  convention  of  1814, 
596;  in  Burma,  558 

Du  Tremblay,  Pere  Joseph,  62 

East  India  Company  (English),  early 
voyages,  76-8;  founded,  30,  77;  relations 
with  the  Portuguese,  76-8,  80-6,  113; 
relations  with  the  Dutch,  56,  59,  60, 
82-6,  91,  104;  early  relations  with  the 
French,  72, 104;  relations  with  the  Danes, 
115;  Malayan  factories,  77;  Hawkins's 
mission,  77;  Middleton's  voyages,  78; 
Roe's  mission,  80;  in  Persia,  81,  82;  de- 
velopment of  trade,  87  sgq.9  91-4,  96, 
1085^.;  on  the  Coast,  88,  89;  early 
finance,  89;  Courteen's  association,  90; 
Assada  association,  91;  Cromwell's 
charter,  94,  95;  Charles  IPs  charters,  95, 
96;  during  the  Revolution,  97,  98;  the 
new  company,  98,  99,  104,  105;  union  of 
the  companies,  99,  100;  Child's  policy, 
loi,  102;  the  Moghul  War,  102,  103, 
107,  1 08;  organisation  in  India,  102; 
troubles  from  pirates,  103;  Surman's 
embassy,  1 1 1 ,  112;  influence  of  dive's 
victories,  175;  relations  with  the  state, 
181  sqq.9  278,  592;  constitution  under 
Regulating  Act,  189,  190;  Maratha 
policy,  261,  262;  legislation  regarding, 
1786-1818,  31 3  saq.,  455;  loses  trade 
monopoly,  313;  relations  with  the  Board, 
314-6;  Afghan  policy,  498, 499,  505.  See 
also  Justice,  Military  forces,  Covenanted 
servants,  Secret  Committees  and  the 
Indian  presidencies  under  their  several 
names 

East  India  Mutiny  Act,  180 

Ecclesiastical  authorities,  313 

Eck,  Governor  van,  55 

Eden,  William,  first  Baron  Auckland,  596. 
See  also  Auckland,  Lord 

Education,  grant  under  act  of  1813,  313; 
Munro's  enquiry,  481 ;  in  Burma,  565, 566 


Edwardes,  Sir  Herbert,  554,  555 

Egerton,  Colonel,  263-5 

Egypt,  1,9,  15;  attacks  the  Portuguese,  9, 
13;  Napoleon  in,  327,  328,  331,  339; 
English  projects  in,  327 

Eheylapola,  407,  408 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  24,  76,  77 

Elizabethpol,  489 

Ellenborough,  Lord,  513,  578;  and  the 
Afghan  War,  513^.,  529*  and  Sind, 
522,  528  J??.;  and  the  Sikhs,  544,  546, 
547,  549,  5795  and  Gwalior,  579;  and 
the  directors,  579;  and  the  Moghul 
emperor,  606 

Elliot,  Alexander,  598 

Elliot,  Sir  Gilbert,  see  Minto,  Lord 

Ellis,  Sir  Henry,  490 

Ellis,  William,  172,  173 

Ellore,  136 

Elphinstone,  Mountstuart,  quoted,  222, 
388,  390,  397,  582;  mission  to  Peshawar, 
487;  resident  at  Poona,  379;  in  the 
Deccan,  571 ;  governor  of  Bombay,  321 ; 
on  the  Afghan  question,  498 

Elphinstone,  General  W.  G.  K.,  505-7, 
510,  511,  515 

England,  Brigadier,  515,  516,  519,  530 

Enkhuizen,  29 

Entertainment  allowance,  234 

Erivan,  489 

Erskine,  Sir  James,  202,  309 

Etheraja,  34 

Ethiopia,  Portuguese  missionaries  in,  5 

Eurasians,  143 

Evans,  Sir  De  Lacy,  489 

Evelyn,  John,  96 

Excise  revenue,  564,  568 

Eyloff,  Pieter  Ysaac,  33,  34 

Eyre,  Sir  Charles,  108 

Fairfax,  Lord,  91 

Faizabad,  301 ;  Treaty  of,  232,  233 

Faizulla  Khan,  220,  303  sqq. 

Fakr-ud-din,  607 

Falck,  Iman  Wiflem,  55 

Famine  policy,  481,  402 

Fane,  Sir  Henry,  497,  499 

Faridkot,  540,  541 

Farmer,  W.,  261,  264,  265,  267 

Farrer,  — ,  235,  236,  238,  239  . 

Farrukhabad,  375 

Farrukhsiyar,  104,  in 

Fatehabad,  511 

Fatehgarh,  347 

Fatehpur  Sikri,  365 

Fateh  Singh,  118 

Fateh  Singh  Gaekwad  I,  257,  258,  267, 

268,  270,  271 
Fateh  Singh  Gaekwad  II,  368,  381,  382, 

575 

Fath  'Ali  Khan  Talpura,  484,  522 
Fath  'Ali  Shah  Kajar,  486,  489,  490 
Fath  Jang,  519 
Fath  Khan  Barakzai,  485*8,  541 


INDEX 


667 


Faujdari  adalats,  415 

Fcrreira,  Miguel,  12 

Ferricr,J.  P.,  483 

Fez,  24 

Finkenstcin,  Treaty  of,  331 

Firozpur,  499,  512,  520,  534,  542,  544* 

„. 548-5i»  555 

Firozshah,  550,  551 

Firoz-ud-din  Sadozai,  488 

Fitch,  Ralph,  76 

Fitzwilliam,  Lord,  199 

Flcetwood,  Edward,  558 

Fletcher,  Sir  Henry,  199 

Fletcher,  Sir  Robert,  174,  179,  180,  280 

Flint,  Lieutenant  William,  284 

Floyer,  Charles,  125,  128 

Foote's  Nabob,  283 

Forde,  Colonel  Lionel,  155,  162,  207 

Forests,  Maratha  revenue  from,  397; 
Burmese,  ^66,  567 

Fort  Dauphin,  62,  66 

Fort  Gustavus,  see  Chinsura 

Fort  Macdowall,  406 

Fort  St  David,  72.  See  also  Cuddalore 

Fort  St  George,  see  Madras 

Fort  Louis,  see  Pondichery 

Fort  Victoria,  see  Bankot 

Fort  William,  see  Calcutta 

Fouquet,  Nicolas,  62 

Fowke,  Joseph,  235,  420 

Fox,  H.M.S.,  561 

Fox,  Charles  James,  181,  186,  191,  223, 
2 47)  309,  318;  his  India  bills,  194 
sag.,  20 1,  314,  355;  his  coalition  with 
North,  198-200,  434;  on  the  India  Act, 
202 

Foxcroft,  George,  104 

France,   lie  de,  see  Mauritius 

Francis,  Philip,  189,  203,  212,  213,  224, 
227,  228,  231,  236,  245,  507,  426,  435, 
437,  599,  600,  601 ;  his  character,  225, 
220,  414,  419;  compact  with  Hastings, 
229;  leaves  India,  230;  and  Nanda- 
kumar,  239,  240;  and  Chait  Singh,  295; 
views  on  revenue,  423-5,  430 

Franciscans,  the,  18,  21 

French  in  India,  the;  early  voyages,  61,  62; 
relations  with  the  Dutch,  56,  59,  61, 
67  sqq.9  72, 104;  relations  with  the  Portu- 
guese, 6-1;  projected  companies,  61,  62; 
in  Madagascar,  62,  65-7;  Colbert's  com- 
pany, 63-5 ;  early  factories,  66 ;  La  Haye's 
expedition,  56,  67-70,  400;  at  Pondi- 
chery, 70,  71 ;  in  Burma,  558;  early  rela- 
tions with  the  English,  72,  104;  Martin's 
policy,  73;  Law's  company,  74;  in 
Bengal,  599;  struggle  with  the  English, 
see  Dupleix;  war  of  the  American  Revo- 
lution, 281;  intrigues  with  Marathas, 
261, 266;  assist  Hyder  *Ali,  268, 285  sqq.; 
adventurers  in  India,  323,  371 ;  projected 
Dutch  alliance,  325;  influence  of  the 
Revolution,  326;  designs  on  Portuguese 
settlements,  329;  in  the  Napoleonic  War, 


French  in  India  (continued) 
set  Napoleon;  relations  with  the  Sikhs, 
544.    See  also  Pondichery,  Chanderna- 
gore,  Mane" 

Fryer,  Dr  John,  101 

Fulaili  river,  536,  537 

Fullarton,  Colonel  William,  287,  288 

Fulta,  144,  147 

Gaekwad,  the,  249, 250, 252, 254, 257, 368, 
372,  373,  375.  379,  3«2;  treaty  with 
Fateh  Singh,  267;  as  protected  state,  57$, 
575,  578.  See  also  Anand  Rao,  Damaji, 
Fateh  Singh  Govind  Rao,  Kanhoji, 
Sayaji 

Galle,  25,41,44-6,  51,52 

Galloway,  General  Sir  A.,  607 

Gama,  Christovao  da,  16 

Gama,  Estavao  da,  6,  16 

Gama,  Vasco  da,  i,  2,  16;  first  voyage,  3; 
at  Calicut,  4;  second  voyage,  6,  7; 
viceroy,  13 

Gambier,  Robert,  256 

Gaming  farms,  568 

Gandammak,  487,  506,  511,  519 

Ganga  Bai,  255,  256 

Gangadhar  Sastri,  379 


Ganga  Govind  Singh,  427 
Ganges,  the,  92,  107,  146, 

324,  373,  38i,  558 
Janjkottai,  337 


218,  219,  296, 


Ganjkottai,  337 

Gardane,  General,  his  mission,  331 

Garhwal,  378 

Garo,  546 

Gaunggyok,  560,  566 

Gawilgarh,  374 

Gaya,  169 

Gayer,  Sir  John,  102,  105 

Gazzalhatti  Pass,  336 

Geldria  Fort,  see  Pulicat 

Genoa,  i 

George  III,  181,  307,  308,  598;  and  the 

India  bills,  199,  200;  "sovereign  of  the 

seas,"  594 

Georgia,  331,  486,  487,  489 
Germain,  Lord  George,  186 
Ghafur  Khan,  573 
Ghazipur,  zamindar  of,  233 
Ghazi-ud-din  Khan,  135,  136 
Ghazni,  484,  488,  501,  502,  512-5,  517-9 
Gheria,  114;  captured,  157 
Ghilzai  tribe,  485,  488,  504-6,  511,  519 
Ghorian,  49^ 
Ghulam  'All,  522 
Ghulam  Kadir,  365,  366,  603 
Ghulam  Shah,  526 
Gilgit,  547 

Gillespie,  Sir  R.  R.,  378 
Gilpin,  Major,  301,  307 
Gingens,  Captain  Rodolf  de,  128,  129 
Giriskh,  517 
Gleig,  Rev.  G.  R.,  quoted,  290,  306,  308, 

343,  421 
Globe,  the,  83 


668 


INDEX 


3,  i3»  i5-i7>  19*  23,  26,  29,  31,  34, 
9,  68,  79,  80,  91,  1 13,  264,  346,  382; 
;n  by  the  Portuguese,  10,  n;  their 


Goa,  3,  i 

43-9, 

taken 

headquarters,  14;  see  of,  15;  Jesuits  at, 

18;  siege  of,  20,  21;  blockaded  by  the 

Dutch,  32,  42,  44, 83,  85;  Dutch  hanged 

at,  33,  39;  Convention  of,  85,  87,  89,  90 

Goalpara,  558 

Godavari  river,  251 

Goddard,  General  William,  229,  266-70 

Godeheu,  Charles  Robert,  132,  133,  137, 

138,  157 

Godolphin,  Lord,  99,  100 
Godwin,  Sir  Henry  Thomas,  561 
Goens,RijckIof  van,  48-50, 56, 58,60,69, 70 
Goeree,  Adriaan,  39 
Gogala,  15 

Gohad,  267,  268,  270,  375 
Golconda,  35,  36,  88,  589;  Dutch  relations 

with,  33-5,  38;  Dutch  factory  at,  37; 

conquered  by  Moghuls,  38,   104,  590; 

attacks  French  at  St  Thomd,  56,  69-71 ; 

English  relations  with,  83 
Goldsborough,  Sir  John,  102 
Gombroon,  alias  Bandar  Abbas,  French  at, 

66;  English  at,  81,  82,  87,  90,  93,  94 
Gondhalis,  the,  397 
Gondhs,  the,  608 
Gooty,  138,344 
Gopika  Bai,  250,  251,  254 
Gorakhpur,  378,  380 
Goring,  C.,  421 
Gotki,  532 

Gough,  Hugh,  Lord,  549~5i>  554~6»  579 
Goupil,  Louis  J6rome,  136 
Governor-general,  powers  of,  189, 190, 194, 

203,  206,  280,  316;  appointment  of,  203; 

separate  powers,  3 1 7 
Govinda  Chand  Mitra,  237 
Govindpur,  108 
Govind  Rao  Gaekwad,  257,  267,  268,  368, 

Grafton,  Duke  of,  278 

Graham,  J.,  414 

Grand  Alliance,  the,  73 

Grand  Anglais,  the,  see  Marie  de  Bon  Secours 

Grant,  Ensign,  406 

Grant,  Charles,  232,  360,  435,  436,  441, 

Grant,  Charles,  Lord  Glenelg,  320 
Grant,  James,  209,  398,  431,  432,  435-7, 

447  W- 

Grant,  Sir  John  Peter,  584 

Grasias,  the,  572 

Greenhill,  Henry,  89 

Gregory,  R.,  199 

Grcnville,  William  Wyndham,  198,  309 

Greville,  Charles  G.  F.,  509,  520 

Grey,  Charles,  second  Earl,  297,  309 

Grey,  George,  282 

Griffin,  Sir  Lepel,  quoted,  542,  545 

Griffin,  Admiral  Thomas,  123 

Grose,  J.  H.,  114 

Guardafui,  Cape,  10,  17 


Gujarat,  kingdom  and  province,  3,  9,  12, 
14, 16, 19, 24, 32, 80, 261, 268, 374,  387; 
conquered  by  Moghuls,  22 ;  Dutch  fac- 
tories in,  39-41 ;  French  factories  in,  66; 
English  factories  in,  78,  87,  92 ;  Maratha 
state,  see  Gaekwad,  the 

Gujrat,  battle  of,  556 

Gulab  Singh,  546,  548,  549,  552,  553 

Gulbadan  Begam,  23 

Gulistan,  Treaty  of,  469 

Guntoor,  281,  282,  284,  334,  366,  370 

Gurdas,  210 

Gurkhas,  the,  377,  575;  war  with  the  Sikhs 
541;  regiments,  507 

Gurramkonda,  344 

Gwalior,  365,  497,  579,  580;  taken  by 
Popham,  268-70,  296;  restored  to 
Sindhia,  363,  375;  Treaty  of,  380,  381; 
state  of,  see  Sindhia 

Hafiz  Rahmat  Khan,  217,  219-22 

Hague,  the,  30,  44,  45,  5 

Haidarabad,  see  Hyderab 

Haidar  'AH,  see  Hyder  'Ali 

Haidar  Beg  Khan,  305,  347,  348 

Haidar  Jang,  140 

Haidar  Khan  Barakzai,  501 

Haidaru,  541 

Haidar-ud-din  Ghazi,  575,  578 

Hakulzai,  515 

Hala,  536 

Hamid  'Ali  Khan,  348 

Hamilton,  Charles,  221 

Hamilton,  William,  1 1 1 

Handia,  380 

Hanguraketa,  52 

Hannay,  Colonel,  222,  301,  302 

Hanwella,  54 

Hardinge,  Henry,  Lord,  513,  520;  and  the 

Sikhs,  549^.;  and  the  Indian  states, 

580,  583 

Hariharpur,  88,  106 
Harington,  J.  H.,  415,  431 
Hari  Pant  Phadke,  254,  257,  270,  271,  334, 

365 

Hari  Singh,  543 

Harkaras,  the,  394 

Harland,  Sir  Robert,  279 

Harris,  General  George,  340,  341,  346 

Hartley,  Colonel  James,  207 

Hasham  daftardar,  389 

Hashamnauis,  389 

Hashamphadnis,  389 

Hastings,  Marquess  of  (Lord  Moira),  375; 
and  the  Gurkhas,  378 ;  his  Maratha  policy, 
379,  385  W->  4w,  582;  and  the  Indian 
states,  570  sqq.}  578, 581 , 587 ;  his  adminis- 
trative reforms,  458,  459  sag.;  relations 
with  the  Moghul  emperor,  605,  606 

Hastings,  Warren,  316,  323,  356,  364,  436, 
437,  438,  439,  461,  589,  59IJ  early 
service,  147,  167, ,  1 72,  173,  175,  180, 
205  sqq. ;  on  Lord  Shelburne,  187;  on  the 
ating  Act,  182,  190;  on  the  Com- 


INDEX 


669 


Hastings,  Warren  (continued) 
pany,  183;  appointed  governor-general, 
189,  191 ;  continued  in  office,  192;  recall 
demanded,  193,  194.;  and  Fox's  bilk, 
I95>  196;  on  the  India  Act,  203;  on  the 
Company's  servants,  198;  his  patronage, 
319;  financial  policy,  295;  administra- 
tion, 1772-74,  205  J?0.,  598;  his  foreign 
policy,  177.2-74,  215^?;,  597,  598,  607; 
relations  with  the  majority,  225  sqq.9  280, 
599,  600;  resignation,  228;  Maratha 
policy,  254,  257,  259,  261-3,  265^71; 
relations  with  Rumbold,  281;  relations 
with  Macartney,  287-90, 292, 317 ;  policy 
towards  Mysore,  284,  285,  333,  363;  re- 
lations with  Ghait  Singh,  295*9?.;  Pre~ 
sents,  298,  302,  303;  treatment  of  the 
begams,  300;  treatment  of  Faizulla  Khan, 
303;  conduct  in  Oudh,  1784,  305;  rela- 
tions with  the  shahzada,  306,  60 1;  en- 
courages Suez  route,  327;  revenue  ad- 
ministration, 41 3  ;??.;  impeachment, 
181,  307  J00. 

Havaldar,  the,  589 

Havart,  Daniel,  56-8 

Havelock,  Captain  Henry,  512,  551,  560 

Hawkins,  William,  77,  78 

Hay,  William,  173 

Hayat  Muhammad  Khan,  266 

Hazara,  552,  554 

Ha&rinauis,  389 

Heath,  Captain  William,  108 

Heber,  Mrs,  406 

Hector,  the,  77 

Hedges,  William,  106 

Helmund,  the,  501 

Henrique,  Dom,  24,  26 

Henry  IV,  61 

Herat,  483-8,  490-8,  501-5 

Herbert,  Thomas,  62 

Heytesbury,  Lord,  490 

Himnson,  Nathaniel,  i 

Hi)Ui,  island  of,  107 

Hindu  Kush,  the,  502,  503,  519 

Hira  Singh,  547,  548 

Hislop,  Sir  Thomas,  376,  380,  381 

Hobart,  Lord,  317,  321,  357-&>>  468 

Hobhouse,  Sir  John  Cam  (Lord  Brough- 
ton),  493,  497-9,  501,  503-5,  527,  606 

Hodgson,  John,  476,  477 

Hodflon,  Major  William,  554 

Holkar,  family  of,  249,  250,  256,  257,  250, 
260,  262,  368,  381,  539,  570;  after  1818, 
57*,  573,  577*  See  <&<>  Jasvant  Rao, 
Malharji,  Malhar  Rao,  Kashi  Rao, 
Khande  Rao,  Tukoji,  Vithuji 

Hollond,  John,  281,  282,  317,  335 

Holmes,  Thomas,  265 

Holwell,  John  Zephaniah,  141,  143,  156, 
166-9 

Honawar,  286 

Honfleur,  61 

Hope,  the,  79 

Hornby,  William,  193,  262,  264-6 


102 


Houtraan,  Cornelb  de,  28-30,  76 
Howe,  Lord,  186 

Hughes,  Sir  Edward,  285,  287,  401 
Hugii  district,  416;  faujdar  of,  590 
Hugli  river,  41,  55,  60, 107,  115, 120, 145, 

Hugh  town,  145,  146,  148;  English  factory 
at,  88,  91,  xoo,  103,  1 06,  107;  customs 
house  at,  208 

Hulft,  Gerard,  47 

Humayun,  i^,  22 

Humayun  Mirza  Durani,  484 

Humberstone,  Colonel,  286 

Hundikaris,  397 

Hunter,  — ,  562,  563 

Huriki,  549 

Hurst,  G.,  423 

Husain  'Ali,  522,  534 

Hutchinson,  John  Hely,  328 

Huzur  Daftar,  385,  388 

Hu&ar  zilla  land,  416 


158;  province  of,  112,  134;  contingent, 
34.1,  586.  See  also  Nizam,  the 
Hyderabad  (Sind),  500,  522-4,  526,  527, 

529-37 

Hyder  'Ali,  51,  333,  346;  rise  to  power, 
275;  assists  Lally,  163, 164;  relations  with 
the  Marathas,  251-5, 259, 260,  276, 277; 
first  Mysore  War,  252,  275^.;  execu- 
tion of  treaty,  279;  relations  with  Nizam 
'Ali,  277;  relations  with  Bombay,  275, 
277,  279;  allies  against  the  English,  267, 
269;  his  Malabar  conquests,  282;  second 
Mysore  War,  268,  270,  271,  282^.; 
revenue  administration,  462, 463;  death, 
286;  character,  321 

Ibrahim  Husayn,  22 

Idalcao,  see  Yusuf  Adil  Khan 

Ilbert,  Sir  Courtenay,  quoted,  184,  202, 

247,  589 

lie  Dauphine,  see  Madagascar 
Ilmas  'Ali  Khan,  347,  351 
Imad-ul-mulk,  alias  Madre  Maluco,  19,  20 
Imam  Garh,  534,  535 
Imhoff,  Baron  van,  53,  54,  59 
Impey,  Captain,  569 
Impey,  Sir  Elijah,  226,  232,  235-8,  240, 

24 1 , 243-5, 30 1 , 302, 426 ;  impeached,  246 
Inams>  380,  387 
India  Act,  Pitt's,  181,  194,  200^.,  280, 

3 1 3,  355,  356»  358,  43<>,  595     ^ 
Indian  states,  relations  of  the  Company 

with,  §70  sqq. 
Indo-China,  559 

Indore,  252,  256,  369;  state  of,  see  Holkar 
Indus,  the,  327,  485,  485*  488,  49*,  495* 

497,  499>  5<>o>  508,  513*  5l6>  523>  524> 

5«5>  527>  528,  529*  53°>  53 1 »  532,  533> 
T  534,  535,  53?,LM2,  543,  545,  552 
Ingeram,  English  factory  at,  136,  139 


6yo 


INDEX 


Inquisition,  the,  18 

Interlopers,  95-7,  102,  109 

Internal  trade  of  Bengal,  169-72, 177, 178, 

208 

Irrawaddy,  the,  558 
Irrigation,  in  South  India,  463,  482 


Ismail 
Ismail 
Ispahan,  62 
Istalif, 
Itimad 


•5-7 

12 


Khan,  19, 


22 


abbar  Khan,  488,  501,  504 
Jacatra,  31,  32 
Jacob,  General  John,  538 
far  'Ali,  136 

a'far  Khan,  112 

affnapatam,  alias  Jaffna,  48, 51, 52, 85, 401 

agdaflak,  511,  519 

agir,  Clive's,  153,  206;  the  Company's, 
74,  467,  468,  471,  473,  474,  476,  482 
angir*  39,  77~9.J  Hawkins*  mission  to, 
77  sqq.;  Roe's  mission  to,  80  sqq. 

rahangir  Sadozai,  488 

raikottai,  335 

aintia,  559,  578 

raipur,  365,  374,  375,  380,  574,  578 

aitak,  378 
Jakat,  397 

Jalandnar  doab,  the,  552 
Jallalabad,  488,  495,  501,  502,  506,  507, 

509-18,  520,  546 
Jalla  Pandit,  548 
Jambi,  39 
Jamems,  the,  388 
James  I,  77,  80,  97 

ames  II,  96 

ames,  Commodore,  114 

ammu,  rajas  of,  545-8.  See  also  SuchetSingh 

amrud,  489,  491,  512,  543 

anjira,  the  Sidis  of,  101,  369 

ankoji  Rao  Sindhia,  578,  579 

anoji  Bhonsle,  250-2 
Jaora,  573 

apan,  31,  36,  61,  90 
jask,  81 
Jastipatti,  396 
Jasuds,  the,  394 

Jasvant  Rao  Holkar,  372,  373,  376;  and 
the  English,  374, 375 

asvant  Rao  Lad,  381 
Jats,  the,  252,  253,  323,  374 

ava,  29-32,  40-2,  55,  67,  76,  77,  332 

jawahir  Singh,  54.7,  548 

ayaji  Rao  Sindhia,  579 

edda,  i,  2,  9,  12,  13 

effreys,  Chief-justice,  96 
Jenkinson,  Charles  (Lord  Liverpool),  199 

essore,  4.16 

esuits,  toe,  3,  18 

hansi,  581-3 

helum,  the,  555,  556 
Jhusi  (Joosee),  299 


Jindan  Rani,  547,  548,  553 
Jinji,  117,  130,  131,  163,  384;  Dutch  rela- 
tions with.  33 ;  French  relations  with,  72 ; 
English  relations  with,  1 04 ;  taken  byBuny, 
127;  taken  by  the  English,  164;  river,  127 

iwan  Bakht,  007 

bao,  Dom,  41,  42 

odhpur  (Marwar),  366,  380 

bhar,  see  Sidis,  the 

bhnstone,  Captain,  407 

bhnstone,  Governor  George,  185,  192 

bhore,  32 

rones,  Sir  Harford,  331,  487 

'ones,  Sir  William,  436,  437,  445,  4.55,  461 

umna,  the,  92,  270,  354,  374,  380,  539, 


Jumus,  ic_ 

justice,  Maratha  administration  of, 
sqq. ;  early  courts  at  Bombay,  100, 1 14;  at 
Madras,  104,  589;  at  Calcutta,  590; 
Admiralty  courts,  102;  charter  of  1726, 
113;  Supreme  Court  of  Calcutta,  189; 
Company's  courts  in  Bengal,  415,  420, 
440;  proposed  amalgamation,  242  sqq., 
426;  Cornwallis's  reforms,  433,  434, 436, 
440,  443-5,  45°,  452-4;  Shore's  amend- 
ments, 456, 457 ;  Wellesley's  amendments, 
457;  Minto's  amendments,  457;  Lord 
Hastings'  amendments,  459,  4.60;  in 
Southern  India,  464,  472 ;  Bengal  system 
introduced,  474,  476-9;  modified,  480; 
in  Burma,  503,  564,  566;  use  of  Persian 
in,  563;  police  in  Bengal,  391,  451,  458, 
459,  464J  in  Madras,  474,  479,  480 


Kabaw  valley,  560 

Kabul,  483-5,  488,  401-6, 


49^  5°o,  507»  509»  5">»  5i5> 

Great  Bazaar,  519 
Kachhi,  500,  502 
Kafaristan,  483 
Kalanga,  378 
Kalat,  484,  500,  502-4 
Kalora,  tribe,  484,  522,  538,  543 
Kalpi,  262,  268 


Kalyan,  268,  270 

Kamal-ud-din,  235 

Kamaran,  12 

Kamavisdar,  the,  387,  389,  396 

Kamran  Mirza  Sadozai,  485,  486,  488,  490, 

492,  493»  497,  501,  5'4 
£anara,  5\  343,  47<>,  47J,  47g^ 
Kandahar,  87,  91,  483,  484,  486-8,  490-4, 

497,  499,  500-5,  509,  5i*-7>  5'9*  53O, 


543,  511 
Kandi,  34,  41-4,  46,  51,  54,  55,  69,  85,  400, 

401,403-8 
Kangra  district,  541 
Kanhoji  Gaekwad,  368,  375 
Kannanur,  3,  341  ;  Portuguese  at,  5-10,  12; 

taken  by  the  Dutch,  50,  85;  taken  by 

Macleod,  288  X 


INDEX 


671 


Kantu  Babu,  see  Krishna  Kantu  Nandi 

Kanund  Mohendargarh,  366 

Kanungos,  the,  41 1, 412, 428-30,  432,  460 

Karachi,  527,  529-32 

Karam  'Ali,  522 

Karauli,  583 

Karens,  the,  567 

Karikal,  75,  126,  1 60,  163 

Karim  Khan,  377 

Karja  patti,  396 

Karnal,  497,  549 

Karnatak,  387 

Karnul,  128,  378 

Karrak,  island  of,  487,  494 

Karvir,  377 

Karwar,  90,  103 

Kasauli,  549 

Kashi  Rao  Holkar,  376 

Kashmir,  484, 485, 487, 488, 495,  541,  542, 

547>  552»  553 
Kashmira  Singh,  547 
Kasijora  case,  243,  246,  247,  426 
Kasimbazar,  English  factory  at,  88,  106, 

142,  144,  148;  French  factory  at,  145 
Kasur,  549 
Kathiawad,  368,  379 
Kathmandu,  378,  379 
Kautiliya,  384, 387,  393 
Kavalgar,  the,  464,  472 
Kavari,  the,  129,  341 
Kavaripak,  action  at,  130 
Kaway  river,  337 
Kaye,  Sir  John,  quoted,  190, 491, 496,  503, 

506 

Kays,  islet  of,  48 
Kaysar  Mirza  Sadozai,  486 
Keane,  John,  Lord,  497,  499-502,  527 
Keating,  Colonel  Thomas,  257-60 
Kedda,  62 

Keigwin,  Richard,  102 
Kelly,  Colonel  Robert,  336 
Ken,  544 
Kenghung,  568 

Kcrjean,  Jacques  Desnos  de,  130 
Khadki,  battle  of,  380 
Khaibar  Pass,  491,  502,  512-4,  516,  520 
Khairpur,  522,  523,  526,  527,  530,  < 


,  210,  415,  416,  427,  447 
Khande  Rao,  275 
Khande  Rao  Holkar,  376 
Khandesh,  387 
Khanduji  Bhonslc,  368 
Khaneri,  island  of,  101 

Kharak  Singh,  545,  546 
Kharda,  battle  of,  328,  370,  371 
Khasgi-wala,  Dada,  579 
Khem  Savant,  of  Wadi,  3! 


Khudawand    Khan,    see    Khwaja    Safar 

Salmani 

Khudawand  Khan  Rajab,  20 
Khudkasht  ryot,  424 
Khulum,  504,  505 
Khurd  Kabul  Pass,  510,  519 
Khurram,  Prince,  see  Shah  Jahan 


Khwaja  Petrus,  148 

Khwaja  Safar  Salmani,  alias  Khudawand 

Khan,  15-17,  20 

Killpatrick,  Major  James,  144,  145,  150 
Kilwa,  8 

Kineer,  Major,  130 
King's  Bench,  court  of,  280,  315 
Kirkee,  see  Khadki 
Kirman,  483 
Kirti  Sri,  400 
Kishm,  island  of,  81,  82 
Kittur,  334,  365 
Kizilbashis,  the,  485,  488 
Kohandil,  484,  488,  492 
Koh-i-nur,  the,  487,  541 
Kohistan,  503,  505-7,  519 
Kokand,  504 
Kolaba,  369 

Kolhapur,  369-72,  377,  382 
Kolis,  the,  ^97 
Kondur,  102 
Konimedu,  104 
Konkan,  the,  371,  372,  379 
Kopargaon,  261,  364 
Kora,  215,  216,  218,  251,  309,  597 
Koregaon,  381 
Kosseir,  328 
Kotah,  366,  374,  380 
Kotte,  26 
Kotwal,  393 

Kranganur,  49,  50,  68,  335 
Krishna,  the,  128,  337,  364,  365 
Krishna  Kantu  Nandi,  421,  422 
Krishna  Rao  Kadarn,  Mama  Sahib,  579 
Krishnaraja  Udaiyar,  345,  578 
Kubilai  Khan,  23 
Kulkarni,  the,  386 
Kulu,  484 
Kumaon,  378,  379 
Kuran,  the,  397 
Kutb,  the,  007 
Kutiari,  69 

Kyaukpyu,  the,  562,  564 
Kyunok,  the,  563 


VL  .  , 

Khojak  Pass,  515 
Khorassan,  483-4, 488,  489 
Khosas,  the,  523 


La  Bourdonnais,  Bertrand-Frangois 
de,  119-22,  124,  1 60,  343 

La  Condamine,  —  de,  569 

Lahar,  268 

La  Haye,  Jacob  Blanquet  de,  56,  67-70 

Lahna  Singh  Sindhianwala,  547 

Lahore,  350,  485,  487,  492,  495,  496, 
524,  544-6,  548,  549,  552,  555; 
Treaty  of,  539;  second  Treaty,  552;  re- 
vised, 553 

Lahribandar,  English  factory  at,  87 

Lake,  Edward  John,  554 


672 


INDEX 


Lake,  Gerald,  Lord,  374,  375,  539,  540, 

604,605 
Lakheri,  366 

Lally,  Comte  de,  140,  158  sqq.,  323 
Lai  Singh,  548-50,  553 
Lambert,  Commodore,  561 
Lancaster,  James,  76,  77 
Lang,  Colonel  Ross,  293 
Langhorne,  Sir  William,  104 
La  Rocheile,  67 
Laswari,  battle  of,  374 
La  Touche,  PreV6t  de,  128 
La  Tour,  Chevalier  de,  122 
Laval,  Francis  Pyrard  de,  61,  63 
Lavaur,  Pere,  132,  159 
Laverolle,  —  de,  400 
Law,  Hindu  and  Muslim,  436,  444, 

455,  461,  464;  in  Burma,  568.  See 

Legislation 
Law,  Edward,  first  Lord  Ellenborough,  309 
Law,   Edward,  second   Lord,  see  EPen- 

borough 

Law,  Jacques,  129,  131,  138,  139 
Law,  Jean,  74,  145-7,  152,  169,  601 
Lawrell,J.,  414 
Lawrence,  Sir  George,  554 
Lawrence,  Sir  Henry,  511,  549,  551,  553' 

554,  556,  557 
Lawrence,  John,  Lord,  320,  551,  553,  556, 

557 
Lawrence,  General  Stringer,  125,  130,  131, 

'49,  150*  160,  162 
Leech,  Lieutenant,  492,  515 
Legislation,  the  Cornwallis  code,  452, 

455;    modified,    459,    461;    applied    in 

Madras,  474,  477,  479 
Le  Gouz,  La  Boullaye,  62,  66,  67 
Lemaistre,  Mr  Justice,  235 
Lenpir,  Pierre  Christophe,  75 
Leslie,  Alexander,  558 
Leslie,  Colonel  Matthew,  262,  263,  265, 

266 

Lespinay,  Bellanger  de,  70,  71 
Lestineau,  — ,  365 
Levant,  the,  i,  62,  77 
Levant  Company,  the,  94 
Lewis,  — ,  561 


Leyden,  see  Ouratura 

Leyrit,  Duval  de,  138,  158,  159 

Lindsay,  Sir  John,  253,  277,  278,  279, 

594 

Linois,  Admiral,  330 
Linschoten,  Jan  Huyghen  van,  28,  29,  31 
Lisbon,  i,  3,  24,  25,  28,  76,  83 
Littler,  General,  550 
Loknath  Nandi,  422 
London,  city  of,  opposes  the  Regulating 

bill,  1 88 
Lord,  Dr,  505 
Lorraine,  regiment  of,  158 
Loughborough,  Lord,  234,  310,  311 


Louis  XIII,  62 

Louis  XIV,  56,  61,  63,  65,  67,  68,  73,  75 
Low,  Sir  John,  582,  584 
Lucknow,  232,  300, 305, 306, 348, 349, 351, 
352,  354>  585;  English  factory  at,  100; 
'  :  Imambarah  at,  349;  the  Martiniere, 


Luifhiana,  378,  487,  491,  496,  497,  540, 

54i»  542,  543»  549i  550,  55* 
Lumsden,  Sir  Harry  Burnett,  554 
Lushington,  Henry,  149 
Lusiads,  the,  18 
Lyall,  Sir  Alfred,  quoted,  221,  224,  230, 

231,236,298 

Macao,  85,  87 

Macartney,  Lord,  232,  287-93,  320,  356 

Macassar,  114 

Macaulay,  Lord,  quoted,  221,  225,  236, 
240,  241,  245 

McCaskill,  Sir  John,  519 

Macdowall,  General,  404 

Macgregor,  Captain  Charles,  506,  510,  512 

Mackeson,  Frederick,  496 

Maclaren,  Brigadier,  515 

McLeane,  Colonel  Laughlin,  228 

Macleod,  Lord,  283;  his  regiment,  283 

Macleod,  Brigadier,  288,  289 

Macleod,  Lieutenant,  501 

Macleod,  Major,  566,  568 

Macleod,  William,  471 

Macnaghten,  Sir  William,  492,  494-7, 
50079,  520,  528,  5£5 

McNeill,  Sir  John,  489,  490,  493,  494 

Macpherson,  James,  279 

Macpherson,  Sir  John,  231,  278,  279,  287, 
292,  296;  appointed  to  council,  230; 
Maratha  policy,  334,  364;  Oudh  in  the 
time  of,  347, 351 ;  revenue  administration 
under,  430  sqq.,  443 

Madagascar,  alias  lie  Dauphine,  dis- 
covered, 5;  French  in,  62,  63,  65,  67; 
English  in,  65, 90,  91 ;  coffrees  from,  120 

Madapollam,  139 

Madec,  Ren6,  323,  324 

Madge,  Captain,  406 

Madhu  Rao  Peshwa,  218,  249-54,  279, 
386,  388,  396 

Madhu  Rao  Narayan  Peshwa,  253,  263, 
3*>4»  367>  370 

Madras,  35,  38, 83,  94,  105,  106,  108,  in, 
117,  1 19,  123,  128,  130,  131,  145,  147, 
J575  158,  164,  1 66,  1 68,  169,  178,  170, 
284, 285, 287, 293;  foundation  of,  87, 88; 
presidency  of,  89,  96, 100,  101,  103, 10$, 
106,  ii2,  113;  courts  at,  102,  113;  muni- 
cipality of,  103;  trade  with  Burma,  558; 
taken  by  La  Bourdonnais,  120-2,  590; 
rendition  of,  124,  591;  headquarters, 
125;  expedition  against  Siraj-ud-daula, 
144,  145;  besieged  by  Lally,  140,  157, 
159-61 ;  Hastings  at,  205;  relations  with 
Hyder,  253,  275  sqq.;  Maratha  policy, 
254;  Lindsay  and  Harland  at,  279;  re- 


INDEX 


673 


Madras  (continued) 

lations  with  Bengal,  277,  281,  282;  select 
committee  at,  283,  284,  290,  291 ;  form 
of  government  after  1786,  321;  sove- 
reignty over,  589,  590 

Madre  Maluco,  see  Imad-ul-mulk 

Madrid,  Treaty  of,  84 

Madura,  nayak  of,  48,  52;  occupied  by 
Muhammadans,  117;  Yusuf  Khan  at, 
279;  poligars  of,  357 

Maetsuycker,  Joan,  46,  52 

Magellan,  Straits  of,  31,  77 

Mahad,  372 

Mahadaji  Rao  Sindhia,  254,  261-3,  265-8, 
270-2,  288,  298,  324,  326,  333,  363  sqq.9 
368,  369,  602-4;  his  widows,  371,  372 

Mahal,  the,  387,  389 

Mahanadi,  the,  88 

Maharajpur,  battle  of,  579 

Mahars,  the,  391,  392,  396 

Mah6,  French  factory,  74,  75, 164, 282,  324 

Mahfuz  Khan,  276 

Mahi,  river,  258,  267 

Mahidpur,  battle  of,  376,  381,  573 

Mahmud  of  Ghazni,  his  tomb,  518 

Mahmud  II,  sultan  of  Turkey,  540 

Mahmud  III,  sultan  of  Gujarat,  16,  18 

Mahmud  Shah  Sadozai,  484-8 

Mai  Chand  Kaur,  see  Ghana  Kaur 

Mailapur,  see  St  Thom6 

Maine,  Sir  Henry,  483 

Maingy,  A.  D.,  565,  568,  569 

Mainville,  Chevalier  de,  131,  132 

Mairta,  366 

Maissin,  — ,  131,  132 

Makwanpur,  377,  378 

Mai,  409;  adalats,  444,  453,  460 

Malabar  Coast,  33,  43,  48,  55,  57,  61,  83; 
Dutch  on,  49^?.,  58,  85;  French  on, 
66-8,  71;  English  on,  87,  90,  94,  103; 
Danes  on,  1 15;  pirates  on,  100,  101,  1 13, 
114;  Hyder's  conquests  on,  275,  282, 
285,  286,  471;  Tipu's  cessions  on,  337. 
See  also  Calicut,  Cochin,  etc. 

Malabar  district,  transferred  to  Madras, 

Malabar  Hill,  261 

Malacca,  16-9,  21,  26,  20,  31 ;  taken  by  the 
Portuguese,  n,  12;  taken  by  the  Dutch, 
32,  42-4,  85;  taken  by  the  English,  326 

Malader,  532 

Malaon,  378 


-*  - 

,  369»  £75;  "is  missions 
,  487  ;  in  Cent 


o 

a*  i»  348,  353»  3 

to  Persia,  33  1  ,  486,  487  ;  in  Central  India, 
1  >  57  *>  572,  573J  governor  of  Bombay, 


Malda,  Em 


;,  1 06,  436,  441 

Maldivc  Islands,  8,  25  •«•« 

Malet,  Sir  Charles,  257,  334,  335,  337,  365 
Malharji  Holkar,  252,  368 


Malhar  Rao  Holkar,  376,  578 

Malik  Ayaz,  13 

Mallavelly,  341 

Malwa  (Central  India),  14,  266,  368,  372, 

373,  38o,  57i,  $73 
Malwa  (Cis-Satlej),  540 
Malwan,  369,  370 

Mama  Sahib,  see  Krishna  Rao  Kadam 
Mamlatdar,  the,  387-91,  393,  396 
Manaji  Angria,  369 
Manaji  Gaekwad,  257,  368 
Manar,  48 
Mandaly  the,  410 
Mandasor,  battle  of,  14;  Treaty  of,  381, 

573 
Mangalore,  276,  286,  328,  339;  siege  of, 

288;  Treaty  of,  288,  289,  333-5,  341,  363 
Mangni,  534 

Mamkani  family,  the,  522 

Manilla,  87 

Manipur,  558-60 

Mansell,  Charles  E.,  556 

Mansfield,  Lord,  311 

Manu,  389 

Marathas,  the,  wars  with  the  Moghuls,  101 ; 
in  South  India,  104,  118,  119;  raids  on 
Bengal,  112,  142 ;  relations  with  Bombay, 
113,  114;  attack  the  Portuguese,  114; 
attack  Salabat  Jang  and  Bossy,  135,  136; 
northern  ambitions,  180,  215,  252,  253, 
597;  attack  the  Rohillas,  217;  Lindsay's 
relations  with,  279;  revolution  of  1773, 
218;  first  and  second  Maratha  Wars,  229, 
249  sqq.y  287;  relations  with  Nizam  'AH, 
249-51,  255,  277,  333,  338,  370;  rela- 
tions with  Hyder  and  Tipu,  252,  253, 

255,  275~7,  325-7,  33P,  333,  .334,  33J*, 
364,  370;  French  intrigues  with,  see  St 
Lubin;  relations  with  Macpherson,  334, 
363 ;  relations  with  Cornwallis,  335  sqq.t 
366;  position  of  the  confederacy  in  1794, 
367;  third  Maratha  War,  341-4, 373  sqq., 
539 »  pirates,  369,  382;  fourth  Maratha 


J  :?  379^-,  4*K>,  570,  576,  577J  their 
administrative  system,  384^.;  nobles, 
38^;  the  Huzur  Daftar,  385.  See  also 
Military  forces 

Manage,  — ,  66 

Maria  Theresa,  115,  1 16 

Marie  de  Bon  Secours9  alias  the  Grand  Anglais, 
61 

Marine,  the  Bombay,  1 14 

Markhazn,  — ,  307 

Marley,  Major-general,  378 

Marryat,  Captain,  559 

Marseilles,  63,  327 

Martaban,  562,  568 

Martin,  General  Claude,  349 

Martin,  Francois,  70-4 

Marwar,  see  Jodhpur 

Mascarenhas,  Dom  Francisco,  2^ 

Mascarenhas,  Joao,  16 

Mascarenhas,  Pero  de,  18 


CHIV 


674 


INDEX 


Maskat,  17,  87 
Masson,  Charles,  490 
Massowah,  16 

Master,  Sir  Strcynsham,  104 
Mastung,  500,  502 

Masulipatam,  136, 153;  Dutch  at,  33-5, 37, 
x),  59;  French  at,  62,  67,  70,  72,  74; 
^  ish  at,  83,  88,  89,  94,  103,  105,  113; 

their  trade  to  Burma,  558 ;  Danes  at,  1 1 4 ; 

granted  to  the  French,  126,  138;  taken 

by  Forde,  155,  162 
Matara,  54 

Mathews,  Brigadier  Richard,  286 
Matturai,  45 

Maulmain  Chronicle,  the,  566 
Mauritius,  119,  158,  160,  165,  324,  328, 

339>  561 ;  Dutch  in,  65;  occupied  by  the 

French,  74;  under  La  Bourdonnais,  120; 

d'Achd  at,   163;  privateers,  326,  328; 

taken  by  the  English,  332 
Maxwell,  Colonel  Hamilton,  336 
Mazarin,  Cardinal,  63 
Mazaris,  the,  543,  544 
Mazumdar,  the,  388,  389 
Mecca,  n,  12,  15,  23 
Medows,  General,  336 
Mcdwayt  H.M.S.,  120 
Meerut,  549,  551 
Mekong  delta,  74 
Melbourne,  Lord,  320,  490 
Melville,  Lord,  see  Dundas,  Henry 
Menezes,  Dom  Diego  de,  23 
Menezes,  Duarte  de,  13 
Menezes,  Henrique  de,  13 
Menou,  — ,  328 
Meredith,  George,  556 
Mergui,  565,  568 
Meshed,  490 
Metcalfe,  Charles,  Lord,  320,  487,  494, 

540,  57i,  576,  577,  578,  582 
Methwold,  William,  85 
Meuron,  Comte  de,  401 ;  regiment  of,  401, 

402 

Mewar,  see  Udaipur 
Miani,  battle  of,  528,  536,  537 
Middleton,  Sir  Henry,  78 
Middleton,  Nathaniel,  222, 232, 233, 300-4, 

Middleton,  S.,  414,  422,  4.23 

Midnapur,  410,  413,  416,  429;  ceded  to 
the  English,  168,  206,  593 

Mihrab  Khan,  502 

Military  forces;  the  Maratha  army,  393 
sqq. ;  Company's  army,  revolt  at  Bombay, 
102;  batta,  178,  179;  officers'  mutiny, 
179-80,  280;  Clive's  fund,  180;  com- 
mand of  the  Madras  Army,  292,  293; 
local  battalions,  562,  507;  military 
boards,  321 

Mill,  James,  quoted,  193,  201,  216,  221, 

302,  341,  352,  358,  424 
Minto,  Lord  (Sir  Gilbert  Elliot),  186,  199, 
233,  246,  309;  President  of  Board,  314; 
foreign  policy,  331,  378;  revenue   aa- 


Minto,  Lord  (continued) 

ministration,  456-8  J  relations  with  Indian 

states,  570 
Mints,    Indian,    92;    Maratha,    397;    at 

Madras,  590;  at  Calcutta,  590,  592 
Miran,  151,  153-5*  l66>  l67 
Miranpur  Katra,  219 
Mirasdars,  the,  395,  396,  468,  469,  476 
Mir  Hasham,  see  Amir  Husayn 
Mir  Ja'far,  60, 147-52, 154~5>  166-72, I74» 

1 80,  210,  592 
Mir  Jumla,  88 

Mir  Kasim,  167-74,  179,  377,  593 
Mjrpur,  522,  528,  532,  537 
Mirtha,  see  Mairta 
Mirza  Bakr  Gurgian,  526 
Mirza  Jiwan  Bakht,  602 
Mirzapur,  377 
Mislsy  542 
Missionaries,  admission  of,  313;  in  Burma, 

$66 

Mississippi,  the,  133 
Moghul  Empire,  Child's  war  against,  102; 

survival  of,  571,  574,  575,  591,  592,  603 
L  and  English  policy  towards, 


sqq.\  French  and      0       ,.---,. 

600,  601.   See  also  Norris,  Sir  William; 

Roe,  Sir  Thomas;  Jahangir;  Shahjahan; 

Aurangzib;  Farrukhsiyar;  Shah  'Alam  II 
Mohan  Lai,  147 
Mohan  Prasad,  235 


Mohaturfa,  397 
Moira,  Lord,  i 


,  see  Hastings,  Marquess  of 
Mokasa,  395 
Mokha,  39,  40,   75,  81,  84;  Middleton 

seized  at,  78;  English  factory  at,  93,  1 1 1 
Molucca  Islands,  29,  31,  32,  35,  39, 42,  61, 

77,82 

Monckton,  General  Robert,  191 
Mongir,  172,  173,  179 
Mong  Nai,  568 
Monson,  Colonel  George,  164,  189,  231, 

236,  239,  419;  character,  226;  death, 

228,  422,  424 

Monson,  Colonel  William,  374,  375 
Montague,  F.,  199 
Montigny,  — ,  324,  325 
Montmorin,  — ,  596 
Moore,  Commodore  John,  258 
Moraba  Phadnavis,  262 
Moracin,  Le*on,  138,  162 
Morari  Rao  Ghorpade,  129-32,  138 
Morbihan,  Company  of,  63 
Moriarty,  G.,  quoted,  ^ 
Mornington,  Lord,  see  ^ 
Mostyn,  Thomas,  252,  261 
Motijhil,  1 68 
Moucheron,  Balthazar  de,  41 
Moulmein,  561,  565-8 
Mountney,  Nathaniel,  90 
Mozambique,  17,  31 
Mudaji  Bhonslc,  266,  268-70,  334,  3641 


,  Marquess 


Mudki,  battle  of,  550 
Muhammad,  Mir,  522,  525,  527 


INDEX 


675 


Muhammad  Akbar  Khan,  489,  501,  507- 

Muhammad  'Ali  Walajah,  88,  126-0,  132, 
'33,  135,  168,  179,  276,  591;  relations 
with  Macpherson,  230,  278;  debts,  273, 
280;  retains  administration,  274;  nazim, 
274;  Maratha  policy,  277;  Lindsay's 
mission  to,  278,  279,  594;  and  Tanjore, 
275,  280,  355;  leases  Guntpor,  281; 
assigns  revenues,  290-2;  missions  to 
Calcutta,  291,  292,  591;  relations  with 
Macartney,  293;  later  years,  355  sqq.; 
revenue  administration  under,  462 

Muhammad  Azim  Barakzai,  488 

Muhammad  Beg,  364,  365 

Muhammad  Husam,  533 

Muhammad  Mirza  (later  Shah),  489,  490, 

Muhammad  Reza  Khan,  206,  209,  211, 

409,  414,  416,  431,  445,  599 
Muir,  Colonel  Grainger,  270 
Mukhya  deshadhikari,  387 
Mukund  Dara  Pass,  374 
Mukur,  519 
Mulgrave,  Lord,  309 
Mulraj,  Diwan,  548,  554 
Multan,  23,  484,  495,  541,  542,  544,  548, 

Mumr-ul-mulk,  576 

Munni  Begam,  210,  233,  234 

Munro,  Sir  Hector,  '174,  280,  281,  283, 

284,  286 
Munro,  Sir  Thomas,  321,  333,  342,  343, 

346,  470-2,  475-82,  571,  582 
Munsifs,  459, < 


Murad  *Ali,  Mir,  522,  523 

Murray,  Colonel,  374 

Murshidabad,  141,  142,  147-50,  152,  168, 
174,  205,  208,  210,  211,  234,  413,  415, 
445,.453>  558,  59p;  customs  house  at,  422 

Murshidabad  division,  422 

Murshid  Kuli  Khan,  409,  410,  412 

Murtaza  'Ali  Khan,  119 

Murtaza  Nizam  Shah,  20,  2 1 

Mustafanagar,  136 

Mustafa  Rumi  Khan,  14 

Mutiny,  the  Sepoy,  607,  608 

Mutuswamy,  404,  405 

Muzaffarjang,  126-8,  133,  134 

Muzaffar  Sultan,  22,  24 

Myothugyi,  563 

Mysore,  Hindu  rajas  of,  163,  608;  assist 
Muhammad  'Ali,  129,  135;  help  the 
French,  130-2;  attacked  bySalabatJang, 
138;  under  Hyder  'Ali,  251,  275;  first 
Mysore  War,  275,  276;  second  war,  282 
sqq.;  third  war,  334 spa.;  fourth  war, 
339  sqq.y  475;  re-establishment  of  Hindu 
family,  344-6,  382;  as  protected  state, 
574,  578 

Nabha,  chief  of,  540,  548 
Nadgaunda,  395 
Nacfia,  distict  of,  422 


Nadir  Shah,  483,  484,  486,  492 

Nagaraka,  the,  393 

Nagelwanze,  37,  38 

Nagpur,  367,  368,  372,  379-81,  574,  608. 

See  also  Bhonsle  family,  the 
Na£ur,i59 
Nairs,  the,  49,  50 
Najib-ud-daula,  222 
Najm-ud-daula,  174,  177 
Nana  Phadnavis,  250, 254, 255, 261-9, 271, 

272»  333,  334,  SOS  sqq.y  372,  398 
Nana  Sahib,  381,  586 
Nandakumar,    146,    169,   174,   209,  210; 

accuses  Hastings,  232-4;  trial,  235-9, 246 
Nandi  Raja,  131,  132 
Nao  Nihal  Singh,  503,  543,  545,  546 
Napier,  Sir  Charles,  530-9,  552,  556 
Napier,  Sir  Robert,  Lord,  551 
Napier,  Sir  William,  quoted,  537 
Napoleon,  his  eastern  projects,  327,  328, 

331,339,540 
Nara  river,  534 

Narayan  Rao  Peshwa,  253-4,  257 
Narbada,  the,  215,  266,  364,  373,  379,  381 
Nargund,  333,  334,  365 
Nasik,  379 
Nasir  Jang,  1 1 8,  134;  in  the  Carnatic,  127, 

128,  142,  150 
Nasir  Khan,  50^ 

Nasir  Khan,  Mir,  522,  525,  527,  531 
Nasir-ul-mulk,  604 
Natyegan,  564 
Nawshahra,  488 
Nazarana,  581 
Negapatam,  Portuguese  at,  33;  Dutch  at, 

36-8,  48,  49,  85,  117,  154,  155;  taken 

by  the  English,  60,  285 
Negombo,  43-7 
Negrais  Island,  558 

Nepal,  the  war  with,  377  sqq.,  575, 577, 580 
Nesselrode,  Count,  494 
Netherlands,  the,  24,  596.  See  also  Dutch 

in  India,  the 
Neutrality  projects,  in  the  Carnatic,  119; 

in  Bengal,  145,  146 
Newspapers,  566 
Newton  s  Principia,  349 
N^a  Chin  Pyan,  558 
Nicholson,  John.  554 
Nicobar  Islands,  61,  76,  115 
Nicolls,  Sir  Jasper,  504,  511 
Nieuw  Oranje,  50 
Nimula,  487 

Nimweguen,  Peace  of,  71 
Nizam,  the,  as  protected  prince,  574-7; 

relations  with  Barlow,  375;  relations  with 

the  Moghul  emperor,  575, 602;  the  Berar 

question,    586.     See   also    Nizam    'Ah', 

Nizam-ul-mulk 

Nizam  'Ali,  140,  274,  398;  relations  with 
the  Marathas,  249-52, 254, 255, 259, 260, 

«77,  328,  333,  334,  364,  370,  ^71;  rela- 
tions with  Hyder,  275-7;  relations  with 
Madras,  252,  267-9,  271,  274-6,  281, 


43-2 


676 


INDEX 


Nizam  'All  (continued) 
282,  289;  relations  with  Cornwallis,  334, 
335»  337,  366;  relations  with  Shore,  338; 
relations  with  Wellesley,  328,  341,  344, 

353,373*471 

Nizamat  adalat,  440,  443,  445 

Nizampatam,  sarkar  of,  128.  See  also 
Petapoli 

Nizam-ul-mulk,  117-9,  I26,  127,  135 

Noronha,  Antonio  de,  2 1 

Noronha,  Dom  Affonso  de,  18,  19 

Noronha,  Garcia  de,  15,  1 6 

Norris,  Sir  William,  99,  104,  105 

North,  Colonel,  199 

North,  Frederick,  403,  404,  406 

North,  Lord,  181,  186,  191,  192,  228,  233, 
242,  289,  598,  600;  coalition  with  Fox, 
198-200,  434;  on  Hastings,  205 

North-east  Passage,  29,  76 

Northern  Sarkars,  the,  granted  to  the 
French,  136;  French  administration, 
!39»  attacked  by  Forde,  162;  ceded  to 
the  English,  274,  275,  281;  revenue  ad- 
ministration, 281,  467,  468,  47-j;  pro- 
posed rendition,  289;  raided  by  Pmdaris, 
377;  zamindars  in,  463,  473,  474,  476 

North-west  Passage,  76 

North-west  Provinces,  j>ii 

Nott,  General  Sir  William,  505,  507,  515- 
20,  529,  530 

Nur  Muhammad  Khan,  Mir,  522,  525-7 

Myayadhish,  the,  390,  391 

Oakeley,  Sir  Charles,  337 

Ochterlony,  Sir  David,  375,  378,  540,  571, 

577 

Ohio,  the,  153 

Okhamandal,  382 

Oldenbarnevelt,  Johan  van,  30 

Oman,  Sea  of,  483 

Omichand,  141,  147-9,  I5l»  I^° 

Ongole,  117 

Opium  revenue,  439,  440,  460,  564,  568 

Orangist  party,  325,  326 

Orenburg,  502 

Orissa,  88,  106,  183,  374 

Orleans,  Duke  of,  62 

Orleans,  lies  d',  74 

Orme,  Robert,  144,  150,  151 

Ormuz,  ii,  12,  84;  taken  by  the  Portu- 
guese, 9, 10;  their  rule,  13,  17, 18;  taken 
by  the  English  and  Persians,  81,  82 


Orves,  -3  d',  285 
;  India 


Company,  109,  114-6, 


Ostend  East 

Oudh,  153,  172-6,  179,  254,  360,  497; 

early  relations  of  the  English  with,  152, 

597;  the  bsgams  of,  230,  300^.,  309, 

310;  condition  of,  302;  reforms  of  1784, 

305;  history  1785-1801,  347  sgq.;  as  pro- 

578,580,581, 

t  also  Asaf-ud- 

Ouratura,  48 


Outram,  Sir  James,  522,  528-33,  535,  536, 

538,  539,  583,  585 
Oxenden,  Sir  George,  100 
Oxus,  the,  483 

Pacheco,  Duarte,  7,  8 

Pagan,  560 

Palakollu,  37 

Palayams,  474,  475 

Palehaut,  288 

Palk,  Sir  Robert,  132,  273 

Palliar,  the,  131 

Palmer  and  Company,  576 

Palmerston,  Lord,  494,  499 

Panchayat,  the,  389,  390,  464,  479,  480 

Pandit  Rao,  the,  394 

Panipat,  third  battle  of,  1 80,  215,  249,  253, 

255 
Panjab,  the,  relations  with  the  Afghans, 

381,  483, 485;  relations  with  the  English, 

497,  503,  50.4,  520,  539  sqq.y  576,  580. 

See  also  Ranjit  Singh;  Sikhs,  the 
Panniar,  battle  of,  579 
Pant  Pratinidhi,  the,  377,  382 
Pant  Sachiv,  the,  382 
Paradis,  Louis,  122 
Parana,  387,  412 
Pans,  Treaty  of  (1763),  278,  594,  595; 

(1814),  596 
Parliament,  and  the  East  India  Company, 

97, 98, 181  sqq. ;  select  committee  of  1 772, 


181,  185,  1 86;  secret  committee  of  1772, 
181,  186;  select  committee  of  1781,  101, 
192,  247,  303,  433;  secret  committee  of 
1781,181,192;  impeachment  of  Hastings, 
307  J00.;  legislation  1786-1818,  313  sqq.9 
458,  595J  select  committee  of  1808,  458, 
478 

Parsaji  Bhonsle,  379 

Parvarti  Bai,  255 

Parwandurrah,  505 

Paskievich,  General,  489 

Patan,  366 

Patel,  the,  386,  387,  389-93,  39$ 

Patiala,  540 

Patna,  152,  169,  170,  170,  208,  209,  378, 
413,  423-5,  453J  Dutch  factory  at,  41; 
English  factory  at,  88,  92,  106;  attacked 
by  'Ali  Gauhar,  153,  166;  Ellis  at,  172, 
173;  massacre  of,  173;  customs  house  at, 
208;  the  —  case,  243,  246,  247 

Paton,  — ,  562,  563 

Patronage,  in  the  time  of  Hastings,  212; 
under  Fox's  bill,  195;  under  the  India 
Act,  318,  437 

Pattakila,  380 

Patterson,  J.,  412,  428 

Patullo,  H.,  423 

Patvardhans,  the,  382,  385 

Patwari,  the,  460 

Payandah  Khan,  484,  485 

Pearse,  Colonel  Thomas,  269 

Peat,  Captain,  501 
Peel,  Sir  Robert,  516 


INDEX 


677 


5«»  "5,  56a,  566*  567J  French 
in,  62 

Pelham,  Thomas,  309 

Pembroke  Dockyard,  566 

Penang,  76 

Pennar  nver,  337 

Pens£e9  the,  61 

Perron,  Pierre  Guillier,  dit,  326,  366,  374 

Persia,  i,  62,  88,  91,  483,  560;  relations 
with  the  Portuguese,  12,  8x,  82;  rela- 
tions with  the  French,  65;  relations  with 
the  Dutch,  84;  relations  with  the  English, 
8 1, 82, 84, 93;  Gardane's  mission  to,  331, 
485,  486;  English  missions  to,  486,  487, 
489,  492-4;  relations  with  Russia,  486, 
489;  relations  with  the  Afghans,  487-0^, 
-6,  497,  514,  543;  relations  with 


«Y        .  "'     "^      '      • 

Sind,  525-7 

Persian  Gulf,  Portuguese  trade  in,  6,  81; 
French  in,  66;  English  trade  in,  92;  dis- 
putes with  the  Turks  in,  278;  English 
influence  in,  486,  494 

Pertab  Singh,  547 

Peshawar,  484,  485,  487-90,  492-3,  495, 
497,  504»  508,  511,  512,  515,  518,  520, 

„  541-3,  546»  549*  555,  556 

Peshawara  Singh,  547,  548 

Peshwa,  the  origin  and  position  of,  384, 
574,  608.  See  also  Marathas,  the 

Petapoli,  Dutch  at,  33,  34,  37;  English  de- 
feated off,  56,  104 

Peyton,  Captain  Edward,  120 

Phadnavis,  the,  250,  388,  389 

Phayre,  Sir  Arthur,  562,  565 

Philip  II,  24,  26-8,  77 

Philippine  Islands,  31 

Pigot,  George,  Lord,  144,  156,  158,  160, 
161,  279,  280,  286,  293,  355,  360 

Pilame'  Talaw6,  404-7 

Pimienta,  18 

Pindaris,  the,  375-7,  379,  380,  383,  571 

Pipph,  41 

Pirates,  103,  105.  See  also  Marathas,  the 

Pir  Dil  Khan,  488 

Pitt,  John,  105 

Pitt, Thomas,  102,  104,  105,  in 

Pitt,  William,  Lord  Chatham,  see  Chatham, 
Lord 

Pitt,  William,  181,  213,  314,  320,  3; 
434,  437,  450,  45'  J  on  Fox's  I 
195,  198,  199,  403;  Ws  India  Act,  194, 
200  sgq.t  355;  and  Hastings,  203,  307-9; 
and  Impey,  247 

Place,  Lionel,  4^8,  471,  472,  482 

Plancius,  Petrus,  28 

Plassey,  battle  of,  60,  149,  150,  152,  155, 

™l69»  'ZS?  32i,  593 

Plumer,  Thomas,  309,  311 

Plymouth,  24 

Pocock,  Sir  George,  15$,  158-60,  163 

PoCtc,  Chevalier  de,  160 

Police,  see  Justice 

Policr  dc  Bottens,'Major  Paul,  159 

Poligars,  357, 463, 464, 471-3, 475, 480 


Polilur,  first  battle  of,  283;  second  battle 
of,  284,  286 

Pollock,  Sir  George,  51 1-20,  546 

Pompadour,  Madame  de,  121 

Pondichery,  117,  110-23,  126-8,  130-4, 
137,  142,  143,  146,  158-61,  163,  261, 
329;  early  history,  70-4;  taken  oy  the 
Dutch,  72;  besieged  by  Boscawen,  123, 
124;  taken  by  Coote,  157,  163-5;  taken 
in  1778,  281;  taken  in  1793,  326;  pro- 
posed transfer  of  headquarters  from,  324, 

325 

Pontchartrain,  Jer6me,  73 

Ponwars,  the,  376 

Poona,  1 1 8,  218,  249-52,  254-7,  259-64, 
266,  324, 325,  367,  370-3,  379,  380, "  . 
police  of,  393;  collectorate  of,  392; 
Treaty  of,  575 

Poonamallee,  127,  130 

Popham,  Captain,  208 

Porakad,  50 

Porter,  Endymion,  90 

Port  Louis,  1 20 

Porto  Novo,  70;  Dutch  factory  at,  37; 
English  at,  104;  battle  of,  284 

Portuguese  in  India,  early  voyages,  2  s< 
chronicles,  3;  oriental  sources,  3;  r< 
tions  with  Muslim  powers,  6,  9,  10-13; 
atrocities,  6,  19;  organisation,  8,  17;  at 
Goa,  10;  at  Dm,  14;  war  with  Turks,  15, 
1 6,  with  Gujarat,  16,  18;  their  decline, 
17;  religious  policy,  18,  53;  war  with 
Zamorin,  18;  at  Daman,  19,  20;  rela- 
tions with  Akbar,  23;  union  with  Spain, 
24,  44;  relations  with  the  English,  24,  76 
sqq.,  82  sqg.1  in  Ceylon,  24  sqq.\  relations 
with  the  Dutch,  29,  31  sqq.,  44,  ^7,  50, 
85;  their  influence,  53,  402;  relations 
with  the  French,  61 ;  cession  of  Bombay, 
86,  87;  relations  with  the  Marathas,  1 14, 
256,  264,  269,  334;  French  projects  on 
their  settlements,  329 

Potdor,  the,  388 

Potms,  the,  388 

Pottinger,  Eldred,  493,  501,  507,  509,  510, 

515 

Pottinger,  Colonel  Henry,  497,  500,  523-8 

Pozzo  di  Borgo,  Count,  494 

Pront,  the,  387 

Pratab  Singh,  raja  of  Tanjore,  125,  129 

Protinidhiy  the,  384 

Prentout,  M.,  quoted,  330 

Presents,  after  Plassey,  151;  after  revolu- 
tion of  1 760, 169;  forbidden  by  the  Com- 
pany,  177;  illegal,  303,  309,  310 

Previous  communications,  315,  316 

Prinsep,  H.  T.,  quoted,  382 

Privateers,  French,  326,  328,  330,  332.  See 
oZw  Whitchill,John 

Private  trade,  under  the  Dutch,  58;  under 
the  English,  94,  438,  442;  prohibited, 

4*9,  433,  443,  444 
Promc,  502 
Prussian  companies,  116 


678 


INDEX 


Psyche,  the,  330 

Pudukottai,  132 

Pulicat,  32,  34-8,  42,  44,  83,  88,  120 

Pulo  Kondor,  74 

Pulo  Run,  86,  Qi 

Pultcney,  — ,  106 

Purandhar,  255,  262;  Treaty  of,  260-3, 

266,  270, 271 
Purnaiya  (Purniya),  344 
Purnia,  district  of,  141,  142,  423,  428 
Puttalam,  54,  55 
Pybus,  John,  400,  401 

Quetta,  499,  500,  504,  515,  516,  519 
Quilon,  47,  49,  50 

Raghoba,  see  Raghunath  Rao 
Raghuji  Angria,  569 
Raghuji  Bhonsle  I,  118,  136 


Rahmat  Khan,  see  Hafiz  Rahmat  Khan 

Rai  Durlabh,  146,  147,  150-4,  169,  416 

Rainier,  Commodore  Peter,  326,  328 

Raj-raian,  the,  209,  416,  418,  420,  427 

Rais  Salman,  13 

Rajahmundry,  136,  162 

Ra.japur,  90,  103 

Raja  Rama,  384 

Raja  Sinha  I,  2b 

Raja  Sinha  II,  42-8,  51,  52 

Rajballabh,  416 


„  573,  574,  576,  578,  _ 

Rajputs,  the,  252,  253,  365,  366,  375,  376, 

3.8o»  3p8,  571  ,  57? 
Rajshahi,  zamindari  of,  422 
Rakshasbhavan,  251 
Ramazan  Rumi  Khan,  17 
Ramdas  Pandit,  135,  138 
Ramghat,  218 
Rammanakoil,  48 
Ramnad,  poligar  of,  279,  475 
Ramnagar,  555 
Ramnarayan,  151-3,  169,  170 
Ramosis,  the,  391,  392 
Rampur,  220,  222,  303,  304 
Ramree,  562-5 

Rangoon,  558-6*,  566,  567,  607 
Rangpur,  428,  429 
Ranjit  Singh,  304,  485,  487,  488,  4^0-7, 

499.  503,  51$  523-5.  539  W-,  547,  54°, 

552,  557 


Rasul,  556 


Ratlam.  yji 
Ratnagin,  250 
Ravestcyn,  Gilles 


Ravestcyn,  Gilles  van,  39 

Ravi,  the,  555 

Rawlinson,  Major  Henry,  514 


Raygamwatte,  47,  48 

Raymond,  Fra^ois  de,  326,  370 

Raza  Sahib,  126 

Razilly,  Isaac  de,  61 

Read,  Colonel  Alexander,  467-72, 477, 480 

Red  Sea,  i,  2,  10,  11,  13,  16,  25,  74,  105; 

Portuguese    and    trade    through,    6-9; 

English  in,  78,  79,  81,  84,  92,  1 1 1 ;  route 

to  India,  327,  328 
Reede  tot  Drakenstein,  —  van,  see  Draken- 

stein 
Regulating  Act,  181,  iQBsqq.,  277,  303, 

4*9,594,599^         .  f    J 

Renault,  set  St  Germain,  Renault  de 

Revenant,  the,  330 

Revenue,  Bengal,  controlling  boards,  208, 
210;  committee  of,  213,  410;  Hastings' 
administration,  309, 409  sqq. ;  permanent 
settlement  recommended,  419,  423;  Su- 
preme Court  and,  421;  Macpherson's 
reforms,  431  sqq.t  443;  Cornwallis's  re- 
forms, 433,  439,  440,  443,  444,  4^7.^-, 
456;  revenue  courts,  444,  453;  criticism 
of  zamindari  settlement,  458;  sair  re- 
venue, 409,  439,  449,  467.  See  also  Salt 

Revenue,  Burma,  562,  5O3,.567,  5$8 

Revenue,  Madras,  462  sqq.\  in  the  Northern 
Sarkars,  281,  283,  473;  assignment  of  the 
Carnatic,  290-2,  356;  Board  of  Revenue, 
319,  321,  467,  471-3,  476;  permanent 
settlement,  473,  475,  476,  478;  village 
settlements,  476-8;  ryotwari  established, 
479,  480 

Revenue,  Maratha,  division  of,  385,  395; 
accounts  etc.,  387,  395  sqq. 

Rezimont,  Gilles  de,  02 

Richardson,  Dr,  568 

Richelieu,  Cardinal,  61-3 

Richmond,  Colonel,  547,  548 

Rigault,  — ,  62 

Ripon,  first  Lord,  579 

Rivett-Carnac,  Sir  James,  581 

Roberts,  Brigadier,  505 

Robertson,  Thomas  Campbell,  511 

Rochester,  Bishop  of,  31 1 

Roe,  Sir  Thomas,  80  sqq.;  and  the  Dutch, 

39 

Rogerius,  Abraham,  53 
Rohilkhand,  174,  217-22,  232 
Rohillas,  the,  252,  253,  348,  485 
Rohilla  War,  217^.,  232,  303;  vote  on, 

307,  308 

Rohri,  530,  532-4 
Rojhan,  543,  544 
Rooke,  William,  428 

Rose,  Professor  Holland,  quoted,  199,  307 
Rotation  government,  at  Calcutta,  105, 153 
Rouen,  merchants  of,  61 
Rous,  Boughton,  421 
Roussel,  Colonel  Jean-Baptiste,  162 
Royal  Society,  the,  96 
Rot  kird,  386 

Rumbold,  Sir  Thomas,  193,  280-3 
Rupar,  543 


INDEX 


679 


Russell,  Sir  Henry,  576 
Russia,  331,  483;  relations  with  Persia, 
4*6,  487,  489,  49?,  494,  543,  544J  rela- 
tions with  the  Afghans,  492,  493,  496, 
49^,  5°3»  525;  relations  with  the  Turks, 
tions  with  the  Sikhs,  489;  expe- 
hiva, 502-4 
Broach),  22 
Rustam  Khan,  Mir,  522,  523,  526,  527, 

533-5,  538 

Ryotwari,  see  Revenue—  Madras,  Burma 
Ryswick,  Treaty  of,  72 


ition  against  Khiva, 
Rustam  Khan  (of 


,  575 

Sa,  Garcia  de,  17,  1  8 
Sabaip,  see  Yusuf  Adil  Khan 
Sabaji  Bhonsle,  258 
Sabathu,  549 
Sabhasad,  the,  388 
Sabzalkot,  531-3,  536 
Sachin  state,  369 
Sacre,  the,  61 
Sadar  amins,  459 
Sadar  waridpatti,  388 
Sadashiv  Rao  Bhao,  255 
Sadozai  clan,  483,  485,  488,  493 
Sadraspatam,  alias  Sadras,  Dutch  at,  37; 

conference  at,  132 
Sadr  diwanni  adalat,  242,  244-6 
Sadullapur,  556 
Safdar*Ali  Khan,  117-9 
Safdar  Jang,  519 
Saffragam,  45 

Sagar  and  Narbada  Territories,  381,  574 
Sapuli,  Treaty  of,  378 
Saharanpur,  378 
Sahotra,  395 

St  Anne's  Church,  Calcutta,  113 
St  Augustine's  Bay,  65,  90 
St  George,  Battle  of,  219 
St  Germain,  Renault  de,  145 
St  Helena,  99 

St  Lubin,  —  ,  261-3,  266,  324 
St  Malo,  merchants  of,  61,  73;  Company 

of,  63 

St  Mary's  Church,  Fort  St  George,  104 
St  Petersburg,  490,  494 
St  Thomas  Mount,  130,  161,  280,  284 
St  Thome",  alias  Mailapur,  Portuguese  at, 

33-5,  88;  French  at,  56,  69-71,  104; 

taken  by  Golconda,  103;  occupied  by 

Boscawen,  126,  127 
Sair,  revenue,  see  Revenue,  Bengal 
Saiyid  Ahmad  Shah  Ghazi,  542 
Saiyid  Lashkar  Khan,  135,  136,  138 
Sakharam  Bapu,  250,  254,  255,  260-3 
Salabat  Jang,  134,  135,  137-40,  144,  151, 

162,  274,  594,  600 

*  <3Cmty  °f>  a54'  a7°~*'  ^  ^  334' 


6 
Sale,  F 


tarentia,  Lady,  510 

Sale,  Sir  Robert,  501,  505-7,  510,  512-4, 
o  516,  520 
Salsette,  18,  250,  256-61,  267,  271 


Salt,  213;  revenue,  439,  440,  467,  481 

Sambhaji,  384 

Sampaya,  Lopo  Vaz  de,  13 

Samru,  Begam,  323 

Sandoway,  562,  564 

San  Fiorenzo,  the,  330 

Sanivar  Wada,  the,  370 

Saranjams,  385,  386,  394 

Sarboji,  360,  361 

Sardar  Khan  Singh,  554 

Sardesmukhi,  394,  395 

Saristadar,  chief,  431,  432,  435,  447,  448 

Sarii  Rao  Ghatke,  371 

Sarkar,  the,  387 

Sarkhej,  92 

Sarsubhedar,  the,  387,  390,  391 

Sartine,  Gabriel  de,  262 

Sasvad,  392 

Satara,  118,  249,  254,  262,  36 

382 ;  position  of  the  raja 

state,  574,  578,  581,  583 
Sati,  forbidden  at  Goa,   18;  Ganga  Bai 

proposes,  255 ;  in  the  protected  states,  580 
Satlej,  the,  378,  383,  483,  495,  497,  508, 

n  5",  539-42,  549-52,  555,  579 

Saugor,  see  Sagar 

Saunders,  Thomas,  128, 132, 133, 136, 154, 

157 

Savanur,  128,  138,  334 

Sayaji  Gaekwad,  257,  368 

Sayf-ul-muluk  Miftah,  alias  Cide  Bofata,  19 

Scheldt,  the,  28 

Schonamille,  Francois  de,  115,  142 

Schreuder,  Jan,  54 

Scott,  Major  John,  193,  202,  213,  301,  307 

Scott,  Colonel  W.,  352,  353 

Scottish  East  India  Company,  97 

Scrafton,  Luke,  148,  150,  172,  207 

Sebastian,  Dom,  24 

Secret  Committee  of  the  East  India  Com- 
pany, the,  200,  201,  315,  337,  441 

Sedasere,  battle  of,  341 

Seignelay,  Marquis  de,  71,  72 

Selim  III,  340 

Sena  Khas  Khel,  the,  257,  368 

Sena  Sahib  Suba,  368 

Sepoy  Troops,  mutiny  1764,  174 

Sequeira,  Diogo  Lopes  de,  13 

Scrampore,  114,330 

Seringapatam,  336,  337,  340-3,  345,  346, 
361,  470,  475;  first  Treaty  of,  §37,  338, 
366;  second  Treaty  of,  345,  346 

Seths,  the,  147,  148,  173 

Scton,  Alexander,  487 

Seven  Korles,  408 

Seven   Years'  War,   59,    139,    145,   147, 

S^y  75, '80,600 

Shadiwal,  556 

Shah  Abbas,  81 

Shah'AlamI,  m 

Shah  'Alam  II,  153,  166,  167,  169,  170, 
173-5,  *  80,  323,  324,  602;  Treaty  of 
Allahabad  with,  176, 251, 274, 409, 596; 


68o 


INDEX 


36,  1 


40 
t),  502 


Shah  'Alam  II  (continued) 
joins  the  Marathas,  215,  253;  i 
from  Bengal,  215,  216,  264, 
relations  with  Sindhia,  33" 
602,  603;  blinded,  365,  6  _ 
with  the  English,  374,  601  sqq. 

Shahdad,  522 

Shahdadpur  family,  the,  522 

Shah  Jahan  (Prince  Khurram),  39,  40,  80, 
606 

Shahji,  125 

Shah  Nawaz  Khan,  13 

Shah  Nawaz  Khan  (o 

Shahpuri  Island,  559 

Shah  Shuja,  106 

Shah  Shuja,  see  Shuja-ul-mulk  Sadozai 

Shahu,  384 

Shah  Wali  Khan,  484 

Shaikh  Imam-ud-din,  553 

Shaista  Khan,  107 

Shakespeare,  Sir  Richmond,  503,  519 

Shal,  500,  502 

Shan  states,  558,  561,  568,  569 

Shapur  Mirza,  519,  520 

Shaukat Jang,  142,  147 

Shelburne,  Lord,  187,  278,  434 

Shelton,  Brigadier,  506,  507,  509,  511 

Sheppard,  — ,  561 

Sheridan,  R.  B.,  309,  310 

Sher  Khan  Lodi,  70,  71 

Shete  mahajan,  389 

Shikarpur,  495,  499,  523,  525,  530,  531, 


Shir  Munammad,  522,  537,  538 

Shir  Singh,  545-7,  550,  554,  555 

Shitab  Rai,  206,  209 

Shivpuri,  see  Sipri 

Shohnghur,  battle  of,  285 

Shore,  Sir  John,  Lord  Teignmouth,  307, 

3^7,  319,  320,  347,  350,  415,  420,  421; 

and  Hastings'  reforms,  211,212, 427-3 1 ; 

his  foreign  policy,  338,  339,  370,  371; 

his  Oudh  policy,  3^0  sqq.;  his  Carnatic 

policy,  358;  his  Tanjorc  policy,  360;  and 

CornwaUis's  reforms,  435-7,  439,  443 

sqq.;  appointed  governor-general,  451; 

revenue  policy,  456 ;  accepts  a  khil'at,  604 
Shuja-ud-daula,  172-4,  180,  300,  598;  and 

Treaty  of  Allahabad,  176,  251;  and  the 

Rohillas,  217  sqq.;  death,  233 
Shuja-ud-daula  Sadozai,  515 
Shuja-ul-mulk  Sadozai,  Shah  Shuja,  484, 

485,  487-90,  493-502,  504-6,  508,  512, 

5'3,  515,  517,  519,  524-6,  541-5,  549 
Sialkot,  547 

Siam,  French  in,  72,  73;  frontier  raids,  568 
Sidis,   the,   Abdul   Rahim,    369;    Abdul 

Karim,  alias  Balu  Mian,  369;  Johar,  369. 

See  also  Janeiro. 
Sihbondi,  387,  393 
Sikhs,  the,  365,  366,  386,  602;  Metcalfe's 

mission   to,   487,   540;   war  with   the 

Gurkhas,  541 ;  relations  with  the  Afghans, 


Sikhs  (continued) 

49i,  495,  496,  498,  502,  503,  512,  513, 
520,  541-5,  555,  55o;  designs  on  Sind, 

attack  Chinese  Tibet,  546;  relations  with 
the  English,  513,  516,  518,  539  sqq. 

Sikkim,  378 

Silveira,  Antonio  da,  15 

Simla,  496,  519,  549 

Simomch,  Count,  490,  493 

Sind,  483,  515,  552;  Portuguese  in,  19; 
English  factories  in,  80,  87,  92;  French 
designs  on,  323, 522, 523;  the  Afghans  in, 
484,  486,  488,  495,  522,  524,  528,  543; 
English  relations  with,  4.8^,  491,  493, 
497,  499,  5°°»  5*3?  Sikh  designs  on, 
496, 523, 524>  542  5  Persian  relations 
500,  525-7;  conquest  of,  « 

Sindhia,  family  of,  249,  252,  256,  257, 


578, 


, 257,  259, 
!,  579.   See 


500,  525-7;  conquest  of,  522  sqq.,  580 
,,  family 

78, 
:oji  Rao,  Jayaji 


.7.    See  also 
Singh 


260;  their  state,  571,  5 

also  Daulat  Rao,  Ja: 

Rao,  Mahadaji  Rao 
Sindhianwala  family, 

Ajit  Singh,  Atar 
Sinfray,  — ,  140 
Sipra  river,  376 
Sipri  (Shivpuri),  battle  of,  270 
Siraj-ud-daula,  139,  141-3,  145-52,  I54» 


540 


Sistan,  4ox>  493 

Sitabaldi,  381 

Sitke,  566 

Sivaganga,  poligar  of,  279,  475 

Sivaji,  71,  100-3,  253,  258,  372,  384,  385, 

387,  393-5,  398,  574,oo8 
Siva  Rao,  360 
Skardu,  546 
Skinner's  Horse,  510 
Slavery,  481,  568;  debtor,  568 
Sleeman,  Sir  William  H.,  568,  583',  585 
Smith,  Sir  Harry,  551 
Smith,  General  Joseph,  276,  284 
Smith,  Colonel  Lionel,  382 
Scares,  Lopo,  7,  12,  13,  25 
Sobraon,  battle  of,  551,  557 
Socotra,  9,  10 
Sodre,  Vmcente,  6,  7 
Sohrabani,  family  of,  522 
Soldanha,  — ,  7 
Somnath,  Gates  of,  518-20 
Son  river,  action  on  the,  169 
Sonars,  397 
Sondhwada,  577 
Souillac,  Vicomte  de,  324 
Soupire,  Chevalier  de,  158 
Sousa,  Martin  Alfonso  de,  16 
Southampton,  Lord,  347 
South  Arcot,  471 
Sovereignty,  question  of  British,  in  Bengal» 

241,  242,  34;  in  India,  589  sqq. 
Spanish  Armada,  the,  76  <• 
Spanish  Succession,  War  of  the,  73 


INDEX 


681 


Spice  Islands,  see  Moluccas,  the 

Spilbergh,  Joris  van,  41 

Sraddha,  391 

Srirangam,  island  of,  129-31 

Stables,  John,  230,  231 

Stamps,  481 

Stephen,  Sir  James,  quoted,  225,  226,  233, 

234>  235,  236,  237,  238,  239,  240,  241, 

243,  244,  245,  302 
Stewart,  Captain,  267 
Stewart,  Major-General  James,  341 
Stoddart,  Colonel,  494,  503,  504 
Strachey,  Sir  John,  quoted,  217,  220,  221, 

222,  223,  224 

Stuart,  Charles,  436,  438,  442,  440 
Stuart,  Major-General  James,   280,   286, 

287,  292,  295 

Stuart,  Colonel  James,  401 
Subha,  the,  387 
Subhedar,  the,  387 

Subudar  Khan,  522,  525,  526,  532,  534 
Suchet  Singh,  547,  548 
Suez,  2,  9,  10,  13,  14,  16,  18,  327,  494 
Suffren,  the  Bailli  de,  164,  285,  287 
Sukkur,5i6,  517,  529-33 
Sulaiman  Mirza,  484 
Sulaiman  Pasha,  15 
Sulaiman  Sultan,  15 
Sulivan,  Laurence,  175, 184,  185,  231, 266, 

268,  289,  290,  318 
Sultan  'Ali  Sadozai,  488 
Sultan  Muhammad,  488,  492,  493 
Sumatra,  29,  32,  39,  61;  English  factories 

„  m>  77,  79 

Sumer  Singh,  255 

Sunda,  Straits  of,  29,  84 

Supervisors,  sent  out  1769,  207,  278,  411; 
proposed  1772,  187 

Supervisors  of  revenue,  206,  208,  220,  41 1 

Supreme  Court  of  Calcutta,  established, 
189,  1 91,  225;  decides  between  Hastings 
and  Clavering,  228;  its  power  of  reprieve, 
237;  conduct  of  the  court,  240  sqq., 
421,  426,  599;  its  powers  limited,  192, 
247 

Surat,  20,  22-4,  31,  33,  56,  92,  105,  258, 
260,  261,  266,  267,  369,  372;  Dutch 
factory  at,  39,  40,  57,  58,  84;  French 
factory  at,  66, 67,  71,  73;  English  factory 
at,  77-61,  QO,  03,  96,  100-3,  '°7»  m, 
112;  nawab  of,  603;  Treaty  of,  257, 
260-2;  revenues  ceded,  257 

Surcouf,  Nicolas,  330 

Surcouf,  Robert,  330 

Surji  Arjungaon,  Treaty  of,  374,  380 

Surman,  John,  104,  in,  112 

Sutanuti,  107,  108 

Suvarndrug,  114 

Swally  Hole,  66,  68,  78,  79,  84 

Swartz,  Christian  Frederick,  282,  360 

Swedish  East  India  Company,  1 16 

Sydney,  Lord,  314 

Symes,  Captain  tyl.,  559 

Syriam,  558 


Table  Bay,  65 

Tabriz,  12,  489 

Tafazzul  Hussain  Khan,  349 

Turn,  396 

Tahsildars,  449,  460,  563 

Taimur,  house  of,  see  Moghul 

Taimur  Mirza,  501,  502,  516,  517,  519 

Tairnur  Shan,  483, 


,  397 
Takings,  the,  558-60,  562,  566-8;  corps 

of,  507*  5 
Talegaon,  21 

Tal]3ura,  tribe,  484,  500,  522,  538 
Tanjore,  kingdom  of,  59,  117,  118,  125, 

130,  132;  attacked  by  Chanda  Sahil 


127,  159;  attacked  by  Lally,  15 
relations  with   Muhammad   V 


1 60; 
?73» 


279,  280,  355;  relations  with  Madras, 
290;  French  intrigue  in,  330;  Wellesley's 
settlement  with,  352,  353,  360,  361  ;  land 
values  in,  465;  village  system  of,  476; 
revenue  system,  471;  title  extinguished 
586,  606 

Tankhwa,  571,  572 

Tantiajogh,577 

Tapasnavis,  the,  393 

Tapti,  the,  77,  78,  252,  267 

Tara  Bai,  384 

Tarai,  the,  378,  379 

Tarf,  the,  387,  389 

Tatta,  527,  531,  532,  535;  plundered  by 
the  Portuguese,  19;  English  factory  at, 
87,  522 

Tavernier,  Jean-Baptiste,  62 

Tavoy,  565,  568 

Taylor,  William,  259,  260 

Teheran,  331,  486,  487,  489,  492;  Treaty 
of,  489 

Teignmouth,  Lord,  see  Shore,  Sir  John 

Tei  Singh,  548-50 

Tellicherri,  103 

Temple,  Lord,  200 

Tenasserim,    558-60;    administration    of, 


Texel,  the,  28,  29 

Teylingen,  Christiaan  van,  59 

Tezin,  519 

Thackwell,  General  Joseph,  555 

Thalbarit,  397 

Thalmod,  397 

Thanadars,  the,  474,  480 

Thana  Fort,  256 

Tharrawaddy,  560,  566 

Thathamcda,  563 

Thebes,  328 

THjssen,  ~,  44,  46 

Thomassen,  Adolf,  34 

Thomson,  Captain,  501 

Thugs,  568 

Thu&i,  563,  566 

Thurlow,  Lord,  192,  202,  203,  207,  211, 

^.310,311,598 

Tibet,  219,  493;  Chinese,  546 

Tiku,  62 


682 


INDEX 


Tilsit,  Treaty  of,  33 1 ,  486 

Tinnevelly,  district  of,  289,  358;  poligars 


of,  3?7,  475 
Sulta 

succeeds  his  father,  286;  peace  with  the 


Tipu  Sultan,  51,  271,  272,  286,  317,  318, 
324,  327,  346,  356,  360,  366,  371,  467; 


English,  287,  288,  363;  treatment  of 
prisoners,  289;  relations  with  the  French, 
324  J??.,  339  ;  war  with  theMarathas,  364; 
government  and  fall,  333  sqq.,  574,  602; 
revenue  administration,  463,  409;  char- 
acter, 341,  342 

Txrupapuliyur,  33,  37,  49 

Tiruvalur,  150 

Tiruvannamalai,  battle  of,  276 

Tiruvendipuram,  127 

Timviti,  127,  130,  131 

Tod,  Lieutenant-Colonel  James,  571,  573, 

Todd,  Major,  501,  503-5 

Tomar,  24 

Tone,  Colonel,  398 

Tonk,  380,  573 

Tonkin,  71 

Tordesillas,  Treaty  of,  2,  76 

Torrens,  Henry  Whitelock,  494,  504 

Trade,  with  Europe  by  the  Levant,  I,  2; 
in  the  I7th  century,  91,  92;  in  the  i8th 
century,  438;  Coromandel,  35;  Com- 
pany^ monopoly  abolished,  458;  boards 
of  trade,  321,  436,  438,  439,  441,  442, 

447,  454,  458 

Tranquebar,  114,  115,  330 

Trayancore,  raja  of,  317,  326;  French  in- 
trigues in,  530;  Tipu  attacks,  335,  366; 
as  protected  state,  574 

Trevor,  Captain,  509 

Trichinopoly,  179;  Hindu  state,  117;  taken 
by  Marathas,  118;  retaken  by  Nizam, 
119;  Muhammad  'Ah'  at,  126,  127;  at 
tacked  by  the  French,  128,  129,  131,  132 


135, 


132, 


5,  i37-40» 

Trieste  Company,  116 
Trimbakji  Danglia,  379 
Trimbak  Rao,  Mama,  253,  255 
Trinkomali,  42-4,  56,  60,  68,  69,  285,  324, 

325,328,400,401,405-7 
Tnpartite  Treaty,  the,  495,  505,  525,  528, 

543—5 

Truce  of  Antwerp,  83 
Tukoji  Holkar,  252,  254,  262,  263,  266, 

267,  270,  271,  334,  365-9,  371,  372 
Tulsi  Bai,  376 
Tungabhadra  river,  337 
Tupai,  556 


Turkestan,  507 
Turkomancnai, 


Treaty  of,  489 


Turks,  the,  attack  the  Portuguese,  15,  18, 
27;  relations  with  Persia,  81;  dfisHke 
Europeans  in  Egypt,  327;  relations  with 
the  English,  540 

Tutikorin,  48 

Twenty-four  Parganas,  the,  153,  206, 
593 


Udaipur  (Mewar),  380 

Ujjain,  270 

Umaji  Naik,  392 

Umarkot,  537 

'Umdat-ul-Umara,  357,  359,  361,  362 

Underi,  island  of,  101 

Upri,  395,  396 

Upton,  Colonel  John,  259-61 

Utrecht,  37,  53;  Treaty  of,  115 

Uva,  407 

Uzbegs,  the,  503 

Valentia,  Lord,  398 

Valentyn,  Francois,  53,  400 

Valikondapuram,  70,  130;  action  at,  129 

Valudavur,  127 

Vandalur,  130 

Vansittart,  George,  235,  423 

Vansittart,  Henry,  132,  168-73,  J75>  !78> 

207,  208,  601 
Vellore,  33,  34,  118,  119,  126,  336,  341, 

408;  mutiny  at,  330 
Venpurla,  49,  51,369 
Venice,  I,  9,  n 
Ventura,  General,  542 
Vepery,  113 
Verelst,  Harry,   180,  208,  234,  411,  412, 

415 

Vernet,  — ,  154 

Versailles,  Treaty  of,  288,  324,  339,  595 
Versluys,  Pieter,  54,  58 
Victoria,  Queen,  514 
Vijayadrug,  114 
Vijayanagar,  3,  11,  88,  117 

Vikrama  Raja  Sinha,  404 
Vikravandi,  action  at,  130 
Village-systems,  under  the  Marathas,  386; 

in  Bengal,  410;  in  south  India,  463-5, 

468,469,471,476,477 
Villiyanallur,  126,  164 
Villupuram,  127,  130 
Vincens,  Marie,  alias  Chonchon,  134 
Visaji  Kishan,  252,  253 
Vithuji  Holkar,  372 
Vitkevich,  Captain,  490 
Vitre",  Fran9ois  Martin  de,  61,  63 
Vizagapatam,  104, 112, 113, 128, 136, 139, 

14.5,  162 

Vizianagram,  162 
Vuyst,  Pieter,  54,  58,  59 
Vypin,  50 

Wade,  Colonel  C.,  496,  497,  501,  518,  525, 

542,  545 
Wadgaon  (Wargaum),  Convention  of,  264, 

265,  267 
Wadi,  369,  377 
Wadni,  550 

Waite,  Sir  Nicholas,  102,  105 
Wakil-i-mutlak,  364,  367,  604 
Walajah,  see  Muhammad  *Ali  Walajah 


Walcot,  5! 
WaUace, ' 


534»  536 


INDEX 


683 


Wallich,  Dr  Nathaniel,  567 

Walpole,  Horace,  186 

Wandiwash,  battle  of,  140, 163;  defence  of, 

28^;  chief  of,  589 
Wards,  Court  of,  429 
Wargaum,  see  Wadgaon 
Wasu  Muhammad,  377 
Watans,  387 
Watson,  Admiral  Charles,  1 14, 139,  144-6, 

149,  156-8 
Watts,  William,  141,  146,  148,  149,  152, 

15? 

Wazir  'Ali,  350,  351 

Weavers,  481 

Webbe,  Josiah,  361 

Weddelljohn,  90 

Weert,  Sebald  de,  41 

Wellesley,  Arthur,  Duke  of  Wellington, 
339-4i»  345,  346,  354,  358,  359,  361, 
3fo,  373.  374»  498,  509,  517,  5'8,  520, 
521,  535,  539,  544,  554 

Wellesley,  Henry,  Lord  Cowley,  353,  354 

Wellesley,  Richard,  Lord  Mornington, 
Marquis,  315,  317,  319,  320,  323; 
opposes  the  French,  327^.,  600;  over- 
throws Tipu,  338^^.;  relations  with 


states,  570,  587;  revenue  administration 
under,  456, 472 ;  treatment  of  the  Moghul 
emperor,  604,  605;  his  honours,  345;  re- 
called, 375 

Wellington,  Duke  of,  see  Wellesley,  Arthur 

Wesick,  —  van,  34 

Western  Ghats,  the,  100 

Westerwolt,  — ,  42,  43 

West  Indies,  321 

Westminster,  Treaty  of,  86 

Wheeler,  General,  551 

Wheler,  Edward,  212,  228,  229,  231,  296, 
301,  302,  426;  character,  230 

Whitehill,  John,  193,  283,  284 

Wilberforce,  William,  199,  308,  313 


Wild,  Brigadier,  511,  512 

Wilks,  Colonel  Mark,  quoted,  335,    36, 

3?7>  342,  344 
Wifflam  III,  97,  98,  108 
William  IV  (or  Orange),  59 
Willock,  Sir  Henry,  498 
Willshire,  General,  502 
Windham,  William,  309 
Winter,  Sir  Edward,  104 
Wood,  Major-General,  378 
Wood,  Benjamin,  76 
Wood,  Colonel  John,  276 
Wraxall,  Nathaniel,  190,  307 
Wynad,  343 
Wynch,  Alexander,  280 

Xavier,  St  Francis,  8,  16,  18,  26 

Yajnavalkya,  389 

Yanam,  74 

Yandabo,  Treaty  of,  559,  560,  567 

YarLutf  Khan,  148 

Yar  Muhammad  Khan  Barakzai,  541 

Yar  Muhammad  Wazir,  490,  493,  501, 

505 

Tuagaung,  563 
Yusaf  Khan,  279 
Yusuf  Adil  Khan,  alias  Idalcao  and  Sabaio, 

10 

Zabita  Khan,  365 

Zaman  Shah,  350,  351,  484-6,  515 

^amindari  daftar,  429 

Zamindars,  in  Bengal,  409,  410,  448,  449, 

452,  456,  457,  473;  in  the  Northern 

Sarkars,  463,  473,  474,  480 
Zamindar's  Court,  590 
Zamorin  of  Calicut,  see  Calicut 
Zeeland,  38 
Zeyla,  13 
Zillah  courts,  453,  454,  457,  458,  460,  474, 

479 

Zorawar  Singh,  546 
Zulfikar  Khan,  104 


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